Chapter 11
Rowen
The Hollow had never felt quiet to me.
But now? Now it felt like it was whispering to me. Had it always been like this, and I just hadn’t understood what it meant? The land had always been there—but only now did it feel like a steady pulse at the edge of my awareness, a weight under my feet that felt like belonging.
And the more I listened, the more it hummed. I wasn’t sure whether it was trying to warn me or welcome me. I really hoped it was the latter. I didn’t need any more dire warnings.
I stood at the ridge overlooking the valley where the wind always skimmed first. It felt familiar. Comforting. This was one of my favorite places in the Hollow. The air was sharp, too cold for early evening, like the Hollow had pulled its breath tight.
I heard footsteps behind me, and I had a pretty good idea of who my stalker was. He’d been at my side since Wolfe left. Diesel strolled out from behind me, boots crunching over stones.
“You too,” he said.
I crossed my arms. “Me too, what?”
“Having a fondness for perching at the edge of mountain ridges.”
I didn’t get the chance to argue because his head snapped down toward the tree line so fast the hairs on my arms lifted. I felt his wolf rise within him. Diesel stared down at the Hollow, his eyes narrowed and his shoulders tight.
“What is it?” I whispered. “Diesel?”
Diesel inhaled. Slow. Deliberate. Sniffing the air. If anything, the tension in his shoulders got tighter. He seemed…uneasy.
“Diesel?” I heard the edge of panic in my voice. “Talk to me.” We weren’t ready for an attack. I got ready to shift.
Diesel exhaled loudly. “Not ours,” he muttered.
Not Hollow. Not Stonefang.
“Pack Council?” I asked.
He shook his head.
Something else? What? My stomach knotted. “Where?”
“Everywhere,” he said, voice low. “Which is wrong. Things don’t smell everywhere unless they’re power. Or”—his jaw clenched—“or old.”
Old. My wolf pressed hard against my skin. The druid’s voice slipped through my mind uninvited, the Hollow remembers.
“What does that mean, Diesel?” I asked him quietly.
He was still staring down at the Hollow. “Ancient answers to what is ancient.”
I swallowed. “Ancient? The land?” I recalled my conversation with Wolfe this morning when Killian had unashamedly woken me, with a pissed off look as he handed me a cell phone.
Wolfe had called Killian to tell him he needed to stay at Stonefang one, maybe two days more.
He’d called Killian because I’d forgotten the black phone they’d given me needed to be charged.
It was charging now, and I would have to get used to the fact that my husband would be away from me at times as he spent time with his other pack. Not other, our. It would take time to get used to thinking of it as one pack. But I would.
If we survived what was coming.
“Is it the same thing that Wolfe sensed, do you think?”
Diesel’s eyes whipped to mine. “He felt something?”
Shit. Did he not know? “Um, maybe. Diesel—”
“No. No, no, no.” He stalked toward me, wagging his finger back and forth as if I’d foolishly summoned a demon with a scented candle.
“You can’t drop that like it’s casual conversation.
‘Is it the same thing that Wolfe sensed, do you think?’ is not a sentence we gloss over.
What did he feel? When? Why am I only just hearing about this now—”
I grabbed his arm. “Diesel.”
He froze.
I lowered my voice even though we were both at the top-ish end of a mountain. “Because I didn’t want to scare the pack until I knew what it was. And because the druid said—”
“Oh, this is getting worse by the second,” he muttered.
I ignored him. “Because the druid said the Hollow isn’t quiet anymore. It’s reacting. And that means something is coming. You feel it too. So is it that? Or is it something else?”
Diesel stared at me. Not angry. Not sarcastic. He glanced at my waist, quick enough that anyone else would have missed it, but I wasn’t anyone else. He looked worried. Deeply, painfully worried.
“What do you feel?” he asked, voice softer now. “What is the land saying to you?”
“It doesn’t say anything,” I breathed. “It’s just…there.”
His expression tightened. “It is, but does it feel…content? Or—”
“It feels anticipatory.”
His eyebrow rose. “Excited?” he hedged, and I shook my head.
Diesel turned to look down toward the trees again. It must have been a trick of the afternoon sun, because his shadow didn’t look like that of a man, but a wolf. His wolf. “That’s exactly what I feel now,” he said softly.
“Excited?” I whispered in confusion.
“Anticipatory,” he said with a smirk my way.
A shiver ran down my spine. “Is it them? The Pack Council?”
“I’d tell you if it was Council,” he said, brushing off my fear casually.
