Blood Oath To The Alpha

The diner’s sign buzzed behind me, the red letters coughing light like a bad pulse. OPEN. That was a lie. No one came in after midnight unless they were desperate, and the desperate had left already.

The air outside tasted damp, metallic. Fog slid down the street and pooled at my ankles. It swallowed the lamps until they looked like tired moons hanging too low. If I stared too long, I felt like the road would give way and I’d fall straight into nothing.

I shoved my hands deep in my jacket pockets. My hair smelled of fry grease. My tongue was burnt from cheap coffee. My back ached from leaning on the counter for too many hours. Normal aches. Familiar ones. But my skin wouldn’t settle—like the air was carrying something I couldn’t see.

“Raven.”

The voice floated out of the fog.

Sheriff Evelyn Kane leaned against her cruiser, arms crossed, her boots polished like always. She carried herself neat, sharp, put together. Except for her eyes. Her eyes looked like they hadn’t rested in years.

“Sheriff,” I said, hitching my bag higher on my shoulder. “If you came for pie, it’s been dead for two days. Might need its own autopsy.”

Nothing. Not even a smirk. Her gaze slid past me to the tree line across the road.

“You shouldn’t be walking alone tonight.”

I tried to laugh. It cracked. “Come on. Town’s what—three thousand people? What’s gonna get me? A loose trash can lid?”

Her voice was calm, too calm. “Not tonight. The woods feel… restless.” A pause. “Hungry eyes out there.”

The words landed heavy. She wasn’t joking. Not even close.

“You’re serious?”

She didn’t blink. “Take the long way. Stay in the light.”

I wanted to make some smart remark, but the look in her eyes stole the humor right out of my throat.

“Fine,” I muttered. “Noted.”

Her radio hissed, voices spilling over one another. She cursed, slid into the cruiser. “Go home, Raven. Lock your doors.”

The headlights slashed across me, then vanished into the fog.

I stood there, suddenly too small in the empty street. No bugs. No footsteps. No sound at all. Just the fog, curling at my ankles like it had weight.

I forced myself forward. One block. Two. My shoes whispered against the wet pavement. I told myself to breathe normally, but every breath scraped too loudly in my ears.

Then—crunch.

Not mine.

I froze, throat tight, and turned toward the trees. Black trunks. Straight. Still. Empty.

“Deer,” I whispered. My voice sounded wrong.

Another step behind me. Slow. Heavy. Not deer.

I started walking faster. Every nerve in my legs screamed don’t run, don’t run. Running makes you prey. But my body twitched, ready to bolt.

The sidewalk ended at the bend. The deer path cut through the woods—ten minutes faster. I’d walked it a hundred times.

Evelyn’s voice pressed in my head: Don’t cut through the woods.

The sound behind me grew closer. Deliberate.

I didn’t think so. I went.

Branches clawed my jacket. The fog inside the trees was thicker, choking. My lungs burned, heartbeat smashing against my ribs.

My foot hit something soft.

I looked down.

A body.

It lay twisted on the ground, arms bent wrong. The throat was gone, torn out, the blood soaked black into the mist-wet dirt.

My stomach lurched. I bent double, gagging.

Then I saw the chest.

Symbols carved into the skin. Spirals and crooked marks, shallow but deliberate.

My whole body went cold.

I knew those shapes.

Drawings my father used to scribble in his notebooks, ugly and frantic, swearing they didn’t mean anything. I wanted to believe him. I did believe him.

But here they were. Etched into dead flesh.

I crouched without meaning to. My fingers hovered above the carvings, trembling. Almost touching—

A growl.

Behind me.

The sound crawled through my bones. I froze, bent over the corpse, lungs locked.

Slowly, I turned my head.

The fog shifted. Something moved inside it.

Too big. Too fluid.

And then it stepped forward.

A wolf.

Not the kind that darted along ridges. This one was enormous, shoulders rolling with muscle under black fur, eyes burning a deep, steady gold.

It didn’t even glance at the body. Its gaze locked on me.

“Stay back,” I whispered, the words shaking apart. My hand fumbled for the pocketknife. The blade snapped open. The sound felt small.

The wolf tilted its head, watching me like it was amused.

Then it moved.

I threw myself sideways. The ground where I’d stood cracked under its weight.

I ran. Branches tore at my arms. My palms split on bark. My lungs begged for air. The wolf didn’t lunge. It didn’t need to. It stayed near. Too near. Stalking me. Playing.

I stumbled out onto the road, half-blind. The lamps glowed faintly through the fog. Relief hit me stupid and fast—

Because it followed.

The wolf stepped onto the asphalt, fog coiling around its legs. Its eyes caught mine again. Help me.

The air thickened, humming against my skin like static.

It lifted its head and howled.

The sound ripped through me. It shook the ground, tore at the fog, rattled inside my ribs until I couldn’t tell if I was standing or falling.

Then silence.

Its gaze lowered back to mine. It didn’t pounce. Didn’t kill.

It just looked.

Like it knew me.

My father’s symbols burned in my mind. The corpse lay cold in the woods. My knife dangled in my hand.

The wolf stepped closer, eyes blazing brighter.

And then, clear as glass, the voice slid into my head:

Raven Blackwood.

The knife slipped from my fingers.

The wolf hit the ground hard enough that I felt it in my ribs. I flinched for the bite—teeth in the throat, lights out. But it didn’t come.

It stopped. Inches from my face. Close enough that I could see scraps of blood between its teeth, close enough to feel its breath—thick, humid, almost electrical, like the air before a storm breaks.

I should’ve moved. Swung. Screamed. Something. Instead I just… froze. My body wasn’t mine anymore.

The thing tilted its head, eyes narrowing, like it was trying to read me. Or worse—like it already had.

Time bent. I don’t know how long it hovered there, but eventually—without a sound—it stepped back.

My legs buckled. I dropped hard onto my hands, palms scraping wet asphalt, breath tearing in like I’d been underwater too long. By the time I looked up, it was already sliding back into the fog. Three strides and nothing. No sound. No mark left behind.

I stayed there, whispering nonsense to no one. Just noise, shaking