Chapter Two: The Pull

The air outside was crisp, but Sophie’s skin burned.

Frustration. Disorientation. A strange, unsettling tug in her chest that she couldn't explain.

Who the hell did Elias Blackwood think he was?

She stormed down the silent lanes of Silver Hollow, gripping her coffee tightly. Leave? Just like that? The nerve. The insolence. And yet… beneath the anger, something else flickered.

Fear.

Not of Elias himself, but of the way he had looked at her. Like he knew something she did not

Like he saw her—really saw her.

Sophie hardly knew him, but his words had spoken meaning when he talked. They had penetrated her flesh, provoking her in an over-maddening and yet fascinating way.

And damn it, that bothered her. She turned the corner, lost in thought, when?

"Hey, watch it!"

A hand shot out, caught her wrist, and prevented her from stumbling straight into the road. Warm. Strong. Electric.

Sophie gasped and looked up, finding herself looking straight into his eyes.

Elias. Her breath hitched.

"You," she said, her voice half whispered, half challenging.

His grip tightened just a fraction before he released it and stepped back. "You weren't paying attention."

Sophie placed a hand over her racing heart. "Maybe because I was too busy fuming about some guy who told me to leave town like I was some damsel in distress."

Elias’s gaze darkened. "I was serious."

"And I'm seriously not leaving," she retorted. "I just got here, and and I don’t take orders from strangers."

His voice really low and rough, he said: “ You don’t know what you’re getting into” . it was almost as if he were barely holding himself back.

Sophie crossed her arms, trying to avoid the tingling in her skin where he had touched her. "Then speak plainly. All I hear from you is some vague threatening and intense staring."

Elias exhaled sharply and ran a hand through his dark hair. For the first time, Sophie saw a glimmer of something behind his normally controlled facade—uncertainty and perhaps even a hint of remorse.

"You’re not supposed to be here," he murmured, not much to her as to himself.

"But I am here," Sophie said, softening just a little. "Why does that bother you so much?"

He didn’t respond. His jaw tightened instead, and his body was rigid as though he were struggling with some invisible force.

"Stay out of the forest," he finally said, his voice edging on desperation. "Not at all, really."

Somehow the manner in which he said it made a shiver crawl up Sophie'''s spine.

"And if I don’t?" she asked, defiant but breathless.

Elias moving even closer to her and now he is towering over her, his scent—wood smoke, pine, and some kind of unmistakably wild vissing every fibre of hers.

"Then you won’t be able to walk away from this place," he said, his voice almost gentle now. "Not even if you want to."

One beat of silence stretched between them, thick with something Sophie didn't dare to name.

Then, just as suddenly as he had appeared, Elias turned and walked off.

Leaving Sophie standing there, her heart racing, with the terrifying thought that he just might be right.

She wasn’t sure she could leave Silver Hollow anymore. And worse? She wasn’t sure she wanted to.

Sophie’s thoughts were a tempest long after Elias had vanished down the street.

He annoyed her most. His tone was as if he held the ultimate authority. The expression on his face when he looked at her suggested that he knew something she was oblivious to. But above all, how her body responded to him seemed like an invincible attraction overriding rationality. She hated that.

But even so, while she walked home, his words stayed with her. "Stay out of the forest. Especially at night."

That was exactly the kind of warning someone like Sophie would not take well.

That is why when the sun started to go down behind the mountains, she was standing by her window almost at the last row of trees.

A chill wind whispered through Silver Hollow, shaking the limbs as if with hushed secrets. There was a strange vibrancy in the air, an unnerving quiet that pricked up the hairs on her forearms.

Just a walk, she said. Enough to show me that there’s nothing out there. Sophie put on her jacket and grabbed a flashlight before stepping out.

The town was silent, the roads deserted. Silver Hollow wasn't the type of community that encouraged late-night activity. She knew it from how the buildings bunched close to each other, their windows flickering softly as if guarding the souls inside.

But Sophie wasn’t afraid.

Not yet.

She navigated the rear alley that lay behind the bookstore and entered the woodland.

The moment she entered the woods, the world changed.

The trees stood taller at this place with their canopies thick enough to filter out most of the moonlight. The silence was intense, as though the air itself were waiting.

She walked slowly, the crunch of leaves beneath her boots and nothing else. Her flashlight cast long, shifting shadows along the trunks.

See? Nothing’s here.

In a slow circle she turned, the great trees, the tangled roots, the thick mist that clung to floor one step at a time she gazed at.

And then—A snap somewhere to her right. Sophie stilled, her breath hitching. She swung the flashlight toward the noise, but the beam pierced only darkness. Probably just an animal.

Then another snap. This time, behind her. Her pulse kicked up. The back of her neck tingled. Slowly, she turned and saw their eyes.

Golden, glowing, watching her from between the trees.

Not one pair, not two but many. A guttural snarl rumbled through the air, low and deadly. Sophie’s blood turned to ice.

Her legs froze, and every instinct yelled at her to run.

The eyes didn’t move. They only watched. Stalking. Waiting.

The she-wolf finally saw what was there in the darkness, a huge wolf, black as midnight with fur all puffed up. It stared at her with its eyes and some inner thing of her got twisted. Not fear, not just fear but recognition.

The wolf took a step closer. Sophie took a step back.

A deep growl rippled through the pack.

And just as the shadows seemed to close in, another growl, sharper, angrier, cut through the night.

A new figure lunged from the darkness. A blur of motion. A clash of bodies.

the black wolf fell back, and towering where it had stood was-

"Elias?" Sophie breathed.

His eyes were molten gold, his breath ragged. His body was stiff, coiled as if he were barely restraining something animal.

"Run" he growled. Sophie’s stomach dropped.

He wasn’t speaking to them, he was speaking to her.

And for the first time, she realized

Elias Blackwood wasn’t just a man, he was one of them.