Goddess Of The Underworld (Sheridan Hartin) novel Chapter 114

Chapter 114

By the time we step back into the evening air, the sky has slipped toward indigo. The scent of sap and sawdust still hangs over the orphanage fence, clean and ordinary against the old metallic bite of blood. I check the windows, tiny faces pressed to the glass, caretakers counting heads again just to be sure. Elliot spots me from the blanket and lifts his hand. I lift mine back. We’re okay. For now.

“East line first,” Tommy says, already jogging. Noah falls in beside him, and I match their

pace. Haiden and Levi peel off toward the service road to reset the last of the alarm sigils. Xavier hangs back to finish assigning rotations, then shadows us a beat later, quiet as a

phantom. The forest swallows the village hum in a handful of strides. Trunks rise like pillars, the understory dense with bracken and fern. The air is cooler here, sharper. Hawk paces at the edge of my consciousness through Noah, head low, ears forward, that deep, steady rumble threading through the bond.

Something’s wrong, Noah murmurs across our link. He doesn’t have to say it. I feel it too. Not a scent, exactly, more like a hollow in the air where a scent should be. Levi’s ward pings softly as we cross the east perimeter–no alarm now, just a slow pulse, acknowledging us. Tommy crouches at the ditch line, where the bone totems were found earlier. The ditch’s damp edges glint faintly in the fading light.

“Fresh tracks,” he mutters, pointing. “Heavier paws here, lighter here. They split and reconverged.” He looks up at me. “It’s messy on purpose.”

“Smudged…” Noah kneels beside him, frowning. “Scent dragged. They’re dragging their

own trails with ash sacks.”

I scan the treeline. The last light slips through like spilled milk, blurring shadows. Layah materializes at my side, low and silent, hackles lifted.

“We’re not alone,” Levi says. He raises a palm; sigils spill from his skin, thin as cobweb, and drift outward until they kiss bark and rock and disappear. A second later, they hum back to him in tiny pulses. His eyes narrow. “Movement. Small. Fast. Stopping and

starting. Not wolves.”

“Runners?” Tommy asks.

Levi shakes his head. “No heart–thump. No heat signature.” He glances at me, and

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Chapter 114

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something unspoken clicks between us. The hollowness again, closer.

Noah stands, tilting his head. Hawk’s growl deepens. “I’ve got five distinct gait patterns within a hundred meters,” he says. “But I only smell three.”

A branch snaps to our left. Tommy is moving before the sound finishes, but the figure that stumbles from the underbrush isn’t charging. It’s a rogue male, gaunt, patchy fur, eyes clouded. He drags a forepaw like it’s caught on a trip line we can’t see. He stops six feet from us, head jerking as if holding himself back from lunging takes all his strength.

I raise a hand. “Easy.”

His gaze flicks to me, then past me, searching. His nose lifts, but he doesn’t sniff. It’s a strange, abortive movement, as if the function is there but the instinct is not.

“Who sent you?” Tommy asks, voice low.

The rogue shifts and his throat works. A rasp squeezes out, sand–dry. “Hun…ger.” His jaw trembles. A shiver ripples through him from spine to muzzle.

“Who?” I press, softer. “Give me a name.”

He sways. When he speaks again, it’s not a name. It scrapes the air, brittle as bone. “Kin.”

My stomach drops, sudden and hard. The rogue jerks once, twice, and then his eyes widen like he’s seeing something behind us. Levi reaches for him on instinct, a stabilizing spell on his lips, too late. A thin thread of nothing peels free from the base of the wolf’s skull, fine as hair and darker than shadow. It retracts into the treeline before any of us can move. The rogue collapses, a puppet with the strings cut. Silence slams down. Even the insects hold their breath. Tommy rolls the body gently, checking for breath he already knows isn’t there. He looks up at me, jaw set. “He didn’t die. He was… released.”

“Something rode him,” Levi says quietly. He’s pale in the blueing light. “Something that doesn’t leave heat or sound. Just hunger.”

a fence that cuts strings.”

“Kin,” I say.

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