Chapter 5: Blood in the Forest
Josie
The air was cool when I slipped out the window.
Kiel didn’t say a word—he just extended a hand toward me, like this was all perfectly normal. Like it was ordinary for a girl to follow a dangerous Alpha into the woods after her world had just been ripped apart.
Maybe it was foolish. Maybe it was reckless.
But I took his hand anyway.
We walked in silence for a while, the moonlight trickling through the trees like silver threads, guiding us deeper into the forest. My slippers sank into the moss with every step, and still, I didn’t speak. I didn’t ask where we were going or why he’d come. Something in his expression told me not to break the quiet—not yet.
Finally, Kiel stopped beside a clearing dappled in light. The wind sighed through the branches. Everything stilled.
Then he sang.
It wasn’t a song in any language I knew—just soft syllables and ancient sounds, carried by the hush of the forest. His voice was low, steady, almost haunting, as though he were singing to the trees, the stars, and something older still.
The moment he opened his mouth, something changed in the air.
A warmth bloomed in my chest. My shoulders eased. The panic that had gripped me since the pack house dissolved like fog under sun.