Three days passed.
Three days of scrubbing and painting and hammering, of turning the cabin from a place that felt abandoned into something that might, eventually, feel like home. Three days of avoiding the tree line, of not looking too long into the shadows, of telling herself that the sounds she heard at night were just the forest being the forest.
Three days of not seeing Kael Blackwood.
She told herself she wasn't looking for him. That the way her eyes scanned Main Street every time she drove through town, the way she found herself glancing at the gothic mansion on the hill, the way she lay awake at night thinking about amber eyes in the darkness that was just curiosity. He was the closest thing Graylock had to a mayor, Elara had said. The caretaker. It made sense she'd be curious about him.
It didn't explain why her heart rate spiked every time she thought about the way he'd said her name. Vance. Like it meant something.
On the third day, she found the photos.
She was cleaning out the loft, sweeping decades of dust from the corners, when her broom hit something solid beneath a loose floorboard. She pried it up with a screwdriver and found a box wooden, carved with the same symbols that marked the cabin's doorframes hidden in the space between the joists.
Inside were photographs. Old ones, the paper yellowed and brittle, the images faded to sepia. They showed a woman Clara recognized, after a moment, as her great-aunt Margaret. Young in the earliest photos, old in the latest, but always with the same serious expression, the same direct gaze that seemed to look straight through the camera.
In most of the photos, Margaret was alone. But in some, there were others. A man with dark hair and pale eyes, his arm around her shoulders. A woman with grey braids and a carved pendant around her neck Elara, younger but unmistakable. And in one, a boy, maybe twelve years old, with unruly dark hair and the most remarkable eyes Clara had ever seen.
Amber eyes.
She stared at the photograph for a long time, her heart beating too fast. The boy in the picture was too young to be the man she'd met at the inn, but the resemblance was undeniable. The same sharp jaw, the same brooding intensity, the same eyes that seemed to hold light where there shouldn't be any.
"Kael," she whispered.
She found more photos beneath the first layer. Margaret with the same boy, older now, his face harder, his eyes the same. Margaret with a man who looked like an older version of Kael his father, maybe, though the man in the photo had kinder eyes, a gentler expression. Margaret standing in front of the cabin, the same cabin, the trees behind her just as close, the markings already carved into the doorframe.
And at the bottom of the box, wrapped in cloth so old it was nearly falling apart, a letter.
My dearest Clara, it began, and her breath caught.
If you're reading this, then I'm gone, and you've come home. I know you didn't know me. I know your mother kept you from me, and maybe that was for the best. The Vance women have always been drawn to places they shouldn't go, to people they shouldn't love. I was, too, once. And it cost me everything.
But you're here now, and that means something. It means the blood remembers, even when the mind doesn't. It means you have the same gift, the same curse, that I did. You'll see things in Graylock that don't make sense. You'll feel things you can't explain. And there will be a man there's always a man with eyes that don't look human and a voice that makes you forget who you are.
Trust your instincts, Clara. They're stronger than you know. And when the time comes, when you have to choose between running and staying, remember: the wolves aren't always the monsters. Sometimes the monsters are the ones who look like us.
I loved this place. I loved him. And I never regretted staying, not once, even when it broke my heart.
Be brave, little one. You're stronger than you know.
— Aunt Margaret
Clara read the letter three times, her hands shaking, her mind racing. The words didn't make sense—not in any rational way. Wolves. Monsters. A man with eyes that didn't look human.
But she thought of the howl in the forest. The amber eyes at the tree line. The way Kael had looked at her like she was prey and salvation all at once.
She thought of the accident.
In her dreams the ones she couldn't remember when she woke but that left her gasping, sweating, clawing at the sheets there were always eyes. Yellow eyes, in the headlights, before the ice took them. She'd never told anyone that. She'd told herself it was just her mind filling in gaps, creating images to explain what she couldn't understand.
But what if it wasn't?
She folded the letter carefully, tucked it back into the box with the photographs, and slid the floorboard back into place.
Then she went looking for answers.
The mansion on the hill was exactly as imposing up close as it had looked from town.
Three stories of gothic architecture, all pointed arches and steep gables and windows that were dark against the grey sky. Iron gates flanked the driveway, though they stood open, and the path to the front door was overgrown with weeds. It was the kind of house that belonged in a ghost story, the kind of house that held secrets.
Clara stood at the gates for a long time, the rain soaking through her jacket, and tried to talk herself out of it.
This is insane, she thought. You barely know this man. You're showing up at his house uninvited because of some old photographs and a letter from a woman you never met.
But she couldn't shake the feeling that something was wrong in Graylock. Something was hidden here, something that had to do with her great-aunt, with the markings on her cabin, with the way the townspeople looked at her like she was a ghost they'd been expecting.
And she couldn't shake the feeling that Kael Blackwood was at the center of it all.
She was halfway up the drive when the front door opened.
He stood in the doorway, silhouetted against the light from inside, and for a moment, she couldn't move. He was wearing a dark sweater, the sleeves pushed up to his elbows, revealing forearms corded with muscle and laced with scars. His hair was damp, like he'd just showered, and his eyes—
His eyes were amber. They glowed, faintly, in the grey afternoon light, and they were fixed on her with an intensity that made her forget why she'd come.
