Savage heart the other side of him

Some mornings, I wake up and pretend the curse isn't real.

I roll out of bed, stretch my arms, wash the blood off my hands-try not to ask whose it was-and get dressed like a normal man. I unlock the garage by six, fire up the coffee maker, wipe down my tools. Just another mechanic in a nowhere town, fixing busted engines and drinking cold beer with folks who don't ask too many questions.

But some mornings, like this one, the wolf won't let me forget.

The ache in my bones tells me it was a rough night. My knuckles are split, crusted with blood that isn't entirely mine, and my shirt sticks to my back with dried sweat. My jaw is sore, probably from grinding my teeth mid-shift, and there's a dull pressure behind my eyes like something is still pressing against the inside of my skull, trying to claw its way out.

I lean over the open hood of a beat-up '99 Chevy, tools clinking on the metal tray beside me. The old truck smells like burnt oil and mouse droppings. The radiator's shot, the timing belt's off, and something in the transmission is groaning like it's about to confess a crime. I don't mind the work-it keeps my hands busy. Keeps my mind off the rest.

The wolf never really sleeps. He just waits.

Last night was the full moon, and even though I chained myself up like always-silver cuffs around the wrists, iron-lined cage in the basement-I remember breaking free. I remember trees. Running. Snarling. And blood. A lot of it.

I don't know what I did. Or who I did it to.

But I know the wolf fed.

I exhale slowly and try not to think about it.

Outside, the morning air is thick with dew and smoke from someone's fireplace. Birds chirp somewhere beyond the garage, and from the road I can hear the occasional crunch of gravel as someone drives by too slow, watching the woods like they expect something to come walking out.

They're not wrong.

Hollow's Edge isn't a big town. It's the kind of place you miss if you blink, a speck on the map surrounded by forest, legend, and too many missing person reports. The locals pretend everything is fine. They smile, wave, gossip. But deep down, they know something's off. They feel it in their bones.

The town breathes, and the woods breathe with it.

Sometimes, I swear they breathe through me.

I wipe my hands on a rag, check the Chevy's hoses, then reach for the socket wrench just as the front door creaks open. I don't turn around right away. Most folks in Hollow's Edge know better than to come snooping around the garage unannounced-especially the morning after a full moon.

Then I catch the scent.

Smoke. Rain. And something sharp underneath, like crushed herbs and steel.

My stomach tenses.

The wolf wakes up.

"You open?" a woman asks, voice low and steady.

I look up.

And everything stops.

She stands framed by the morning light-tall, lean, wrapped in a weather-beaten leather jacket and dark jeans. Her boots are scuffed, her fingers gloved, and a satchel hangs across her chest like she's been traveling a long time. Her hair is shoulder-length and dark, tousled like wind had dragged its fingers through it. But it's her eyes that get me.

Storm grey. Still. Dangerous.

They don't blink when they meet mine.

I set the wrench down and straighten. "Depends. What are you driving?"

"I'm not here for repairs," she says. "Just passing through. Looking for a place to stay."

"There's a motel near the highway. Another one above the diner, if you don't mind peeling wallpaper."

"I don't mind much." Her voice is smooth, but there's something behind it. Something tired. Heavy. "Quiet town, isn't it?"

I shrug. "Depends what you're listening for."

She smiles at that, just slightly. "And what do you listen for?"

"Trouble."

She doesn't laugh, but I see the corner of her mouth twitch like she wants to. Then she walks in. Not the nervous kind of walk, not someone trying to tiptoe around the town freak. She moves like she owns every inch of ground beneath her feet.

I feel my spine tense.

There's something wrong about her. Not bad. Just... wrong. Like she's wearing a human body, but it doesn't quite fit right. My instincts start rattling like a chain-link fence in a windstorm.

"You got a name?" I ask, carefully.

She nods. "Eira Vale."

"New in town?"

She arches an eyebrow. "Would you believe me if I said I grew up here?"

"No," I say flatly.

"Didn't think so."