“I would smell their stench a mile away. This? This feels like…a shadow.” He looked above us at the cloudless sky.
“This is something…hovering. Just at the corner of my eye, stepping just out of sight.” His jaw locked.
“A heartbeat but…but not a body.” His eyes narrowed to slits. “And it’s watching.”
I wanted to shift on instinct. Ready to fight. “It’s watching us?” I whispered.
“Us?” Diesel shook his head. “No.” His gaze cut to me. “Watching you.”
The Hollow surged under my boots—not violently, but sharply, like being yanked inside-out. My breath caught, and it was so strange to feel like I’d stumbled when I hadn’t moved at all. “Me?” I managed. “How do you figure?”
Diesel didn’t hesitate. “Because you’re opening up to your power. Because you’re pregnant. Because you’re Wolfe’s mate. Pick a reason. They all suck.”
I pressed a hand to my stomach—not even a bump yet, nothing to show for it—but my wolf curled around the place instinctively.
Diesel watched me with a patience I suspected most people never got from him. “Rowen. Stop thinking the worst. Start thinking the real.”
“What’s the real?”
“That whatever is watching you isn’t touching you,” he said. “Not crossing the wards. Not stepping closer. Not pushing. That means the Hollow isn’t letting it.”
My heart thudded. “You’re sure?”
“Rowen, I don’t lie about things that could kill us.” He gently nudged my shoulder. “But we need to get you back down the mountain. Now.”
I startled. “That’s a little dramatic.”
“Dramatic?” He let out a wild, humorless laugh. “Rowen, you are pregnant with the Hollow’s next alpha—”
“Diesel,” I hissed.
“And your mate is too far away, surrounded by wolves who need him, and the land is vibrating like it just woke up with a hangover, and there is something ancient staring at you like you’re the last page of a fucking prophecy, so when I say get down the mountain, I mean move your curvy ass and get down the fucking mountain. ”
“You really are a gigantic pain in my ass!”
Diesel laughed, but I noticed he was still watching the air around us as he began to shepherd me toward the trail. “Maybe,” he conceded. “But think of it this way, most of those things are still happening.”
I blinked. “How is that helping?” I whispered to him.
“Less talking,” he ordered, and grabbed my elbow. “Let’s move.”
We stepped off the ridge—quickly—and made our way down the mountain, and only once the ground leveled did Diesel finally exhale. But his wolf didn’t settle. Not even close. He looked back up the ridge, nostrils flaring again, shoulders rigid.
“What now?” I asked softly, scared he heard me, dreading the fact he’d tell me.
He shook his head. “I… It moved,” he said. “Whatever it is…it moved sideways. Not toward you. Not away either.”
My head hurt. “Sideways?”
“That’s not normal.” He looked at me as if this conversation was.
No. It wasn’t. None of this was normal. The Hollow pulsed again beneath us, and this time I knew what it was, a warning.
A whisper. A living, breathing thing shifting its focus.
“Diesel?” I asked as I turned in a half circle. “What does this mean?”
He didn’t hesitate. “It means Wolfe was right to go to Stonefang.”
I frowned. “How does that connect?”
“Because if something old is watching you in the Hollow,” he said quietly, “then something old is watching him there.”
The air stilled. The Hollow hummed. My wolf growled.
And Diesel murmured the last thing I wanted to hear, “Rowen…someone’s waiting for you.”
My breath caught. Waiting for me. Not hunting. Not approaching. Not testing the borders.
Waiting.
My wolf pressed so hard against my skin that I fought to remain in control. Diesel grabbed my elbow, startling me.
“Easy,” he muttered. “You’re not fainting.”
“I wasn’t going to faint,” I snapped. I knew I had been one second away from fainting. “You felt that,” I whispered.
Diesel’s eyes scanned around us constantly. “Everyone within an ounce of power within a mile felt that. The Hollow just shifted its weight.”
“Shifted its weight?” My voice cracked. “What does that even mean?”
“It means the magic of the land moved to face something,” he said. “Like a wolf turning its head to look at a threat.” His jaw clenched. “Or an equal.”
My throat dried. “The Hollow sees whatever’s watching me.”
“Yeah,” Diesel said. “And it didn’t fucking like it.”
It wasn’t the surreal nature of this conversation that threw me. It was the fact that I was able to keep up with it that was picking me up and slamming me through a solid wall.
