The forest was quiet that night.
Silvery threads of moonlight wove through thin branches, tangling in the dense, needle-like foliage before ever reaching the ground. My cellphone flashlight cut a narrow path ahead of me. However, its gentle light only made the surrounding darkness feel heavier.

Somewhere in the silver night, an owl announced the beginning of a hunt.

This was not a good idea, I thought as my foot sank into soft moss. Something creaked beneath me, then snapped, a twig, maybe.

Dad was going to kill me.

If he knew I'd snuck out in the middle of the night to follow up on a text from a guy he'd explicitly told me to stay away from, not to mention everything else... I shivered. A sane part of my brain knew I was partly doing this to spite him, even if my main reason was making sure Ethan was okay.

Looking back, it was a spectacularly bad decision. But it was also the night that changed everything.

The path ahead of me looked nothing like the sunlit trail I remembered from the day before. No greenery, no birdsong. It stretched forward like a black, gaping mouth.

A sound came from my right, a sharp rustle of leaves. I snapped my flashlight toward the bushes.

Nothing.

Probably a squirrel.

Or a wolf.

Not an animal. One of them.

The thought sent a chill through me. I shook my head. No. This part of the woods was Blackwell territory. They wouldn't dare.

Wouldn't they?

I stopped.

It was probably the first moment I truly understood how stupid I was. But it was too late. I was already deep in the forest. Turning back made even less sense than pushing forward. The only real option was to find Ethan.

The soft murmur of water reached my ears, easing the tension just a little. I was close.

Then the feeling came back, crawling up my spine, that unmistakable sense of being watched. I turned around once. Then again. Each time I met the stillness of the forest, nothing more.

At last, I reached the clearing.
Moonlight coated the water in silver scales, and the sound of cascading waterfalls softened the edges of the place. It should have felt safe. Familiar.

Ethan was nowhere to be seen.

"Ethan?" I called into the darkness. "Are you there?"

The growl that answered sank straight into my bones.

Before I even turned, I knew three things:

Ethan wasn't there.

I wasn't alone.

And I was deeply, deeply f***ed.