"You shouldn't be here," he said.
Clara stopped at the bottom of the porch steps, her heart pounding. "We need to talk."
"Nothing good comes from a woman who shows up at a man's door in the rain with that look on her face."
"What look?"
"The look of someone who's found something she wasn't supposed to find."
She climbed the steps, her wet boots leaving prints on the old wood. Up close, he was even more intimidating—taller than she'd realized, broader, with a presence that seemed to fill the doorway and spill out into the grey afternoon. She had to tilt her head back to meet his eyes, and when she did, she saw something in them that made her breath catch.
Hunger. And fear.
"I found photographs," she said. "Of my great-aunt. With you. With your father, I think. And a letter. She said..." She swallowed, forcing herself to continue. "She said the wolves aren't always the monsters."
Something shifted in his expression. The hunger receded, replaced by something colder. More guarded.
"Margaret shouldn't have written that letter."
"But she did. And now I'm here, and I want to know what's happening in this town. I want to know what's in the woods. I want to know why everyone keeps telling me to leave before the full moon, and I want to know why you look at me like—"
She stopped, the words dying in her throat.
"Like what?" His voice was low, dangerous.
She should have lied. She should have said something safe, something that wouldn't reveal how much he affected her, how much she'd thought about him in the three days since they'd met.
But she was tired of safe. Tired of lying. Tired of pretending she didn't see the things she saw.
"Like you know me," she said. "Like you've been waiting for me. Like I'm something you want and something you're afraid of, all at once."
He was silent for a long moment. The rain fell around them, a curtain of grey, and the world narrowed to the space between them—the porch steps, the worn boards, the look in his eyes that was burning through her defenses like they weren't even there.
"You should go back to the inn," he said finally. "It's going to get dark soon."
"Answer my questions."
"I can't."
"You won't."
He stepped forward, and she had to fight the urge to step back. He was close enough now that she could smell him pine and rain and something wilder, something that made her pulse race for reasons she didn't want to examine.
"Clara." His voice was rough, almost a growl. "Go back to the inn. Stay there tonight. And tomorrow, pack your things and leave Graylock. Go back to California, or anywhere else. Just go."
"No."
The word came out harder than she'd intended, and she saw something flash in his eyes respect, maybe, or anger, she couldn't tell which.
"I'm not leaving," she said. "I came here to start over, and that's what I'm going to do. I don't care about your warnings, or your secrets, or whatever you think you're protecting me from. This is my home now. My great-aunt's home. And I'm not letting anyone scare me away."
"You don't know what you're asking for."
"Then tell me."
He moved so fast she didn't have time to react. One moment he was standing a foot away, and the next his hand was wrapped around her wrist, his grip firm but not painful, and he was pulling her toward him, close enough that she could see the flecks of gold in his eyes, the tension in his jaw, the way his chest rose and fell with breaths that were too fast, too controlled.
"There are things in these woods that don't exist in your world," he said, and his voice was a growl now, raw and rough. "I am one of them. And you—" His grip tightened fractionally, and she felt a jolt of electricity where his skin met hers, a spark that made her gasp. "You should not be here. But you are. And I cannot let you go."
The words hung in the air between them, heavy with meaning she didn't understand. His eyes were blazing now, the amber so bright it was almost gold, and she could feel something coming off him heat, or energy, or something she had no words for. It wrapped around her, pulled at her, made her want to lean into him, to close the distance between them, to—
His eyes flashed.
One moment they were amber, and the next they were something else something that wasn't human, that caught the fading light and held it, that glowed with an inner fire that made her primitive brain scream danger, danger, danger even as her body leaned closer.
And then his face changed.
It was subtle she wouldn't have noticed if she hadn't been staring directly at him. But his features seemed to shift, just for a second, the bones rearranging beneath the skin, his canines lengthening into something that wasn't human. It was there and gone so fast she might have imagined it, but she saw it. She saw it.
She jerked back, and he released her wrist like he'd been burned.
They stared at each other, breathing hard, the rain plastering her hair to her face and soaking through his sweater. He looked almost as shaken as she felt, his hands clenched at his sides, his chest heaving.
"Go," he said, and his voice was hoarse. "Now."
She didn't need to be told twice.
She ran.
Her boots slipped on the wet gravel as she fled down the driveway, her heart pounding so hard she could hear it in her ears. She didn't look back. She couldn't. She was too afraid of what she might see.
But at the gates, her feet slipped on the mud, and she went down hard, her palms scraping against the gravel, her knees hitting the ground with a jarring impact. She pushed herself up, gasping, and looked back despite herself.
He was standing in the doorway, silhouetted against the light from inside, and his eyes were glowing in the darkness.
Two amber points of light, watching her.
And in the forest beyond the mansion, deeper in the shadows where the trees were thickest, two red eyes stared back.
Clara saw them for only a moment—a flash of crimson in the darkness—before they disappeared. But in that moment, she knew, with a certainty that went beyond logic or reason, that she wasn't the only one watching Kael Blackwood's house tonight.
Something else was watching, too. Something with red eyes and hunger in its heart.
And the hunt had begun.