She steps forward, stops a few feet from me, and extends a gloved hand.

"Ronan Thorne," I offer, shaking it.

And everything inside me flares.

It's not lust. It's not fear. It's something primal. Like the scent of rain before a lightning strike. Her skin is warm, too warm, and my pulse starts racing even though I'm trying to stay still.

Her scent coils around me-wildflowers, burnt wood, and old blood. The wolf is pacing in my chest, agitated, confused. I don't know what she is, but she's not normal.

Not human.

"You should be careful around here," I say, pulling my hand back. "This place... it has a way of changing people."

She doesn't blink. "Good. I'm already broken."

That catches me off guard. Before I can say anything else, she turns and walks out, boots crunching gravel as she disappears into the haze.

And just like that, I know two things for sure.

One, she's not just passing through.

And two, my quiet life is officially over.

I don't get much done the rest of the day.

Every time I close my eyes, I see hers. That storm-grey stare. That too-steady heartbeat. That scent I can't name.

By sundown, I've checked the locks on my cage three times, reheated my coffee twice, and thrown a wrench across the garage just to hear something break. The wolf is restless. He doesn't like Eira. Or maybe he likes her too much. I'm not sure which is worse.

By midnight, I give up on sleep.

I step outside, breathing in the night air.

The woods behind the garage are silent. Too silent.

That's when I smell it.

Blood.

Fresh.

Thick and metallic, sharp as a blade across the tongue.

I move fast, instinct taking over. My body shifts into hunting mode-quiet steps, controlled breath, eyes scanning the shadows for movement. I don't shift. Not yet. But I let the wolf peek through.

It doesn't take long to find the trail.

There, in the mud, are deep impressions. Bare feet. Clawed toes. Drag marks.

A kill site.

The copper tang gets stronger.

And then I find him.

Tom Fiske.

The damn mailman.

His throat is torn open, jaw slack, eyes wide with something far worse than fear. His torso is a ruin of meat and sinew, ribs cracked open like someone was searching for something inside.

I drop to one knee, heart pounding.

I knew Tom. He brought me coffee every other Thursday and made the worst dad jokes in the county. He had a daughter in college. He didn't deserve this.

But what makes my stomach drop isn't the body.

It's the footprints leading away from it.

Werewolf prints.

Big. Deep. Fresh.

But they aren't mine.

And I was the only one.

At least-I used to be.

I stare into the woods, my vision sharpening.

Somewhere out there, something howled last night.

And it wasn't me.

Tom Fiske's blood was still warm when I backed away from the body.

I'd seen worse. Hell, I'd done worse. But this was different. It wasn't the mess-the torn throat, the gouged chest, the look of frozen horror in his eyes. It was the fact that I hadn't done it. I could feel it in my bones. In my gut. In the way the wolf inside me was still, head low, ears pinned back.

Whatever did this wasn't me.

And that made it worse.

Because if it wasn't me... it meant there was another.

Another werewolf. In my woods.

And judging by what was left of Tom, it wasn't the controlled kind. This one didn't chain itself up during full moons. It didn't fight the hunger. It didn't care who it tore apart.

I crouched low, studying the prints in the mud. Too big for a normal wolf. Too heavy for a bear. The paw pads had claw points that cut deep and uneven. Four-toed. No shoes. This was someone who fully shifted-someone who lost themselves to it.

A rogue.

I'd heard the stories, even met a few in my younger days-wolves who let the beast drive. Those kinds didn't live long. Either a hunter got them, or their own pack tore them down before they turned feral. But Hollow's Edge had no pack. Just me. And now-someone else.

I looked back at Tom and clenched my jaw.

He'd always called me "Sonny." Treated me like I was still a kid, even though I could break a wrench in half with one hand and pull an engine block like it weighed nothing. He didn't deserve to die like this. Alone. Mutilated. Left like roadkill.

Whoever did this... they'd crossed a line.

And lines meant war.

