Chapter 136
LOGAN
The forest didn’t have a name on any map. Not one you’d find in any official pack ledger, at least. But every wolf who grew up near the Blightwood knew better than to say its name out loud.
That was the kind of place it was.
My tires crunched over brittle gravel, the road narrowing until the trees were practically scraping the sides of the car. I spotted her taillights ahead—dim red orbs flickering in the dark like a predator's eyes.
Cassandra had already arrived. Of course she had. She was standing beside her car when I pulled in, like some gothic statue summoned from the mist.
I killed the engine and stepped out. The cold air hit me like a slap, thick with the scent of moss and distant rot. This wasn’t any wolf’s territory.
Not anymore. This was beyond boundaries now—a jagged slice of no-man’s land the maps avoided, where no pack laid claim. Too dangerous. Too cursed. Even rogues didn’t linger here.
I slammed the car door and shoved my hands into my coat pockets, trying to ignore the sudden weight in my chest. The wind was colder here, sharper somehow, like it knew where to cut.
"What the hell are we doing out here, Cassandra?" I asked, my voice low but brittle.
She turned toward me with a smirk that didn’t belong on any living thing. Her lips curved, sharp and satisfied. “The Blightwood.”
The name dropped like a stone between us.
I shook my head slowly, already half-turned back toward the car. “This is insane. You said we needed to do something serious. This?” I gestured toward the looming treeline. “This place is a ghost story.”
“The only option left to us,” she said smoothly.
I narrowed my eyes. “It’s cursed.”
She didn’t deny it.
I looked over my shoulder instinctively. The night was too still. No crickets. No birds. Just the soft, constant shiver of brittle leaves brushing against one another, like whispers in a foreign tongue.
“If someone sees me out here—”
“No one sees anything in the Blightwood,” she cut in, her tone soft and final, like a priestess giving last rites. She moved past me, her coat sweeping the ground behind her like a trailing shadow. “That’s the point.”
I didn’t follow. Not yet.
I turned back to the road one last time. But there was no road anymore—just a jagged break in the woods where asphalt had surrendered to rot. The stars above looked pale and cold, smeared by fog that had crept in without sound.
There were no headlights behind us, no sound of approaching engines. Just the sigh of the wind and the distant creak of trees that shouldn’t have been moving.
A pulse of instinct beat under my skin. Every hair on my arms stood on end.
“I can’t stay long,” I muttered, finally forcing my feet to move. “The wedding starts in a few hours. I need to be back before anyone notices I’m gone.”
Cassandra didn’t acknowledge me. She was already standing near the edge of the trees, still as a grave marker. In her hands was a small wooden box, polished smooth by age and covered in symbols that seemed to shift slightly if I looked at them too long. Not letters—scratches, curves, marks that didn’t belong to any language I knew.
But they stirred something low in my gut. Something old. Uneasy.
“What the hell is that?” I asked quietly.
Her eyes gleamed in the dark. “An offering box.”
That word—offering—twisted my stomach.
She tilted it toward me. “Did you bring it?”
I hesitated, then reached into my coat. The chain was cold in my hand. At the end of it, the old Moonstone medallion swayed like a pendulum—Elena’s, from all those years ago, the talisman she carried when she was living in Silverclaw.
I’d kept it for a reason. Tucked away, wrapped in flannel, as if that might keep it from bleeding memory. I used to tell myself it was a reminder. Now I knew better.
Maybe part of me had always known we’d end up here.
I passed it to Cassandra, who took it without flinching. Her fingers didn’t tremble, not even slightly. She dropped it into the box beside a small glass vial filled with thick, swirling crimson.
Derek’s blood.
I didn’t ask where she got it.
I didn’t want to know.
“Ready?” she asked, voice flat.
I looked past her to the trees—dense, black, and wrong. The shadows between the trunks were too deep. The forest ahead breathed in long, silent rhythms.
I swallowed hard. “Not really.”
She stepped into the trees without another word.
And I followed her into the dark.
Crossing the threshold into the Blightwood was like stepping through a membrane. The air thickened. Cold snapped tighter around my ribs. The sunlight behind us dimmed, swallowed whole by the canopy of twisted branches above.
The scent changed. Gone was the crisp pine and wildflowers of the packlands. Here, the air smelled of charcoal, mildew, something sweet and sickly—blood, maybe. Or rot.
The deeper we walked, the less the forest felt like a place and more like a creature. The trees groaned softly as we passed, like they were shifting. Watching. Breathing.
I caught flashes of movement in the corners of my eyes, but when I turned, nothing was there. Just shadow and silence.
"This is a bad idea," I muttered.
"We’re past ideas," Cassandra replied. "We’re into consequences now."
And then she appeared.
The priestess didn’t walk into view. She was just… there. One blink and the path ahead was empty. The next, she stood before us.
Tall. Thin. Shrouded in robes the color of ash and bone, eaten at the edges like moths had feasted on them. Her face was veiled in silk so pale it nearly disappeared into the mist.
She didn’t move. Didn’t speak at first.
Then, in a voice like wet leaves and rusted chains:
"Cassandra of the Stolen Glory. Logan of the Forsaken Vow. You seek what should not be undone."
I froze.
Cassandra didn’t. She stepped forward, lifting her chin. "We’re ready."
I swallowed heavily and shifted on my feet.
This wasn’t about a spell or a charm. This was about Elena and Derek. About the bond that still existed between them, thin and frayed but unbroken. Even though she’d rejected him, even though so much had happened since, it still lingered beneath the surface.
Just like mine did.
Maggie.
I could still feel it sometimes. That pull in my chest. The ache of something meant to be that I’d pushed away.
I could still feel her in my arms—the heat of her skin, the heat of her gaze—the anger boiling under the surface. Maybe I should be severing my own bond, I thought, rather than trying to sever someone else’s.
The priestess turned her veiled head toward me. I felt her gaze like frost on my bones.
“He’s not,” she said.
“It’s fine. Let’s just do it,” I said.
"One who hesitates has not yet counted the cost." Goddess, I could feel her presence all around me like cold seeping through clothes.
My jaw tensed. "I’ve counted it. I just don’t like the math."
She held out a hand, palm up. Her fingers were long, too long, bones bent in ways they shouldn’t be.
"Leave the offering. Then go. The bond will break when the moon shifts. But if the bond is blessed—it will return. With teeth."
Cassandra didn’t hesitate. She handed over the box.
The priestess took it, folding it into her robes. The fabric didn’t move the way it should. It swallowed the box like it was a throat.
The trees creaked.
The shadows shifted.
And something cold and ancient moved under the forest floor.
I turned first. I couldn’t get out of there fast enough.
The forest was silent around us as we walked, and I couldn’t stop thinking about what dark thing we’d just set in motion. The priestess had said “if the bond is blessed, it will return—with teeth.” And I couldn’t help but wonder who would those teeth bite? And how hard?
"If this backfires, Cassandra…"
She cut me off with a smirk. "Then we find a way to burn what’s left."
We walked back in silence. The forest didn’t want us to leave. I could feel it, dragging at our heels, brushing our shoulders with unseen fingers.
At the edge of the trees, I looked back one last time.
The priestess was gone.
But the Blightwood was awake now.
And we had fed it.