The Hollow pulsed again under my boots—faint tremor, almost a soft swell beneath my feet, like something beneath me was stretching its spine. The feeling slithered up my legs, wrapped around my ribs, and settled like fingers at the back of my neck.
Not painful. Not hostile. Just aware. And directing my attention in a way that wasn’t entirely mine.
I wrapped my arms around myself. “Diesel…if it moved sideways, does that mean it’s…circling?”
“No,” he said instantly. “If it was circling, I’d smell it. I’d feel it. Whatever this is…it’s not hunting. It’s positioning.”
“For what?”
He finally looked at me. “Contact,” he said. “Or confrontation. Depending on what it wants.”
“That makes me feel worse.”
“I’m not trying to make you feel better,” he said. “I’m trying to keep you alive.”
I closed my eyes for a heartbeat, inhaling deeply, letting the Hollow’s breath synchronize with mine.
It steadied me the way it had since I was a girl—rustling leaves, cool earth, the familiar scent of pine sap and moss.
But underneath that…was that sense of something new.
A pull. Soft. Persistent. Unnerving. But… home.
“Diesel,” I whispered, “it wants me to go somewhere.”
His head snapped toward me so fast I heard vertebrae crack. “No.”
“I didn’t say—”
“No.” He stepped in front of me, blocking the entire request with his chest. “You’re pregnant. You’re not trained. And Wolfe will rip my heart out of my ribcage if I let you wander into the trees, chasing whispers.”
“I’m not chasing whispers,” I said tightly. “The land is—”
“Don’t care,” Diesel said. “You don’t follow strange presences into the fucking forest.”
“It isn’t strange.”
“It isn’t friendly,” he corrected.
He wasn’t wrong. But the Hollow’s tug didn’t feel dangerous. It felt…insistent. A knocking on a door that only I could hear. I took a step to the side to peer around Diesel’s shoulder. He moved with me like a wall on legs.
“Diesel—”
“Not happening.”
“You don’t even know what I was going to say.”
“Yeah, I do. You were going to say ‘just let me check.’ The answer’s still no.”
I rubbed my temple, frustration knotting in my chest. “I can’t ignore it.”
“You can, actually,” Diesel said. “It’s called being sane.”
“Like you know what that feels like.” I stared at him, my temper rising, and he stared right back, cool as a cucumber. “I’m serious.”
“So am I.” He planted a hand on my shoulder. “Rowen, you’re linked to the Hollow now more than you’ve ever been. You’re carrying my alpha’s child. Anything that reacts to you, reacts to him.” His voice dropped. “And something out there reacted.”
My stomach tightened. My son. The Hollow pulsed again—harder this time, deeper. Not demand. Not command. This time in warning. I flinched.
Diesel saw it instantly. “What are you feeling?”
“It’s shifting again,” I whispered. “The land. It’s…turning.”
“Toward us?”
“No.” I swallowed. “Toward the direction Wolfe went.”
Diesel cursed under his breath. “Well, that settles it. Whatever’s watching you is definitely watching him too.”
I nodded slowly. “The druid said the Hollow listens through me. Maybe—maybe it’s trying to send a message.”
“Great,” Diesel muttered. “A mystical game of telephone between you, Wolfe, a druid, and something that smells like dust and nightmares.”
I almost laughed. Almost.
Another pulse. Strong. Urgent.
“Diesel…” I whispered.
He stiffened. “What now?”
“It stopped watching me.”
He froze. “Stopped?” he repeated.
I nodded. “The pressure…it shifted again. The attention is gone.”
He seemed to become more solid. I don’t know how, but he felt bigger. “Gone where?” he demanded.
I turned back toward the ridge, heart pounding, wolf snarling, the Hollow humming like a struck chord. “It moved,” I said. “Do you feel it?”
He concentrated. “Faintly. It’s moved sideways again.”
“No,” I whispered, dread crawling up my spine like cold fingers. “Forward.”
“Fuck!” Diesel growled. “You know where it’s going.”
I nodded, feeling sick. “Toward Stonefang.”
Diesel swore so violently that he startled a raven from the trees. Then he grabbed my arm. “We’re going,” he said. “Now.”
“I can’t leave the Hollow—”
“You’re not leaving,” he snapped. “We’re going to the Heartwood. Somewhere safe for you. Somewhere I can see what’s coming.”
“Diesel—” My wolf surged upwards, desperate, protective, wild.
“Rowen,” he countered, “something old just went after Wolfe.”
My pulse stammered. My wolf howled. And the Hollow shivered under my feet.
Not in fear.
In readiness.