CHAPTER 20 #2
“They died when I was four,” I found myself telling him, my tone matter-of-fact. “In a car accident. I don’t remember it, not really. Just pieces. I was in the back. They said the fire department had to pry open the door to get me out.”
He didn’t react with surprise, just a quiet, patient look, like he knew.
“My grandma told you, didn’t she?” I asked, softer than before, as realization spread.
“Yeah,” he confirmed, glancing down as he walked. “But it’s different hearing it from you.”
I shrugged, trying to keep my voice even. “My grandmother raised me after that. She’s the only family I had growing up. She lost a son and I lost my parents. But at least we had each other. So, when I wasn’t there for her at the end…”
He reached for my hand without hesitation. “It hit so hard.”
The words stopped me. Not just because they were true, but because they were mine. He’d finished the sentence I couldn’t. He knew. He understood what that kind of pain felt like. Our stories might’ve been different, but the pain was real and shared.
We stood there, quietly joined by something heavier than silence.
The space between us was no longer empty.
And in that strange realm of shared understanding, I felt…
freer. I smiled, squeezing his hand, strong and warm in mine, as a cooling breeze blew down the trail and I heard the distant chirping of crickets begin.
My eyes fell to his full lips, the flash of his teeth, when he mirrored my small smile.
“C’mon,” he said, nudging me lightly, clearly changing the mood. “There’s something else I want to show you.”
We crested a ridge, the path briefly widening beneath a tunnel of trees. The sound of water grew louder, a distant rush threading through the hush of the forest.
The trail turned, and with it, the air seemed to shift—crisper, cooler—as if the trees themselves were ushering us toward something sacred.
We walked toward the sound of falling water until we broke into a clearing where a fall cascaded in silver sheets down the rock face.
Cold spray drifted over the mossy stones, and the air sharpened with it.
We both slowed, quiet now. There was something reverent about it—the way the sound filled the clearing, loud but soothing, wild but constant.
It wasn’t grand, like some postcard landmark.
But it felt untouched. Sacred. Like the forest had decided to offer us a gift.
Mist curled up in delicate spirals around the basin, and the scent of stone and moss and cold water filled my lungs. I hadn’t realized how shallow my breathing had been until now. I tilted my face into the mist, laughing softly, and bent to scoop water from the pool cupped in my hands.
The droplets shimmered like glass in my palms. I paused, then took a sip, then gasped.
The water was cold enough to sting my teeth but crisp and clean.
“It’s freezing.” A surprised laugh escaped me before I could stop it, small and real.
For once, I didn’t care how I looked or sounded. “Freezing in summer.”
Jonathan crouched beside me, dipping a hand to drink straight from the stream. The shock of it made him hiss through his teeth before grinning, drops clinging from his chin. “Pure. Best water you’ll ever taste.”
I smiled at him, strands of my hair sticking damp against my cheek. This moment shimmered—light and color and cold air. Everything about it felt brighter. Sharper. Alive. For a second, he just stood, watching me in a way that made my chest feel tighter before he forced himself to look away.
I didn’t move. Didn’t want to. The city felt like a memory, distant and gray.
And this? This was the opposite. This was vibrancy.
Color. Breath. A stolen moment where everything in me felt washed clean.
If only it could last. If only I could stay in this moment longer or capture it in a bottle to keep forever.
We pressed on, deeper into the trail. It wasn’t steep, luckily, but the miles seemed to stretch endlessly.
The sunlight had shifted, filtering long and low through the trees, and the incline was starting to steepen. Still, we moved at a good pace, cutting west toward the ledge where Jonathan said the moonshade berries always grew best—cooler, more sun exposure, the right soil. He’d sounded so sure.
But when we finally emerged from the tree line and scrambled up the narrow path to the flattened bluff beyond, Jonathan came to a halt ahead of me. His shoulders sank slightly, and I slowed to a stop.
The patch was empty.
