MORE SECRETS

MORE SECRETS

THANE’S POV

I don’t even get a full five minutes of silence before someone’s knocking.

It’s not frantic. Not urgent. Just that slow, heavy knock that tells you they don’t care how tired you are, they are not leaving.

I glance at Ayla where she is curled up on the couch with a hoodie that’s way too big for her, the sleeves bunched at her knuckles, her chin tucked down. She’s staring at the wall, but her eyes keep flicking like she’s seeing something that’s not there.

Her nightmares shook her up again last night. Worse than before. She barely said a word this morning, and when she did, her voice sounded like it didn’t belong to her.

I rub my face with one hand and open the door.

It’s Garrick. And behind him, two of the pack’s elders, Grayna and Miles.

Great.

“Saw them on my way here. Apparently, the council wants to see you,” Garrick mutters. He doesn’t look thrilled either.

“Now?”

Grayna just nods. Her hair is pulled back into that tight braid she always wears when things are serious. Like full-moon-serious. Death-serious.

I glance back at Ayla. She doesn’t move.

“I’ll come back for her,” I say. “Soon as I know what’s going on.”

Garrick gives a tight nod.

The room they use for council meetings is nothing special. Just a big, square living room in what used to be the old Alpha’s house, converted into a neutral space after everything blew up.

There are only four elders left now. Used to be eleven. Some died. Some disappeared after the last trial. Some probably didn’t want to be found.

They sit in a semicircle, eyes heavy on me as I walk in.

Miles speaks first. He’s always been the least patient. “We don’t have time to waste. That thing Ayla’s dreaming about? It’s waking up. And we think we know what it is.”

That gets my attention.

At first, I want to ask how they know she has been dreaming but I decide against it.

They probably have their own moles too

I sit down slowly. “You said before… you didn’t know anything about Nadira's business.”

Grayna looks at Miles, then at the other two. Her jaw tightens. “We lied.”

I blink. “What?”

“There’s something our predecessors buried a long time ago. A part of our history we swore never to speak of again,” she says. “Back before my time. Before even your father’s time. There was an Alpha… not from our line. He came from outside, challenged the bloodline, took the title.”

“And?”

“He wasn’t right in the head,” says Miles. “Did things that made the pack nervous. Started dabbling in things, dark things. Said he could make the pack stronger if we stopped worshipping the Moon and listened to something older. Something deeper.”

My chest tightens. I already don’t like where this is going.

“What happened to him?” I ask.

Silence. The kind that gets under your skin. The kind that says no one wants to say it out loud.

“He became something else,” Grayna says quietly. “Something not human. Not wolf. Not anything we understand.”

Garrick’s leaning against the wall with his arms crossed. He’s been quiet until now.

“So what, you think that thing in Ayla’s dreams is him?”

They all exchange looks.

“We don’t know,” Miles admits. “But it matches the old stories. The shifting beneath the earth. The way it feeds on power. The dreams.”

I let out a slow breath. “And you waited until now to say something?”

“We didn’t want to believe it,” Grayna says. “And we thought it died or at best just a myth. Whatever it became, we thought it was sealed.”

“Sealed?”

“In the earth,” she says. “They buried it alive. We don’t know where. Only that it was deep, and the ground was marked. But time erodes everything. If Ayla’s seeing it now, if it’s leaking into her dreams-”

“It’s waking up,” I finish for her.

They nod.

When I get back to the safehouse, Ayla’s not on the couch anymore.

I find her in the kitchen, holding a cold cup of coffee, staring out the window like she’s trying to see through it.

“You’re back,” she says, but she doesn’t turn around.

“Yeah.” I hesitate. “You okay?”

“No.” She sips the coffee anyway. “But I will be.”

I lean against the counter across from her. “They told me what they think that thing is.”

She finally turns. Her eyes are tired. Too tired.

“What is it?”

I tell her everything.

She doesn’t interrupt. She just listens. But I can see the way her jaw tightens with every sentence. Her knuckles go white around the coffee mug.

“So they buried him alive?” she says after a beat. “And hoped it would just… go away?”

“Pretty much.”

“And now he’s feeding off me like some power cord because I happen to be the lucky girl who survived Nadira’s spell?”

I blink. “That’s… basically what Garrick said.”

She lets out a humorless laugh. “Perfect.”

I push off the counter. “Hey. You’re not alone in this.”

“I know,” she says. But it’s quiet. Too quiet.

There’s a beat of silence between us. It stretches a little too long.

Then she says, “You ever think maybe… I shouldn’t be here? Like maybe if I just left, it’d stop?”

“No.” I say it fast. Too fast.

She raises a brow.

I scrub a hand down my face. “Look. I don’t know what that thing is, okay? I don’t know why it’s choosing you or what it wants. But I know this you’re not going through this alone. I won’t let that happen.”

Ayla looks down at her coffee, then up at me again. “Even if I become like him?”

My chest tightens. “You won’t.”

“You don’t know that.”

“Yeah. I do.”

We stare at each other.

The tension that’s always there between us, it’s louder now. Like the air’s getting thinner.

I don’t move. Neither does she. But the silence is different this time. Heavier.

Then she clears her throat and looks away. “So… what now?”

“We plan,” I say. “Garrick wants to scout some of the old burial sites. See if there’s anything left. Symbols. Disturbances. Anything that says where that Alpha was sealed.”

“And you want me to come?”

I nod. “If you’re up for it.”

She gives me a long look. “I’m always up for it. I’m just tired of feeling like I’m the only one who can’t keep it together.”

“You’re not.”

She rolls her eyes. “You say that a lot.”

“Because it’s true.”

She doesn’t argue this time. Just finishes her coffee, sets the mug down, and mutters, “Alright. Let’s go dig up some nightmares.”

Later that night, when we’re out in the field with Garrick and Leona, just walking along this dried-up stretch of woods that smells like burnt air and old moss. I catch Ayla looking up at the moon.

I nudge her.
“You alright?”

She nods. Doesn’t speak.

But she reaches for my hand.

And I let her.

We keep walking like that, side by side, in the dark.

Silent.

Together.