Chapter 6 Ash Hollows #2
That's when the ground started to move.
Gideon felt it first. His head snapped up, magic flaring at his fingertips, and he was shouting before the rest of us even understood what was happening.
“Get out of the circle now!”
Nate grabbed Rafe's arm, yanking him backward as the scorched earth began to crack and heave.
I shifted without thinking, bones breaking and reforming in a rush of pain that had become as familiar as breathing.
Beside me, Evan did the same, his wolf form erupting from human skin in a spray of torn fabric.
The bodies were moving.
Not like living things. Not like wolves waking from sleep. They moved like puppets, like corpses being lifted by invisible strings, jerking upright with motions that made my wolf want to howl and run and never stop running.
Their eyes were wrong. Glowing with sickly green light that had nothing to do with pack magic and everything to do with the corruption Gideon had warned us about.
“Zombie wolves,” Michael breathed. His silver blade was up, his stance steady despite the fear I could smell rolling off him. “They're using the bodies as weapons.”
“Not just the bodies.” Gideon's voice had gone hard. Cold. “The death energy stored here. Someone just activated it. Used it to animate what's left.”
The first zombie wolf lunged.
Evan intercepted it mid-lunge. My son's wolf form crashed into the corrupted thing with enough force to send them both tumbling across the clearing. Teeth and claws and the wet sound of flesh tearing, and for a horrible moment I couldn't tell who was winning.
Then Evan's jaws found the zombie wolf's throat and tore.
Black ichor sprayed instead of blood. The corrupted creature dissolved into shadow and rot, leaving nothing behind but the stench of dark magic.
More zombie wolves were rising. All of them, dragging themselves upright, turning toward us with those terrible glowing eyes. They didn't growl. Didn't snarl. Just moved with silent, terrible purpose.
I threw myself at the nearest one, a female whose human face I could still see underneath the corruption. She'd been beautiful once. Young. Now she was a weapon pointed at my pack.
My jaws closed on her shoulder, tore, and I had to force myself not to gag at the taste. Wrong. Everything about this was wrong. But there wasn't time for horror. Only action.
Rafe had shifted too. His wolf form was lean and dark, smaller than mine but fast, and he fought with a desperate fury that spoke of grief channeled into violence.
He took down two zombie wolves in quick succession, moving through the carnage like he'd been waiting for this.
Like fighting gave him something to do with the rage he'd been carrying.
Michael held his ground at the edge of the clearing, silver blade flashing in the gray morning light. A zombie wolf lunged at him and he met it with a strike that would have made any warrior proud. The silver bit deep, and the creature screamed, actually screamed, before dissolving into nothing.
Gideon’s magic hit the nearest zombie wolf like a hammer, and the creature simply... stopped. Frozen in place for one heartbeat before it crumbled to dust.
“Nate!” Gideon called out. “With me! Channel through the earth! The forest wants to help, let it!”
Nate's hands were already glowing. Green light, wild and uncontrolled, but strong. So strong. He slammed his palms against the ground and the earth responded.
Roots burst from the soil. Thick, grasping, alive with magic that smelled like spring rain and growing things.
They wrapped around the nearest zombie wolves, holding them in place, and I watched something like peace cross the corrupted faces before the roots pulled them down.
Back into the earth. Back where they belonged.
“That's it!” Gideon's voice was fierce with approval. “Don't fight the corruption. Return it. Give the dead back to the soil!”
Nate pushed harder. More roots. More green light. The forest was responding to him in ways I'd never seen.
I took down another zombie wolf. Then another. Evan fought at my flank, our movements synchronized by years of training and the pack bond that sang between us. Father and son, fighting together, protecting each other the way it had always been meant to be.
Michael had moved to cover Gideon and Nate, his silver blade creating a perimeter of protection around the magic-users. He fought like a man who'd learned violence late but learned it well. Every strike purposeful. Every motion economical. No wasted energy. No wasted fear.
He caught my eye across the chaos and grinned. Actually grinned, despite the horror around us.
“This is insane!” he shouted. “This is absolutely fucking insane!”
I would have laughed if I could. Instead, I sent a pulse of warmth through the pack bond. Acknowledgment. Pride. Something that might have been love, if I'd let myself name it.
The last zombie wolf fell to a combined strike from Rafe and Evan. My son's jaws on its throat, Rafe's claws tearing at its spine. It dissolved like all the others, leaving nothing behind but the echo of what it had been.
Silence fell over the clearing.
We stood among the remains of the corruption, panting, bleeding, alive. Gideon's hands were still glowing faintly. Nate had collapsed to his knees, exhausted but triumphant. Evan shifted back to human, naked and bloody and beautiful with victory.
Rafe stood apart from the rest of us, still in wolf form, staring at the empty places where his pack's bodies had been.
