CHAPTER 75: CHAPTER 74: RHYDRIC & THE BEATING HEART I

The further she went, the harder it became to see. Shapes blurred, branches melted into one another, the path behind her lost somewhere in the darkness. She turned around, but there was nothing no light, no house, no sign she had ever come from somewhere. Just an endless darkness pressing in.

Panic flickered faintly in her chest.

God.

How far had she walked?

Her breathing quickened. The stillness was so wrong, it was too silent. No chirping insects, no rustling leaves, no whisper of life. The entire forest seemed frozen in a moment that wasn’t supposed to exist.

The only sound left was the steady thud of her heartbeat, loud and uneven in her ears.

She turned again, just to be sure...

And that was when it hit her.

Not something physical. But a shift in the air so sharp that her instincts screamed.

Every hair on her body stood on end. Her heart lurched violently, beating so hard she swore she could hear it echo in her ribs. She didn’t see anything but she felt it. The weight of eyes on her. The sense of being hunted.

Suddenly a supernatural wind whipped through her hair, sending the white strands flying wildly around her face.

Athena froze. What the fuck was that?

The woods, once dead silent, seemed to breathe again.

But then something...someone touched her shoulder.

It wasn’t a breeze this time. The touch was a solid and warm. Human.

Her body went rigid, her breath locking in her throat. Slowly...painfully slowly Athena turned her head. Her pulse thundered in her ears. But when she looked over her shoulder...

There was nothing.

Just the dark empty the woods that seem to stretch endless.

She swallowed hard, her stomach twisting until it hurt. Every instinct screamed at her to run, but her legs wouldn’t move.

Then, before she could take another breath.

Something yanked her backward, hard. A hand fisted into her hair, jerking her head up so violently that she cried out in pain.

And then she saw him.

He was right there.

A man or something pretending to be one, his face inches from hers. His eyes glowed red, the kind of red that wasn’t natural, wasn’t human. They burned through the dark like twin embers, cold and cruel.

A low snarl ripped from his throat, so close she could feel the vibration against her skin. His breath was cold when it hit her cheek. The sight of his teeth...no, fangs, made her entire body shake.

Athena’s breath hitched. Her voice broke as she screamed, the sound echoing deep into the trees.

Her knees gave out, but his grip held her steady, his claws scraping lightly against her scalp as he pulled her closer, almost studying her face.

This couldn’t be real.

It couldn’t.

She squeezed her eyes shut, trembling violently.

This was a nightmare. It had to be.

If this is a dream, Oliver better come wake me up right now...

But when she dared to open her eyes again, the nightmare hadn’t vanished.

It was worse. Athena felt her world collapse.

The creature’s grin widened. He raised one hand slowly, almost teasingly and the movement revealed what she hadn’t seen before. His fingers weren’t fingers; they were claws, sharp and black, glinting under the faint moonlight.

Athena’s heart slammed painfully in her chest.

"No..." she choked out, shaking her head, stumbling backward as much as his grip allowed. "No, no, no..."

Her scream tore through the night again, desperate, raw. She squeezed her eyes shut, bracing for pain...

But it never came.

The hand gripping her hair went slack. The claws loosened.

Athena froze. Her breath hitched as the pressure vanished completely.

And when she opened her eyes.

The red-eyed man was no longer standing.

He was kneeling.

On the ground.

Head bowed, body trembling like a puppet with its strings cut.

And then she saw why.

Rhydric stood behind him. His expression was cold, deadly as his arm extended forward, fingers curled around something dripping crimson.

It took her a heartbeat to understand what it was.

A heart.

He was holding the creature’s heart.

And it was still beating.

Athena’s breath broke into a silent gasp, her eyes wide, her body too numb even to scream.

The forest was still again, but it wasn’t quiet.

Because she could hear it the slow, wet, rhythmic sound of that heart still pounding in Rhydric’s palm.

Her entire body trembled.

The world around her tilted, blurred, breathing thick with terror she couldn’t swallow down. The pounding of that heart, the one still clutched in Rhydric’s hand, filled her ears until it drowned everything else.

Each beat sounded heavier than the last.

Each one felt like it was syncing with her own.

She wanted to look away, she tried to but her eyes were locked on him.

The night wind ruffled his dark hair, but it wasn’t the same Rhydric she’d known in flashes and fragments. His eyes, those calm grey eyes, were no longer human. They glowed gold, burning bright and wild, casting an eerie halo against the dark.

His chest rose and fell fast. His breath rasped like someone who’d run through fire.

And his hand...God, his hand.

The one that had torn through the creature’s chest wasn’t human either. His fingers ended in long, curved claws slicked in blood.

Athena couldn’t move.

Her pulse went wild.

Her knees wobbled that her knees almost gave out.

She wanted to scream, cry or anything, but her throat had locked tight. Fear crawled down her spine like cold fingers, and the forest spun around her.

She took a step back, but her legs gave out completely.

Her vision blurred, the light from his golden eyes splintering into streaks and for a second, all she could hear was the echo of her own heartbeat crashing in her ears.

Then, everything went black.

Her body collapsed, but before she hit the ground, Rhydric was already there. The heart slipped from his bloodied hand, hitting the dirt with a dull, wet thud.

He caught her mid-fall, one arm around her waist, the other cradling her head. His breath came out in harsh, ragged pulls, his chest rising too fast, as if even he was shaking off the monster that had just clawed through.

For a moment, he just stared at her pale face then shut his eyes, trying to steady his own breath.

...

Rhydric

The moon was full that nightbright, swollen, and merciless. It hung heavy in the black sky, bleeding silver across the forest that stretched for miles. Every sound, every heartbeat, every shift in the wind was sharper tonight.

It was the kind of night Rhydric hated.

He wasn’t supposed to be out here at least, not near the borders of their territory but he couldn’t stay in the mansion. Not tonight. Not when his control was already hanging by a thread.

The forest had always been his only refuge during the full moon. Out here, no one would see him change. No one would hear him lose control. No one would watch him break.

He took a deep breath, his boots touched the dry leaves as he moved deeper into the woods. The air was cold enough to sting, but he didn’t mind. It kept him focused.

His fingers flexed unconsciously he could already feel the itch beneath his skin.

That was the curse of being born to broken blood.

His mother had died the night he was born. They said it was because she’d fought too hard during labor, that she’d tried to suppress her wolf to keep from scaring him as a newborn. But the truth, what Rhydric had pieced together over the years was uglier.

She had been weak. Too weak to survive his birth.

And his father... well, the man hadn’t lasted much longer.

The great Alpha who had once ruled with fire and steel had lost his mate, and with her went his mind. He’d drowned himself in liquor, in grief, in rage. And then one day, he simply ended it putting a bullet through his temple, leaving his wealth, his lands, and his legacy in the hands of a child who didn’t even understand what any of it meant.

Rhydric had grown up alone in that mansion.

Alone, except for Nara...the nanny his father had hired before he died.

She wasn’t a wolf. Just a human woman with too much patience and a soft smile that reminded him of warmth. She’d raised him, fed him, patched his wounds when the transformations first began. She’d stayed even when she should’ve run. Now she’s also dead.

But she still couldn’t teach him how to control the monster in his blood.

No one could.

When the moon came full, Rhydric lost everything that made him human.

He’d tried. God, he’d tried...tried to suppress it, to meditate, to chain himself to the walls of his basement. But it never worked. His wolf was too wild, too raw. It was as if every ounce of rage his parents had buried inside themselves had been born into him.