VOICES IN THE FOREST

The forest held its breath.

After the confrontation and revelations within the ancestral chamber, the Crescent Moon Pack returned to a somber rhythm. Yet for Rhea, sleep came in fitful bursts, and dreams whispered in tongues long forgotten.

She stood alone, once again, in the forest.

Only this time, the trees bent unnaturally, their twisted limbs reaching like skeletal fingers. The wind howled not with air but with breath rasping, guttural, cold. In the distance, a child's laughter echoed, warped and wrong.

Rhea spun. "Hello?"

A soft voice answered. "You shouldn't be here, Luna."

She turned again.

Standing beneath a dying ash tree was a woman cloaked in moss and shadow. Her eyes glowed a muted silver, not quite alive, not fully dead.

"Who are you?" Rhea asked, stepping back.

The woman tilted her head. "You know me. Or you will."

And then Rhea's stomach twisted. Not from fear but from the baby. A kick no, a pulse of light flared through her abdomen, illuminating the entire forest in golden fire.

The shadows screamed.

She awoke with a gasp, her body drenched in sweat, the sheets clinging to her like vines.

Callum sat upright beside her. "Another one?"

Rhea nodded. "They're getting stronger. This one… it felt real. Like I walked into something old."

Callum's hand brushed against her stomach. "The child reacted?"

"Yes. And she was there again."

Callum tensed. "The shadow woman?"

Rhea nodded slowly. "I think she's trying to warn me. Maybe about the Hollow Star… or something worse."

A sharp knock interrupted their hushed exchange.

It was Thorne, Callum's Beta, his face pale and grim.

"You need to come," he said. "Now."

---

They followed him deep into the northern woods, far past where patrols usually ventured. The trees here grew unnaturally close together, bark ashen and pitted, leaves gray as smoke. A hush lay over the path, broken only by the crunch of dead foliage underfoot.

"It was the scouts," Thorne said. "They heard whispers. Voices… chanting."

Rhea exchanged a look with Callum. "Chanting?"

They reached a clearing.

In the center was a crude altar, built of stone and bone. Twigs shaped like runes were bound with red string and fur. At its base, burned into the ground, was a spiral mark eerily similar to the symbol Callum saw in his vision of the prophecy.

"It's fresh," Thorne said. "Whoever made this… was here no more than an hour ago."

Suddenly, the wind shifted.

A low murmur swept through the trees, like dozens of voices overlapping in whispers. The sound wasn't carried on the air it came from the ground itself.

"Leave," the voices whispered. "He comes…"

Callum snarled, stepping forward. "Show yourself!"

But the forest did not respond in kind. The whispering crescendoed into a scream dozens of voices rising in one broken, agonized cry.

Rhea stumbled back, clutching her belly as pain spiked through her.

Callum caught her. "Rhea!"

"I'm fine," she gasped. "But… it's not just pain. It's warning us."

Thorne looked pale. "From what?"

---

Later that evening, back at the Crescent Hall, the elders gathered.

The spiral symbol was drawn on parchment and laid out on the war table.

Elder Mark, the oldest among them, leaned forward. "This is the Mark of Hollow Binding. It's forbidden. Ancient packs used it to summon spirits from beyond the Vale. It binds not to protect, but to lure."

"To lure what?" Callum asked.

"Not what," Mark replied darkly. "Who. The Forgotten King."

Gasps rippled through the room.

"That's just a story," one warrior whispered. "A myth used to scare pups."

"No," Rhea said. Her voice was calm, but her eyes glowed faintly silver. "He's real. I've seen pieces of him in my dreams. He speaks in fragments, cloaked in forest shadow. He… he's waking."

Callum's jaw clenched. "Why now?"

Marrek's eyes met his. "Because the child you carry is the light the King fears. And light draws shadow."

A silence fell.

---

That night, Callum sat at the edge of the watchtower, overlooking the distant line where the forest met sky. A storm brewed in the distance, clouds rolling like waves across the heavens.

Rhea joined him, wrapping a shawl around her shoulders.

"You should be resting," he murmured.

"I tried," she said. "The forest wouldn't let me."

Callum turned to her. "You've changed. Since the vision. Since the altar."

"I feel it too," she admitted. "Like… something inside me is remembering things I never learned. And the child our child is growing faster. Stronger."

Callum rested a hand on her belly. A faint pulse responded, like a heartbeat echoing through time.

"We'll protect them," he said. "Both of you. No matter what comes."

Rhea leaned into him. "Even if the King rises?"

He didn't answer right away. But then his eyes hardened. "Especially then."

---

The next morning, the voices returned.

This time, they weren't whispers.

They were howls twisted, mournful howls that carried through the trees and froze blood in the veins of every wolf in the pack.

Callum led a unit of warriors into the eastern borderlands.

They found claw marks on trees deep and unnatural. Fur, black and oily, clung to the underbrush. And tracks… but not like any wolf they knew. These were warped, three-toed, heavy, dragging.

Suddenly, one of the warriors stopped.

"Do you hear that?"

Everyone froze.

A voice… high, feminine, echoed from deeper in the woods.

"Rhea… Rhea… come home…"

Callum's eyes narrowed. "That's her voice. But she's with the healer."

The warrior shivered. "It sounded exactly like her."

Rhea's voice. In the mouth of a shadow.

Callum turned back. "We're not dealing with just spirits. The forest is mimicking us. Learning us."

"Or someone is," Thorne added. "Something that wants her."

---

That evening, as Callum relayed the encounter to Rhea, she grew pale.

"It called to me too," she said. "Last night in the dream… it used your voice."

Her voice trembled. "It told me to walk into the woods. Said you were waiting."

The silence between them was deafening.

"They're trying to separate us," Callum said.

"No," Rhea whispered. "They're trying to replace us."

---

Later, as thunder rolled across the sky and lightning cast jagged light across the Crescent Moon territory, Rhea stood on the balcony.

The wind carried a faint scent old ash and distant fire.

In her womb, the child stirred again.

But this time, a voice accompanied the movement not in the forest, but in her mind.

"Soon," the voice said. "The King wakes. And your soul will be the cost."

Rhea gasped and clutched the railing.

But a different voice followed. Softer. Familiar.

"You are more than they think."

It was Lysandra's voice.

And just for a heartbeat, the moon glowed gold.