They were truly gone now. Returned to the earth by Nate's magic, given peace by the same power that had been used to violate them.
“It's done,” Gideon said quietly. “The death energy's been released. Purified. Whatever they were storing here, it's gone now.”
“Who?” Michael asked. His voice was hoarse. “Who would do this?”
Gideon's expression went grim. “Someone with knowledge they shouldn't have.” His eyes found mine. “Someone who wanted Rafe to survive. To be found. To lead us here.”
Rafe shifted back to human. Stood there naked and shaking, tears still wet on his face.
Gideon cleared his throat. “We should burn them. Properly. Give them the rites they deserved.”
Rafe looked up, something like hope cracking through the grief. “You'd do that?”
“They were wolves.” I met his eyes. “They deserve a wolf's farewell.”
We gathered what remained. The bodies Nate's magic had returned to the earth were beyond our reach now, but the clearing itself still held their memory.
Gideon walked the perimeter, murmuring words in a language I didn't recognize, his hands leaving trails of soft golden light that sank into the soil like rain.
“I'm cleansing the ground,” he explained when Michael raised an eyebrow. “Releasing whatever's left. Letting them go properly.”
Evan and I built a pyre at the center of the scorched circle. Not for bodies, since there were none left to burn, but for memory. For ritual. Branches and deadfall arranged with the same care our ancestors had used for generations.
Nate contributed wildflowers he'd found at the edge of the clearing. Yellow and white, somehow still blooming despite the corruption that had poisoned everything else. He laid them on the pyre with gentle hands.
“For Elena,” Rafe said quietly, watching. “She loved wildflowers. Used to plant them everywhere, drove Warren crazy because they'd pop up in the training grounds.”
Michael moved to stand beside him. Didn't say anything. Just stood there, close enough that their shoulders almost touched.
Rafe's breath hitched. “And Damian. He was... he was like a father to me, after mine died. Taught me everything. How to track. How to fight. How to be a wolf worth respecting.”
“Tell me about him,” Michael said softly.
And Rafe did. Words spilling out between tears, stories about a gruff older wolf who'd taken a grieving teenager under his wing and turned him into something worth saving. About pack dinners and terrible jokes and the way Damian used to howl off-key during full moons just to make the pups laugh.
Michael listened. That was all. Just listened, his presence steady and warm beside a man who'd lost everyone.
When Rafe's voice finally gave out, Michael put a hand on his shoulder. Rafe flinched, then leaned into it, then broke completely, and Michael caught him.
Held him while he sobbed.
Didn't say anything about being strong. Didn't offer platitudes about time healing wounds. Just held on while Rafe fell apart, the way someone should have held him weeks ago when this first happened.
I looked away. Gave them privacy. Caught Evan's eye and saw my son watching with an expression I recognized, because I'd worn it myself. The look of someone learning what kindness could do when you offered it without expectation.
Gideon finished his cleansing and came to stand beside me.
“Ready?” he asked.
I nodded. Stepped forward. Let my wolf rise just enough that my voice carried the weight it needed.
“Ash Hollow Pack,” I said. The words felt ancient in my mouth. Right. “Wolves of Warren's line. You lived with honor. You died defending your home. The earth remembers. The moon remembers. We remember.”
Evan joined me. Then Nate. Then Michael, his arm still around Rafe's shoulders, helping him stand.
“We remember,” they echoed.
Gideon's magic touched the pyre. Flames erupted, clean and gold and bright, nothing like the sickly corruption that had poisoned this place. The fire reached toward the sky like a prayer.
We stood there until it burned down to embers. All of us. Pack and human and grieving survivor, bound together by the simple act of witnessing.
When it was done, when the ashes had scattered on wind that finally, finally felt alive again, Rafe wiped his face and straightened his shoulders.
“Thank you,” he said. His voice was wrecked. Raw. But steady. “I didn't... I never thought I'd get to say goodbye.”
“Everyone deserves that,” Michael said. “No matter what.”
We walked back to the truck together. The forest around us felt different now. Still wounded, still scarred by what had happened here, but no longer screaming. Nate's magic and Gideon's cleansing had given it something to work with. A chance to heal.
Rafe climbed into the back seat this time instead of the truck bed. Sat between Evan and Nate like he belonged there. Like maybe, just maybe, he was starting to believe he did.
Michael's hand found mine on the gear shift as I started the engine.
“That was good,” he said quietly. “What you did for him. What we did.”
“It was the right thing.”
“Yeah.” He squeezed once. “It was.”
We drove home through mountains that were starting to wake up to spring, leaving Ash Hollow and its ghosts behind. Not forgotten. Never forgotten. But released.
And in the rearview mirror, I watched Rafe's eyes drift closed for the first time since we'd found him bleeding at our border.
He slept the whole way home.