The sun was just peeking over the hills when I finally made it back to the garage. My boots were soaked. My shirt was damp with sweat. I tried not to track too much mud through the door, but I didn't really care. I locked the door behind me and made a beeline for the backroom, flicking on the small overhead light and grabbing a bottle from the top shelf.

Not water.

Not coffee.

Whiskey. The strong kind that burned.

I downed a shot, winced, and braced my hands on the counter.

"You look like hell."

I spun.

She was leaning in the doorway, arms crossed, the same damn stormcloud eyes on me like they'd been waiting.

"Eira," I said, slower than I meant to.

"You gonna offer me one?" she asked, nodding to the bottle.

I stared at her. "You always sneak into garages uninvited?"

"You always smell like blood and fire this early in the morning?"

I didn't answer.

She stepped forward, movements fluid, like a shadow sliding across a wall. She didn't even look tired. I must've looked like a walking corpse-sweat-soaked, filthy, eyes bloodshot. But she? She looked carved out of midnight.

"What happened?" she asked, quieter now.

I hesitated.

I could lie. I should lie. But something in me knew it wouldn't matter. She already knew I wasn't normal. Hell, she might've known before I did.

I poured her a shot and slid it across the table.

"There's a body in the woods," I said. "Tom Fiske. Mailman. You probably met him yesterday."

She nodded, slowly.

"He's dead."

"How?"

"Throat ripped out. Chest opened up like a bear got to him."

She raised an eyebrow. "Bear?"

I met her gaze. "Not a bear."

She took the shot. Knocked it back. Didn't even flinch.

"And not you," she said, just as easily.

"No."

"Good. I'd hate to have to kill you this early in our acquaintance."

I should've laughed.

I didn't.

By noon, the sheriff's truck was parked at the edge of the woods.

Crows circled overhead. The forest was quiet-too quiet for summer. No birdsong. No wind. Just the occasional crackle of a radio and the hum of hushed voices trying not to panic.

I stayed on the edge of the scene, arms crossed, keeping my face neutral. Sheriff Maddox didn't like me much. Never had. Too many questions, not enough answers. I always gave him the kind of silence that made his neck veins throb.

"You find him?" he asked, boots crunching over pine needles.

"I was out for a walk," I lied.

"Lot of blood on your boots for a walk."

"Lot of blood in the woods."

He grunted. "You hear anything last night?"

"No."

"You always this helpful?"

I looked him in the eye. "You always this useless?"

He stepped in close, breath smelling like coffee and bitterness. "Don't test me, Thorne. You got a reputation."

"So do you."

He sneered and walked off, barking orders to his deputies.

I looked down at the tracks. They were starting to fade with the morning heat, but I could still see the edges. No human would've left those. No normal animal, either. But Maddox wouldn't see it. He didn't believe in monsters.

Not the kind I was, anyway.

By evening, the town was buzzing.

The diner stayed open late. People whispered over coffee and pie. They talked about accidents. Wild dogs. Maybe even a cougar that wandered in from the next county.

I sat in the back booth, nursing black coffee and listening.

That's when Eira walked in.

Heads turned. Conversations paused. She had that effect-like someone opened a window and let in a thunderstorm. She didn't look at anyone else. Just me.

She slid into the booth across from me like we'd done this a hundred times.

"You think it's still in town?" she asked, no hello, no preamble.

"I think it never left."

She stirred her own coffee, didn't drink it. "Rogue?"

I nodded.

"Full moon was last night. So it'll lay low now. Feed off scraps, maybe. Sleep. Hide."

I glanced at her. "You sound like you know a lot about this."

"I should," she said. "I've hunted them before."

I didn't blink. "You a hunter?"

She smiled, slow and dangerous. "No. But I've been hunted."

For the first time since she walked into Hollow's Edge, I felt like she let something slip.

I leaned forward. "What are you?"

She met my gaze, steady. "Same thing you are. Different story."

I sat back, breathing slow.

This was getting out of hand.

