Author: Eden Beck
Category: Paranormal
Go to read content：https://readnovelfree.com/p/29741_1
Preface
I thought I knew danger before, but this … this is different.
She must be able to see the realization as it dawns on my face, because her grimace turns into a wicked smile.
“That’s right. This is it.” She grins wider, her expression growing wild. She holds out her arms to either side, gesturing around her to the forest. Above us, moonlight finally breaks through the trees in streams of silvery white between the branches—triggering her shift from woman to wolf.
It happens instantaneously.
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The moment the moonlight hits her skin, she transforms from the beautiful woodland girl into a powerful killing machine with claws and fangs ready to tear me to shreds.
She growls and dips her head down, her wolf-eyes burning with that same fiery rage as her human ones did just moments earlier.
I don’t step back or try to run from her. Even if I could get back to the car before she buries her long teeth into my throat, I’d just be running to another trap. Another death. Slower, sure, but in the end—just as bloody.
In a way, I knew from the moment I arrived in North Port, Washington that this is how it would end.
1
Sabrina
I wasn’t born jumping at the shift of a shadow.
No, that came later.
It came with raised voices, harsh words, and the flurry of fists that once promised to protect me. The change didn’t happen overnight, not at first.
Sometimes I think it would be better if it had all started as it ended, in soured words and rough hands that leave bruises. At least then, maybe I wouldn’t feel my stomach twist and my throat grow tight at the thought of the man my father had once—at the now distant memory of the person who didn’t always strike terror into my heart.
If he’d always been as horrible as he was there at the end, maybe it would’ve made it that much easier to finally escape. Because even now, thousands of miles and what feels like an entire lifetime away, it’s like I can never truly get rid of him. Not really.
“Sabrina?”
My mother’s voice jars me fully awake almost as much as the jerking movement of the car, which is trying desperately to stay centered on the old, unpaved road. The sound of crunching gravel is nearly deafening, filling my ears with a grinding noise I’m surprised didn’t wake me earlier.
“Sabrina, are you alright?”
I sit up a bit, feeling the ache in my neck from so many hours spent leaning against the car window. My fingers trace a tender spot above my forehead. I’ll have a bruise there in the morning. It won’t be the first in its place, but at least this one wasn’t made by a fist.
In the car window ahead, my mother’s eyes flicker up to meet mine for a moment. They’re crinkled up in concern.
“Was I talking in my sleep again?” I ask.
She frowns a bit, her eyes returning to the winding, shadow-dappled road. “Sounded like you were having another nightmare.”
“I think I’d have to be really asleep to have a nightmare,” I say, stretching my neck again to the other side and letting out a muffled moan. “REM, and all that.”
It’s not entirely the truth. I did drift in and out of what I thought was a dreamless sleep, that sort of half-conscious daze that leaves you more tired than you were to begin with. Too many shadows on this road, too many sudden changes in the light to jerk me awake.
The shadows must have followed me into my restless slumber, casting darkness there too. But these shadows stood over my bed in the night, they loomed above me, they reached their hands towards me and—
“I thought you weren’t having the nightmares anymore,” my mother’s voice says, jarring me back into the faded leather backseat of the car we bought with the very last bit of our combined savings. Her gaze keeps flickering up to me in the mirror, the lines around her eyes growing deeper with every second.
The car lurches towards the side of the road, derailed for a second by a massive pothole.
“Mom, keep your eyes on the road,” I snap, one hand darting out to grab the passenger seat headrest for support. Once the car no longer feels like it’s going to end up in a ditch or tumbling off one of the surprisingly steep hillsides here in Eastern Washington, I slump further into my seat and let my gaze wander back out to the forest outside. “Sorry, I’m just nervous. I thought we were through with starting over.”
I let a sigh whistle through my parted lips.
I’m so through with starting over.
For just one brief second, I catch another look from my mother in the rearview mirror. This time, all I see is pity.
No one in their right mind would willingly move to Northport, Washington. Nestled between a million square miles of national forest to the south and the endless Canadian wilds to the north, I’m hoping this little town with a population of less than three hundred is the last place anyone would think to come looking for me.
Because it’s the last place I’d ever want to be.
There’s a dreariness that hangs over the endless sea of trees stretching out to every side as the car makes its way up the last of the steep dirt road towards our final destination. More than just my body, my soul aches. This life, running from place to place, it’s exhausting.
I nearly bite my tongue off trying to stifle a yawn as the car dips violently into another pothole. Honestly, I’m grateful for any sleep that I can get these days, even if it’s only a few restless hours. I squint my eyes to try and make out the tiny structure appearing between the trees ahead of us.
At first, it looks like some kind of optical illusion, the kind where something looks smaller than it actually is because it’s so far away. But I quickly realize that isn’t the case here.
Even as we wind up the last few turns, each time getting a little glimpse of the rustic cabin through the trees, it doesn’t seem to grow any larger. In fact, the closer we get, the more I realize just how tiny it really is. The giant hill be
hind the house dwarfs it in comparison.
It doesn’t matter though, at least we’re away from him.
As if sensing my own unease, my mother breaks into nervous chatter. She tries to keep her tone light, but I see the way her hands grip the steering wheel with each glance up at the cabin, the tips of her knuckles turning red, then white.
“You know,” she says, her voice raising to be heard above the gravel grinding under tire, “I’ve heard stories about this place. They say there’s a huge mansion hidden in the trees at the top of that hill. I guess the owner spent his entire life building the whole thing by hand.” Her eyes flit away from the road up to the cabin as we draw closer, and I see her jaw working for a moment. “I bet it’s gorgeous.”
I hear her unspoken meaning. Compared to this place.
“Who says that?” I ask, wondering where my mother gets her stories from. I love my mother dearly, but sometimes she has a tendency to fabricate things. I can’t really blame her though. She learned to do it out of necessity. For survival.