Chapter 3 The Red Vale Whispers

Two Days North of Hollow Fang Territory

The cold here was not the kind you escaped with furs or fire. It clung to the bones, seeped beneath the skin, and whispered through the cracks in the soul. The further north we rode, the more the world felt untethered from time. Trees gnarled into unnatural shapes, winds howled with voices that didn't belong to the living, and the snow by the third night turned a soft, unsettling pink.

Lucien said nothing about the blood colored frost. I didn't ask. We both knew it wasn't natural.

We were riding into something sacred. Something cursed.

The Red Vale.

Legends said the Moon wept once, for her wayward children the first wolves who abandoned their path and let madness consume them. Where her tears fell, the earth split. Mountains rose. A valley of bone and memory was born.

Those wolves were buried here.

But others said the Red Vale was not a grave, but a prison.

Not for the dead...

...but for a god who chose the wrong bride.

We reached the vale on the fourth morning.

Snow blanketed everything. The wind had died, but it was worse now. Stillness was more ominous than the storm. My horse whinnied and refused to take another step beyond the crooked black trees that marked the edge of the vale.

Lucien dismounted. "This is as far as we ride."

I followed, my boots crunching against frost laced ground. The moment I stepped past the treeline, the air thickened. Like walking through the breath of something ancient. Every instinct in my body screamed to turn back.

"Can you feel it?" Lucien asked, voice low.

"Yes."

It wasn't fear.

It was recognition.

Something in me was calling back.

The ruins appeared like teeth jutting from a snow buried skull.

Obsidian pillars cracked with frost. Stone archways half swallowed by ice. Symbols were carved into the structures, older than the old tongue, curving like the phases of the moon, etched in a language that wasn't meant to be read but remembered.

"This was a temple once," Lucien said. "Built long before the packs. Before the Lycan tribes split. Before the vampire courts became empires."

I stepped toward a broken wall, tracing one of the symbols. It flared beneath my fingertips faint silver light threading through it like veins.

Lucien watched.

"You activated that without blood," he said. "That's not supposed to be possible."

I didn't respond. I wasn't sure what to say. The magic here was alive. And it knew me.

In the center of the temple was the monolith. Tall. Split cleanly down the middle. Black stone, veined with red like dying embers.

When I touched it, the vision came instantly.

I saw her.

The woman from before.

Cloaked in fur and ash, eyes silver bright, standing before a crowd of wolves who bowed to her, teeth bared in reverence.

Behind her, a burning forest.

Before her, a blade held in both hands.

At her feet, a man with familiar gold eyes bleeding from a wound she'd dealt.

Lucien.

But younger. Wild eyed. Betrayed.

She opened her mouth.

And spoke my name.

"Elara."

I tore my hand away from the monolith, gasping.

Lucien was already beside me, hands at my shoulders. "What did you see?"

"You," I whispered. "Bleeding. Kneeling."

He went still.

"And me. Not me. Her. The Forsaken Bride. But she, she looked through me. As if she wasn't past, but waiting."

Lucien's grip tightened. "This isn't just memory. This place... it's echoing what's to come."

We made camp near the ruins.

Lucien warded the perimeter with salt, silver, and blood old protections even the vampires feared. The fire struggled to burn. Even flames didn't want to live in this place.

We didn't speak much. I sat with the dagger he gave me in my lap, tracing the moon runes etched along its silver hilt.

"I don't remember my parents," I said finally, voice low. "They died when I was young. Killed in one of the first border raids."

Lucien glanced at me, eyes unreadable.

"I grew up in the human city of Rhenhart, raised in the gutter by old women who hated wolves," I continued. "When the change came, I thought I was cursed. I begged the gods to take it away."

"But they didn't."

"No." I laughed bitterly. "Instead, they made me stronger."

Lucien leaned back against a stone, watching me through firelight. "You know... my father told me once that the goddess chooses her wolves not for their purity, but for their rage."

"Then she chose right."

He smiled faintly. "I don't think she's done choosing."

There was something in his voice something that twisted like a thread tugged too tight.

"You knew her," I said. "Didn't you? The one I saw in the vision. The Forsaken Bride."

Lucien didn't answer at first. Then he said, "I knew of her. My bloodline carries memories. Whispers passed down through the generations. Some say she was a traitor. Others say she was a martyr. She was loved. And feared."

He looked into the fire.

"They say she died to protect us."

I thought of the monolith. Of her eyes. Of the silver crown of antlers she wore.

"No," I said. "She didn't die. She became something else."

That night, the Red Vale showed its teeth.

I woke to screaming.

Lucien was already up, blade drawn, eyes glowing. The fire was dead, and the sky above us churned with storm clouds lit by no moon.

Figures emerged from the fog.

Not Lycans. Not vampires.

Ghosts.

Wolves half formed creatures of memory and pain. Specters of those buried beneath the Vale. They slithered through the snow like mist, howling with hunger.

"Don't let them touch you," Lucien barked.

I grabbed my dagger, heart pounding.

One ghost lunged skeletal, its muzzle torn open into a permanent snarl. I slashed with the dagger, expecting it to pass through

It didn't.

The blade sang. Silver fire raced along its edge, and the ghost disintegrated with a howl.

Lucien's sword glowed similarly.

"These are the Lost," he shouted over the noise. "Souls unclaimed. Bound to the Vale."

"Why now?"

"They're drawn to you!"

He was right.

They ignored him.

They came for me.

I fought. Slashed. Bled. The dagger burned in my hand, but the ghosts kept coming. Until

I howled.

The sound ripped from me in both voice and soul.

Not a scream. Not a cry.

A call.

The ghosts stopped.

They shimmered.

Then one by one... they knelt.

Lucien lowered his sword.

"Holy gods..."

I stood in the center of the snow, surrounded by the kneeling dead.

"I didn't mean to" I said, voice shaking.

"You called them," Lucien whispered. "And they obeyed."

He walked toward me slowly.

"What does this mean?"

I looked at him and for the first time, I saw fear.

Not of me.

For me.

"It means," he said, "you are no longer becoming the Forsaken Bride."

"You are her."

When the ghosts faded, they left something behind.

A small silver medallion buried beneath the monolith.

Lucien brushed snow from it and handed it to me. It was warm to the touch.

On one side: the symbol of the moon in eclipse. On the other: two wolves, back to back, one bleeding into the other.

"This is hers," Lucien said. "It's called the Veil Sigil. Said to bind wolf to wolf in eternal vow."

I stared at him.

"Why give it to me?"

"Because what's coming... we'll need more than strength. We'll need binding."

He reached out.

And placed the medallion against my collarbone.

It burned.

Not pain.

Claim.

Not as his.

But as something else.

Something ancient.

Something shared.

I looked up into his eyes.

Enemy. Alpha. Protector.

Lover? Not yet.

But soon.

If we survived.