I closed the garage early that night. Locked the doors. Covered the windows. Took the shotgun from the backroom and set it next to my bed. It wouldn't do much against a full-shifted wolf, but it might buy me time.

I didn't sleep.

Around 3 a.m., I heard howling.

Not mine.

Long. Low. Mourning.

It didn't come from the forest.

It came from the edge of town.

Too close.

Morning broke with a knock at my door.

I opened it to find Eira standing there with a black eye and dried blood at the corner of her mouth.

"You okay?" I asked, pulling her inside.

"Yeah," she muttered. "I found it."

"Where?"

"Near the grain silo. It was feeding on a dog. Big one. Fully shifted. Didn't see me at first, but I got a shot in."

I blinked. "Shot?"

She reached into her jacket and pulled out a knife. Silver. Etched in runes I didn't recognize.

"You stabbed it?"

"Clipped its shoulder."

"And you got away?"

"I don't run slow."

I looked her over again. The bruises were bad. She'd been tossed. Slammed into something hard.

I took a breath. "We need to find it."

"We will," she said. "But not like this. Not during the day. It'll be hiding. Healing."

"Tonight then."

She nodded.

And for the first time since I was cursed, I wasn't hunting alone.

You don't forget your first transformation.

You can bury it under work, whiskey, silence-but the memory always finds its way back, like blood rising to the surface of a wound you thought had healed.

For me, it happened on my twenty-first birthday. I woke up half-naked and screaming in a thicket six miles outside of Hollow's Edge, covered in mud and dried blood that wasn't mine. I'd torn through barbed wire, shattered a streetlamp, and left claw marks on my father's gravestone. No one told me it was coming. No warning. No whispers. Just a legacy buried deep in my DNA and a full moon that didn't care about excuses.

I'd thought I was cursed.

But now, with Eira asleep on my couch, bruised and bleeding but breathing, I was starting to think it might've been something else.

A warning.

The rogue wolf was still out there, and we were running out of time.

The town was pretending everything was fine.

That's what Hollow's Edge did best-play dumb. Denial was stitched into our soil. Even with Tom's death and rumors of missing pets and strange sounds in the night, folks still smiled in the grocery store and said things like, "We've had worse." Like the darkness wasn't licking their heels.

I spent the morning reinforcing the garage-silver wiring at the windows, old wolfbane stashed from years ago, a double lock on the cage in the basement. Eira helped when she could, though I could tell her ribs were bothering her. The rogue had thrown her hard.

She didn't complain once.

When I offered her painkillers, she laughed. "I've had worse," she said, echoing the town like it was some kind of private joke.

I didn't press.

Instead, I asked, "Where did you learn to fight like that?"

She hesitated. The question made her still in a way that wasn't just about physical pain.

"My mother," she said finally. "She was a witch. A real one. Not the potion-seller kind. Blood magic. Bone magic."

"And your father?"

She didn't answer. Just pulled the zipper up on her jacket.

I didn't ask again.

That night, we sat on the garage roof, watching the treeline breathe.

Eira nursed a flask, something herbal and bitter by the smell. I stuck to coffee. The night was cool, and the stars were sharp above us, cutting through the black sky like broken glass.

"How do you deal with it?" she asked, not looking at me. "The wolf."

I thought about lying. About shrugging it off with a sarcastic comment or some rugged silence. But the truth was... I didn't deal with it. I survived it.

"Chains," I said. "And guilt."

She nodded. "That tracks."

"You?"

"Same."

I raised an eyebrow. "You shift too?"

"No," she said. "But I've been hunted by enough of your kind to know the look in your eyes."

I turned toward her. "My kind?"

"Not werewolves. Survivors."

I wasn't sure whether that was supposed to comfort me or put me on edge. Maybe both.

"What do you want from this?" I asked. "Why are you here?"

She was quiet a long time.

"Something brought me here," she said. "I don't know what yet. But I'm not leaving until I find it."

The rogue attacked again two nights later.

This time, it wasn't a pet or a loner. It was a family.

