Page 26 of Alpha Unbound

The cold up here isn’t the kind that pricks your skin—it burrows under it. Deep. It curls into your marrow and settles there, like it's laying claim. That clean, sharp air carries the kind of silence you can feel pressing on your bones.

Somewhere behind me, a branch creaks—just one small, dry groan—but it shatters the stillness like a gunshot. The wind doesn’t follow. The silence swallows the sound again almost instantly, like the Hollow is pretending it never happened.

The trail up to the old still site is barely visible anymore, more memory than path, overgrown and forgotten by everyone who doesn’t share my blood. Everyone except Luke.

Brambles claw at my jeans, and moss has eaten away the edges of the old stones we used to mark the route. The forest tries to erase what was ours—but some roots run too deep to pull free.

Luke knew every ridge and root of these hills. He used to wander out here before dawn, long before the rest of us were even thinking about coffee.

I remember one morning I found him already perched on that same ridge by the still, steam rising off his thermos and asketchbook balanced on one knee. He didn’t look up right away—just tapped the spot beside him like he’d been waiting. That’s the kind of presence he had out here, like the woods bent around him, made space. Like the Hollow wanted him close.

He said the morning mist held secrets. Said if you were quiet enough, the Hollow would whisper them to you. I thought it was just poetic nonsense back then. Kid stuff. But now? Now I’m starting to think he was listening to something real.

He used to call it “the hollow within the Hollow.” A pocket of silence tucked between ridgelines where the pack’s rules never mattered much.

It was where he came to breathe. To think. To hide.

He said the air felt different here—older, heavier, like it remembered things we’d never know. Said it was the one place he could feel his thoughts settle without the constant pull of bloodlines and pack politics. I never understood what he meant until now, standing here with the wind still and the trees watching like sentries. It feels sacred. Haunted. And distinctly his.

I used to sneak up after him when I was little, always trying to keep up with his longer stride, always watching the way he seemed to melt into the woods. He’d ruffle my hair, tell me I was a pain in the ass, then let me sit beside him on the ledge while he sketched symbols into the dirt with a stick. It was quiet there. Sacred in a way even the chapel in town couldn’t match.

The air is too still. No birds. No wind. Just the crunch of my boots over the frostbitten ground and the soft rasp of my breath. Each step echoes too loud, like I’m trespassing on something ancient and watching. The trees don’t sway. The underbrush doesn’t twitch. The entire Hollow thrums with silence, braced for whatever comes next. The weight of the silence settles between my shoulder blades, a pressure I can’t ignore, and my wolf stirs uneasily just beneath the skin—alert, listening, tense.

The still is still there—barely. Half-collapsed. Rotting timber and rusted pipe, the copper gone green with age and exposure. The smell hits first—earthy rot and old smoke, ghost traces of mash and ferment lingering in the air like a memory you can’t quite place. It’s a graveyard for secrets, sure, but it’s also a monument to what once was. A place that kept our bellies warm and our family fed when the rest of the world turned its back.

I step over a shattered barrel, wood blackened and half-buried in a drift of damp leaves. The forest here feels older somehow, thicker—like it’s growing over something it doesn’t want found. The air changes the moment I duck beneath the roof of the old lean-to, the temperature dropping by degrees, the silence growing deeper, heavier. My breath slows. My instincts sharpen.

And then I see it. At first, it’s just a sliver of something wrong—a line too straight in a world made of curves and decay. Not old. Not rotting. Shiny black metal where no black metal should be. Cold. Clean. Out-of-place like a knife laid across a grave.

Wires tucked low along the base of the ridge, almost invisible against the dark mulch and frostbitten undergrowth. A camouflaged lens peeks from beneath a spray of dead fern, its curve too precise to be natural, its presence far too intentional. And behind a tangle of brush, the faintest red blink pulses like a heartbeat—steady, watching, alive with purpose. It’s not just surveillance—it’s a trap, quiet and patient.

What the hell?

It’s the kind of thing you see in movies or nightmares—too clean, too precise, too intentional to be anything but bad news. A spike of ice knifes down my spine, and every instinct screams that I shouldn't be here. That I shouldn't have seen this. But it's too late now. I've seen it. And I can’t unsee it.

I crouch low, heart hammering, breath shallow like even that might draw attention. The gear is sleek, compact—suspiciouslyhigh end. Matte black casing, no brand markings, tucked with precision like someone who knew exactly what they were doing had installed it. Not something a moonshiner would use. Hell, not something anyone around here could afford unless they were being paid to watch. And whoever's paying? They're not local. This feels government. Or worse—private, well-funded, and off the books.

I don’t touch it. Just memorize. The angle of the lens. The direction it’s facing. The way it’s positioned to capture anyone coming in or out of the glade. It’s too professional. Too deliberate. Military-grade? Maybe. Or federal? My gut twists.

“Luke,” I whisper. “What the hell were you into?”

And just like that, I’m back there. Two winters ago. The attic smelled like cedar and dust, the floorboards groaning beneath every step Luke took. He was pacing like a caged thing, wild-eyed and sharp-tongued, his voice cracking under the weight of things he didn’t know how to say. He ran his hands through his hair, his hands trembling; this childhood habit only appeared when he was truly rattled. The kind of fear in his eyes that night wasn’t about getting caught—it was about being hunted.

“They’re watching,” he said, shoving the old trapdoor closed with more force than necessary. “Not just us. Not just the pack. Everybody.”

“Luke—”

“No. Don’t roll your eyes. I’m serious. I found a trail cam a mile out from the eastern ridge. And not one of ours. This one’s smart. Buried into the bark. Wired into a relay. I don’t know how long it’s been there.”

“What are you saying?”

“I’m saying this isn’t about moonshine. Not anymore.”

He didn’t stay much longer after that. He stopped coming to Sunday dinner. Slipped away from town meetings. Vanished from poker night at the back of the store, where he always usedto clean up. He became a ghost long before he disappeared for good. And I never saw him pace like that again. Because one day he was just... gone. No note. No trace. Just silence and space where my brother used to be.

I remember the way he looked at me that last morning, eyes rimmed red from lack of sleep, like he hadn’t rested in days and couldn’t afford to. He hugged me longer than usual, tighter, like he knew it might be the last time. His voice was low when he said it, like someone might be listening even inside our own kitchen—said something about keeping the store running, keeping it out of certain hands. At the time, I thought he meant Waylon, the way we all did when something went sideways. But now? Now I’m not so sure. There was fear in his eyes that morning. And something else—resolve. Like he'd already decided to vanish.

I rise slowly, scanning the ridgeline. No one’s there. But the back of my neck itches like I’m not alone. The kind of itch that comes from being watched—closely, silently, like a breath you can’t hear until it’s too close to dodge. Every instinct I have is on high alert, my wolf pacing behind my ribs.

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