Only brittle vines and shriveled stems where the berries should’ve been. Even the leaves were tinged dry and curled, like they’d died in winter and hadn’t grown back.
Jonathan didn’t speak for a moment. His gaze swept the bluff in quiet disbelief as he swore, low and clipped, the word catching on his breath bitterly.
I stepped beside him. “Well, uh, that’s a problem.”
He let out a breath, rubbing the back of his neck. “They shouldn’t be gone. This patch has always held through until winter.”
I waited, letting him puzzle through it. When his brows stayed furrowed, I nudged his elbow lightly. “We could keep looking. The slope runs all along the ridge, right? Maybe there’s another patch nearby?”
He looked at me for a moment, then gave a small nod. “Might as well since we’re already this far out. We can go a little farther up.”
So, we followed the ridge.
The terrain changed quickly, brambles clawing at our boots and loose stones underfoot. The trail wasn’t marked anymore, just a worn thread through the undergrowth that Jonathan seemed to recognize more by instinct than sight. I found it was easy to imagine him in these woods as a boy.
The air grew cooler as we climbed, enough to make me a shiver race down my spine. The shift felt sudden—too sudden and much too cold for the time of year.
Goose bumps rose on my arms. I glanced at Jonathan.
He’d gone quiet again. Oddly…alert. His shoulders were stiffer, his pace slower, gaze flicking toward the denser trees off to our left like he looking for something unexpected.
I tilted my head. “Everything okay?”
He didn’t answer right away. Then he reluctantly replied, “We’re coming close to a place we don’t want to cross into. If we hit a certain point, we’ll turn back.”
There was something in his tone, tight and cautious. It sounded like he was weighing whether to keep going at all.
I didn’t press him. Not yet.
But I couldn’t ignore the chill or the way the gentle wind had suddenly gone still.
The path narrowed as we edged further along the ridge. Roots clawed out of the ground like ribs, and the trees began to lean strangely, all bent away from the same direction as though they’d been pressed back by some invisible weight.
Then Jonathan abruptly stopped.
I almost ran into him, steadying myself with a hand against his arm. But I gripped him tight, the heat and taut strength I felt making me feel safe when this entire place felt…off. “What is it?”
His gaze scanned the tree line ahead of us, where the shadows looked to be thicker, heavier. “We’re nearing the Whispering Woods,” he said quietly. “We shouldn’t linger.”
The name alone raised the hairs on the back of my neck. “The Whispering Woods?”
He gave a slight nod, though his eyes never left the trees. “Older than the mine, older than any maps. This place is best left undisturbed.”
There was a note in his voice I hadn’t heard before. It was unease. He stood, still listening to more than the wind, like the forest itself was saying something I couldn’t hear. Sometimes I forgot he was a Lycan. But in times like these, I was all too aware that he was other.
Then it got abnormally silent, like someone had turned the earth’s volume off. The sudden absence of birds and insects left me disoriented. A faint blue blur flickered in my periphery, but when I turned, it was gone.
I shivered. “Should we turn back?”
Before he could answer, a flicker of color caught my eye down the slope. A cluster of dark, glossy berries clinging to a bush that looked full and bountiful, even though it wasn’t the right time of the season.
“There,” I said quickly, pointing. “Look!”
Jonathan followed my gaze, and I caught the hesitation in his posture. He didn’t move right away, like he was toeing some invisible line. Finally, he exhaled. “We can get them…if we’re quick.”
We scrambled down the slope, careful not to lose footing on the moss-slickened rock. The berry bush was larger than I’d expected—wild-looking with thick vines.
“They’re huge,” I said, crouching beside the thicket.
Jonathan gave a low hum behind me, inspecting the berries with a narrowed eye. “Unusually big.”
I glanced back at him. “Is that a bad thing?”
He didn’t answer right away, just bent to pluck one from the edge and rolled it between his fingers, then closed his eyes and sniffed it. “They’re safe,” he said finally. “Just strange.”