Chapter3

Mind racing, I crept back into bed, paralyzed by dread. But the silence didn't last. A thunderous crash shattered the night from the front yard. I bolted out of my bedroom, bare feet slapping against the cold floor.

The heavy, solid-oak front door buckled under an invisible force. Jagged, half-meter cracks ripped through the wood, raining splinters onto the entryway. Through the fractured timber, an abyss of shifting shadows loomed. Dozens of massive silhouettes prowled the edge of the pitch-black treeline, their sickly, luminescent green eyes locked directly on me.

"Dammit!" I scrambled down the staircase, nearly tripping over myself, and snatched the heavy iron poker from beside the fireplace.

"Drop it. It's useless." A low, gravelly voice bled from the shadows of the living room sofa.

Click.

A lighter sparked, illuminating a brief crescent of orange flame. Elias sat there, a cigarette clamped between his teeth. His combat boots were plastered with fresh mud and streaks of dark, rusted blood.

"Did... did you not see what's out there?" My fingers trembled violently around the cast-iron poker. "They've surrounded us!"

"I saw." He exhaled a harsh cloud of acrid white smoke and slowly rose to his feet. "I called them."

White noise exploded in my skull. Before the horror could fully register, he was already moving, closing the distance across the living room.

With every step, his body twisted in sickening, unnatural ways. He stepped fully into a pool of moonlight.

The warm hazel eyes that used to gaze at me so tenderly were gone. In their place burned a pair of pure, dark-gold slitted pupils. Eyes that instantly matched the nightmare I had seen on that very first night.

"It was you..." I backed away, my limbs stiff with terror.

"Glad to see you aren't completely stupid." He sneered, his lips peeling back to reveal two elongated, razor-sharp fangs. "Even in death, that old hag tried to fend me off, playing her little tricks right under my nose. A pity. Her damn apples just ended up delivering you straight into my territory."

"What do you want?!" I gripped the iron poker so hard my knuckles turned white.

"The last one." He lunged.

His hand clamped around my throat, lifting me off the floor and slamming me against the wall. I clawed frantically at his forearm, but the strength was already draining from my limbs.

"Don't waste my time, Elara. Playing house for the last three months has thoroughly exhausted my patience." He leaned in, his breath washing over my face—thick and metallic with the stench of raw meat. "Where is the third golden apple? Hand it over, and I might consider giving you a quick death."

Black spots danced at the edge of my vision; my lungs screamed for air. He was never here to love me. From the very beginning, he had been a monster, lurking in my home, playing with his prey.

"Dream... on..." I choked out through gritted teeth.

My right hand flailed blindly in the air until my knuckles grazed the heavy bronze lamp on the corner stand. Without a second of hesitation, I grabbed the base and smashed it down onto his temple with everything I had left.

Crash!

The glass shade exploded into shrapnel. A jagged shard sliced open his brow ridge. The gold fire in his eyes flared and shrank, and for a split-second, his grip loosened.

I hit the floor hard. Clutching my bruised throat and coughing violently, I scrambled on all fours toward the kitchen.

"Reckless bitch," he snarled behind me, coldly shaking the glass from his hair. "Take her."

Shatter—!

Both massive floor-to-ceiling windows exploded inward simultaneously. Two wolves, each the size of a bull, crashed through the glass and landed squarely in the living room.

I rammed my shoulder against the rotting back door, bursting into the sub-zero night without looking back. Freezing snow swallowed my bare ankles. I had no shoes, but raw terror drove me deeper into the black woods.

A chorus of howling erupted behind me. Massive, dark silhouettes were already flanking me, weaving effortlessly through the pines. Sickly green eyes flashed between the branches. If they lunged, my throat would be ripped out in a heartbeat.

"Fall back." Elias’s low baritone carried sharply through the frigid air. The flanking wolves immediately slowed, maintaining a tight, semi-circular perimeter just a few yards behind me.

Crunch. Crunch.

The methodical, unhurried sound of combat boots crushing hard-packed snow echoed from directly behind me.

"Run faster, Elara," Elias mocked, his dark laughter scraping against my ears. "Didn't you hide that apple where even I couldn't dig it up? Go get it. If you don't find it tonight, these boys haven't eaten in five days, and they won't be polite."

Tears froze as soon as they hit my cheeks. He had let me escape perfectly on purpose. He had turned the house inside out, but my grandmother’s third golden apple was locked behind a bloodline seal. Only a Seer's blood—my blood—could reveal it. He was playing the infinitely patient hunter, torturing me into serving it up to him on a silver platter.

But I had no choice. After nearly twenty minutes of a lung-burning sprint through the timber, the treeline finally broke.

A partially collapsed log cabin sat hunched beneath an ancient, dead pine. It was my grandmother’s abandoned cellar, the place where she used to experiment with herbs in her youth.

I crashed my numb, bruised shoulder against the unlatched wooden door and tumbled into the dust-choked darkness. Guided entirely by the faint moonlight bleeding through the doorway, I crawled frantically toward the weathered trunk in the corner.

Shoving the rusted lid back, I dug through the forgotten junk, my hands blindly swiping until my fingers closed around the prize at the very bottom: a ratty brown teddy bear, missing one of its button eyes.

I yanked the bear to my face, clamped my teeth onto the heavy stitching of its belly, and ripped downward like a wild animal.

Riiiip—!

Cheap brown stuffing exploded into the stale air.

I shoved my trembling fingers deep into the tear, pushing past the fluff until my nails scraped against something cool, spherical, and incredibly dense.

The third golden apple.

I had it. I gripped it so tight it hurt. It was the absolute last thing my grandmother had left me.

"Got it?" a casual voice asked from the doorway.

My lungs seized. I slowly raised my head.

Elias’s towering frame completely blocked the narrow exit. One combat boot rested casually on the threshold. His right hand had fully morphed. A massive, black wolf's claw hung by his side, thick droplets of crimson blood dripping steadily from the agonizingly sharp tips onto the floorboards. I didn't want to think about what poor creature he had gutted on the way here.

His dark-gold pupils burned through the shadows, pinning me in place. Then, slowly and deliberately, he raised that blood-soaked claw and pressed the wicked tip flat against my temple.