Chapter 83: The Howl That Shouldn’t Exist
Chapter 83: The Howl That Shouldn’t Exist
“Tell me I’m hearing things.”
Cain’s voice broke the silence as the last echoes of that impossible howl faded across the skyline. The pack stood frozen on the terrace, eyes reflecting the crimson moon. No one moved. No one breathed.
Alex didn’t answer. He couldn’t. Because deep inside, beneath reason and logic, his instincts screamed one truth that howl had been real. And it had been hers.
Kara.
But she was dead.
Lucas finally spoke, voice low and sharp. “No wolf can survive what she did. You saw her fall, Alex. We all did.”
Alex’s gaze didn’t leave the horizon. “Then tell me why the air smells like her.”
That silenced him.
Even from miles away, a scent had drifted on the wind faint, wild, alive. A scent the Alpha would never forget.
Maya exhaled slowly. “If it’s really her, then something’s changed. No ordinary wolf carries magic strong enough to shake the moon.”
Cain chuckled nervously. “You mean like the moon literally bleeding red right now?”
No one laughed.
Because above them, the eclipse deepened and the shadows it cast across Lunar Heights began to move.
The following hours were chaos.
Under the burning eclipse, Lunar Heights looked wrong, neon lights flickered in unnatural rhythms, glass reflected shapes that didn’t exist, and alleyways whispered in voices too faint to be human.
Crescent Fang’s scouts reported distortions across the city. Some swore they saw wolves made of mist slinking between buildings. Others claimed they’d heard chanting in the subway tunnels old words from the time before packs hid from humans.
Alex ordered all patrols back to the den.
This wasn’t a war they could fight with claws and teeth.
Not yet.
Lucas paced beside him. “You need to keep control. They’re scared.”
“They should be.”
Lucas stopped pacing. “That’s not leadership, Alex. That’s panic.”
Alex turned to face him. “You taught me to face what’s real, not what’s comfortable. So let’s be honest, something's stirring the old magic again. And if Kara’s somehow tied to it, we need answers before Ravenspire makes their move.”
Maya approached, holding a map. “We may already be too late for that.”
She pointed to the western edge near the ruins of the industrial district where Ravenspire once held its ground. The area pulsed faintly with energy readings. “Something’s happening there. And it’s not just them.”
Alex frowned. “Who else?”
Maya hesitated. “The humans.”
Two years ago, humans didn’t believe in werewolves. Now, after the Eclipse War’s first sparks, they were starting to look closer.
The “Eclipse Phenomenon,” as the media called it, had scientists flooding Lunar Heights measuring lunar radiation, studying electrical surges, and unknowingly stepping into a world they couldn’t comprehend.
“Military patrols have been sighted near the western line,” Maya continued. “If the humans find traces of our kind, it’s over. We can’t risk exposure again.”
Alex leaned against the table, his expression hardening. “Then we move fast. If Kara’s alive… if she’s the source of this ”
Lucas interrupted, voice sharp. “You can’t afford to chase ghosts, Alex.”
“Would you rather wait for them to walk through our gates?”
Their eyes met Alpha and former Alpha, two forces locked between trust and challenge.
Then Lucas sighed. “You’re going after her no matter what I say.”
“I have to.”
Maya folded the map. “Then you’re not going alone.”
By dusk, Alex’s team was ready, small, fast, and quiet.
Maya. Cain. Two scouts. And Lucas, who refused to be left behind despite Alex’s protests.
They crossed into the western industrial ruins under the fading eclipse light. The old factories loomed like skeletons against the skyline, windows shattered, machinery half-swallowed by vines and rust. The air smelled of iron and rain.
Maya crouched low, sniffing. “There’s something else here.”
Cain grimaced. “Yeah. Fear. Mine.”
Lucas growled softly. “Quiet.”
Alex knelt beside a broken pipeline, running his fingers along the dirt. Then he froze.
Footprints.
Wolf prints but not any he recognized. The claws were longer, the impressions deeper, as if the creature had weighed more than a normal shifter could.
“Fresh,” Alex muttered. “Less than an hour old.”
A distant sound broke through the night. Not a howl something subtler. A whisper of movement through metal.
Maya drew her blades. “We’re not alone.”
They reached the heart of the ruins, a vast, circular yard surrounded by collapsed walls. And there, in the middle, lay a stone altar covered in black moss and carved with the same sigil from the obsidian fragment.
The eclipse’s glow reflected off the surface.
Then it shimmered.
And a figure appeared faint, translucent, like smoke caught in light.
Female. Tall. Familiar.
Kara.
Alex’s breath caught. “No…”
Her eyes met his glowing gold, the same shade they’d always been. But her body flickered, shifting between solidity and air.
Maya whispered, “That’s not a ghost.”
Lucas’s hand went to his blade. “Then what the hell is it?”
Kara’s voice drifted through the air, calm and distant. “You shouldn’t have come.”
Alex stepped forward. “You’re alive.”
“I’m here.”
“Then come back. We can help you ”
Her gaze darkened. “You don’t understand. I’m not the same.”
Before he could respond, the air split open a surge of black light erupting from the altar. The ground cracked, hurling them backward.
Cain shouted, “Move!” as shadows spilled from the fracture, forming shapes, wolves made of smoke and bone, their eyes burning with eclipse fire.
The phantom Kara turned, raising her hand. “Go, Alex! Before it takes you too!”
“Not without you!”
Her eyes softened. “Then you’ll die here.”
Lightning flashed. The ruins exploded in chaos.
When Alex woke, he was lying in the mud, the sky pale and gray. The eclipse was gone. The others were scattered alive but shaken.
Maya groaned, pushing herself up. “What… what the hell happened?”
Lucas was already standing, bruised but steady. “That wasn’t an attack. It was a warning.”
Cain spat blood. “A warning? From what? Ghost-Kara and her shadow army?”
Alex didn’t answer. His thoughts were still back in that moment, the look in her eyes, the voice that wasn’t entirely her own.
Because buried under Kara’s tone, he’d heard something else.
Another voice.
Male. Cold. Ancient.
And it had whispered his name.
The team returned under cover of dawn. The den was silent when they entered, but the pack could feel the change.
Something had shifted in their Alpha.
Alex walked straight to his quarters, ignoring the questions, the worried stares. He sat at his desk, pulled out the broken obsidian shard and placed it beside a new one.
It had appeared in his jacket pocket after the explosion. Identical to the first.
And on its surface, a single word burned faintly in gold.
“Eclipse.”
Alex stared at it for a long time, the hum of the den fading into nothing.
Then he whispered, almost to himself:
“She’s not gone.”
The shard pulsed once as if answering him.
And far away, somewhere beyond the city, beneath the ruins and the storm, Kara opened her eyes.
Her first breath was fire. Her second memory.
Chains rattled around her wrists as she looked toward the sky. The red moon was fading, and a voice echoed in her mind the same one Alex had heard.
“The Eclipse rises again. You are its heart.”
Kara’s lips parted.
And she whispered back with fury burning in her throat:
“Not if I destroy it first.”