I got the call around midnight. Sheriff Maddox's voice crackled over my radio like thunder. He didn't say much, but I could hear it in his tone-the panic was starting to slip through.

The family lived near the east ridge-two kids, mom, and dad. Only the youngest survived. Eight years old. Found in the laundry room, clutching a kitchen knife and rocking back and forth.

The rest? Torn apart.

Eira and I arrived just after the deputies cleared out. Maddox didn't see us. We stayed in the trees, downwind.

The scent hit me like a fist. Blood. Feces. Hair. Fear.

"This was rage," Eira whispered. "This wasn't just hunger."

I nodded. "It's not feeding. It's sending a message."

She turned to me. "To you."

The thought chilled me in a way the night air couldn't. Was the rogue taunting me? Trying to draw me out? Or worse-trying to frame me?

I scanned the tracks again. This time, they were deeper. Closer together. Wounded.

"You hurt it," I said. "Your knife-it slowed him."

Eira nodded. "But not enough."

I stood and stared at the woods.

"Then we finish it."

The next day, the town cracked.

Sheriff Maddox posted armed men along the town square. People stopped pretending. Doors were double-locked. Kids were pulled from school. The church held vigils. The diner offered free meals to grieving families.

And me? People stopped meeting my eyes.

Whispers followed me like ghosts. "Wasn't he always a little... strange?" "Never seen him at church." "Doesn't he live near the woods?"

I could feel the walls closing in. Suspicion. Fear. Desperation.

It wouldn't take much to tip them over.

"You need to leave," I told Eira that night, while we packed gear.

She stopped coiling silver wire and stared at me. "Excuse me?"

"If they come after me, that's one thing. But you-"

"Don't tell me how to survive, Ronan."

"This isn't your fight."

"Maybe not. But I'm in it now."

I clenched my jaw. "If I lose control-"

"I'll stop you."

I laughed bitterly. "You think you can?"

She stepped closer. Her voice was calm, but sharp enough to cut.

"I know I can."

I looked into her eyes. She meant it.

God help me-I believed her.

That night, we hunted.

We waited until the moon was high-gibbous, not full, but still strong enough to stir something deep. We followed the old game trails, moving in near silence, weapons strapped to our backs. I didn't shift. Not fully. But I let the wolf rise halfway. Enough to track. Enough to smell.

We didn't speak.

The forest swallowed sound. The leaves didn't rustle. Even the crickets were silent.

Then we heard it.

A low growl-wet and wrong. A snarl that twisted up from somewhere in the trees ahead.

We moved fast.

The rogue exploded from the brush like a freight train.

He was taller than me. Broader. Covered in thick matted fur, but with patches missing-revealing pale, scarred skin beneath. His eyes were yellow and burning. His jaw snapped open, revealing too many teeth. Blood coated his claws.

I didn't think-I lunged.

We hit the ground hard, rolling in a mess of limbs and snarls. He was strong-stronger than I expected. But I had control. I was fighting with instinct and purpose. He was chaos.

I drove my elbow into his ribs, then slammed his head into a tree root.

Eira struck from behind-her silver blade slicing across his thigh. The rogue howled and thrashed, catching her in the ribs with a backhand that sent her flying.

I roared and tackled him again, this time pinning his throat.

And then-he spoke.

Through broken, bubbling lips. Words barely human.

"You're too late."

I froze.

He grinned, blood in his teeth.

"They're coming."

"Who?" I growled.

"Pack."

And then he bit down-hard-on something in his own wrist.

I felt the pulse of magic before I saw it.

His body twisted. Not into a shift-into dust. Bone cracked, fur burned, and his flesh withered, collapsing into ash in seconds.

I stumbled back, breath catching.

Eira crawled over, bleeding but alert.

"What the hell was that?" she gasped.

"He burned himself out," I muttered. "Magic-suicide spell."

"To keep us from getting answers."

I nodded, heart pounding.

"He said the pack is coming."

"Yours?" she asked.

I shook my head.

"No," I whispered. "His."