The first time Cassia saw the wolves, they stood at the edge of town like shadows pretending to be men.
She had just come out of the bookstore on Hollow Street—a place no one visited but her. The owner, Mr. Levan, rarely spoke, but always had a pot of mulled tea boiling on the old stove and a chair in the corner that no one else ever sat in. She liked it that way. People didn't linger around her. She didn't like the way they looked at her: puzzled, cautious, like they knew she didn't belong in Crooked Ash, but couldn't quite figure out why.
That night, the fog was heavier than usual, and it carried a smell with it—earthy, wild, a little metallic. The wolves were at the edge of the tree line, where the woods met the road. There were four of them. Not wolves in fur, not yet. Just tall figures cloaked in darkness, staring as if they knew her soul better than she did.
Cassia didn't run. She didn't break her stride. She walked past them, her boots making no sound against the cobbled street, her scarf drawn high to her nose, her gloved fingers clutching the book she hadn't yet dared to open.
What she didn't know then was that only one of them saw her. Only one of them scented the truth.
And his name was Elias.
He hadn't spoken in months—not since the last moon took too much from him. But when she passed by, his breath hitched, and a word tumbled out of his mouth like it had been waiting there for centuries.
"Mine."
⸻
Cassia lived alone in the house with the slanted roof and the windows that never opened. It stood at the far end of Black Hollow Road, half-swallowed by trees. People in Crooked Ash whispered about the house, said it used to belong to the Nightwood family, that it was cursed with silence and snow. She paid the rent in cash, never spoke of where she came from, and answered no questions.
Inside, the house was a haven of dust and quiet. There were books stacked like towers across the floor, dried herbs hanging from the ceiling, and a fire that never quite warmed her. She had no friends. No phone. No ties. But she had journals—pages of dreams she didn't understand. Dreams where wolves walked upright and kissed her palms. Dreams where the moon bled like a wound in the sky.
She told herself she came to Crooked Ash to escape.
But that was a lie.
She came because something inside her told her that here—among the wolves, the fog, and the ancient trees—she would find the part of herself that had always been missing.
⸻
That night, as she bathed in the cracked porcelain tub, she saw something new in the mirror above the sink: a pale glow beneath her skin. Like moonlight trapped in flesh. Her breath caught, and for the first time in a long while, she felt fear. Not the kind that makes you scream—but the kind that makes your bones hum with ancient memory.
Outside, a howl split the sky. One long note, low and mournful. It didn't sound like a beast—it sounded like a prayer.
She rose from the water, wrapping herself in a threadbare towel, and padded to the window.
And there, in the clearing beyond her house, stood a wolf with eyes like fire and sorrow.
He wasn't snarling. He wasn't hunting.
He was waiting.
For her.