The woods hit us like a wall of cold air the second we crossed the tree line.
Kyle….mostly human again now, though his hands were still clawed and his eyes stayed amber led us down a narrow path I'd never seen before, even after three years of sneaking out to smoke or just get away from everything. Roots twisted across the ground like gnarled fingers, and mist curled around our ankles so thick I could barely see my own feet.
"Where are we going?" I asked, stumbling over a fallen branch. My legs were sore from running, and the aftertaste of that vial's bitter liquid still clung to my tongue.
"Safe house," Kyle said, his voice rough and gravelly. "About twenty minutes deeper in. We can't risk stopping anywhere closer to town."
The vampire who'd told me to call her Lena walked beside me, her steps silent even over dead leaves and loose stones. "He's right. The DLF will have tracked your scent by now."
"DLF?" I pulled my hood tighter against the wind that was picking up, carrying the smell of damp earth and pine.
"Dracula's Legacy Faction," she said, like it should mean something to me. "The ones who think they can finish what he started centuries ago. They've been hunting half-breeds for years trying to wipe out anyone who could stand in their way."
I shot her a look. "And you're not like them? You just show up out of nowhere, tell me I'm some kind of… hybrid thing, and expect me to trust you?"
Lena's lips pressed into a thin line. "I know it's a lot to take in. But your parents they were working together to keep you safe. To build something that could bridge the gap between our kinds."
"Bridge it or control it?" Kyle threw the words over his shoulder as he pushed through a thicket of branches. "Your coven's never cared about balance. Just power."
Before Lena could snap back, we broke into a small clearing. In the middle stood a cabin log walls, a sloped roof covered in moss, smoke curling from a stone chimney. It looked older than anything I'd ever seen, but the windows glowed warm yellow, and I could smell woodsmoke and something else… cooking meat, maybe?
"Welcome to Blackwood Territory," Kyle said, pushing open the heavy wooden door. "Rules are simple no silver inside, no starting fights, and if you feel a shift coming on, you go out back to the cellar."
The inside was cozy in a way I didn't expect—plush couches piled with blankets, a stone fireplace crackling in the corner, shelves lined with books and jars of preserved fruit. An older woman with gray-streaked hair looked up from stirring a pot on the stove, her eyes sharp as she took us in.
"Kyle," she said, her voice steady even though she was looking right at Lena. "You brought company."
"Ma'am." Kyle's posture straightened, the last of his wolf features fading until only his amber eyes remained. "This is Elara. And… her aunt."
The woman….Kyle's mom, I guessed wiped her hands on her apron and stepped forward. She was tall and broad-shouldered, with the same dark hair as her son, but her eyes were a calm brown instead of glowing amber. "I'm Sarah Morrison. You're Elara Vasile. We've been watching out for you at school tried to keep you out of trouble."
"Watching me how?" I asked, dropping onto one of the couches. My head was spinning, and every time I moved, I could feel a strange hum under my skin like energy waiting to be released.
"Your parents were important people," Sarah said, ladling stew into bowls and setting them on the table. "Half-vampire, half-werewolf they shouldn't have been able to have a child. But you were born anyway. And when the prophecies started talking about a 'bridge between worlds,' we knew it had to be you."
I stared at the stew thick with meat and vegetables but my appetite was gone. "So what do you want from me? Am I supposed to… what, unite your people? Fight some bad guys?"
"Something like that," Lena said, sitting down at the table and pulling out a worn leather journal. "The triple blood moon comes every hundred years. This time, it's not just one moon it's three, all rising at once. The old texts say that's when the barrier between worlds gets thin enough to touch."
She flipped open the journal to a page covered in spidery handwriting and faded ink. "Your bloodline vampire on your mom's side, werewolf on your dad's is the only one that can open the Coven of the Wolf's sacred site. The DLF wants to use that power to bring back Dracula's full army. We need to get there first."
Kyle sat down across from me, pushing a bowl toward me. "We can protect you. Train you to control both sides of what you are. But you have to choose join us, and help build something real. Or let the DLF burn everything down."
I looked from Kyle's serious face to Lena's sharp eyes, then to Sarah's steady gaze. Outside, the wind howled through the trees, and somewhere in the distance, a wolf answered it long and lonely, carrying on the cold night air.
I reached for the bowl in front of me, my fingers brushing against the warm ceramic. "What happens if I don't choose?"
Lena closed the journal, her face darkening. "Then the DLF takes control. And trust me you don't want to see what they'll do when they have the power to rewrite the rules."