That night, sleep would not come. The echoes of her howl still haunted her chest, powerful yet strange, as though it had come from something greater than her throat alone. The pack slept in peace, but Lily's heart was restless. The forest tugged at her again, pulling her toward the edges of memory — toward Caleb.
His cabin stood as it always had, tucked into the slope of the valley, framed by ivy and time. She hadn't stepped inside since his death. For a moment she lingered at the door, her hand trembling on the latch, afraid of the ghosts that might greet her.
The air inside was thick with dust, but the scent of him still lingered — pine resin, smoke, the faint musk of wolf. His belongings lay untouched: the worn cloak draped across the chair, the kettle hanging unused above the fireplace, the carved wolf figurine he had once given her when they started dating.
Her chest ached. She ran her fingers over the grooves of the figurine, memories bleeding through — Caleb's laughter, his steady hand on her shoulder, the way his eyes softened whenever he called her pup.
Something pulled her to the floorboards near the hearth. Instinct, or perhaps the bond. She pried one loose and found it: a leather-bound journal, brittle with age. Her heart hammered as she opened it.
The pages were filled with sketches — the same spirals and symbols carved into the stones of the binding circle. Notes written in Caleb's steady hand sprawled across the margins: warnings about the covenant, fragments of chants, diagrams of runes she did not recognize.
And there, scattered across pages like drops of blood, the same phrase again and again:
The demons are not gone. They are waiting for the Alpha Binding.
Her stomach twisted. She was bound now — but bound to what? Bound to whom? Had her rite awoken something Caleb had feared?
She sank into his chair, the journal heavy in her hands. Shadows clung to the corners of the cabin, thicker than they should have been, as though listening. Watching.
For the first time since her binding, Lily felt the stir of something darker than destiny. Something hungry.
She closed the journal, clutching it to her chest. If the past had been Caleb's burden, then the future — all of it — was hers.