Freya Nightshade has always felt a strange pull toward the forbidden forest that looms just beyond her village, but she's spent her life obeying her grandmother's warnings to stay far away. That all changes one fateful night under the Harvest Moon w...
Oops! This image does not follow our content guidelines. To continue publishing, please remove it or upload a different image.
Freya stood frozen in the clearing, her breath catching in her throat as the shadows swallowed him whole. The stranger had disappeared as quickly as he'd appeared, his figure dissolving into the forest as if he'd never been there. The silver light of the harvest moon, which had bathed the clearing in a soft glow, now seemed dimmer, leaving the air colder, darker. Her skin still tingled with the memory of his presence, as though the charge he'd left behind still hummed in the air around her.
She had no idea who he was.
Neither of them had spoken their names. The encounter felt too strange, too surreal for something as grounding as names. It was as if exchanging them would have made everything too real, too solid—something neither of them had seemed ready for. He had been wild in a way she couldn't define—dangerous, yet impossible to turn away from. Now, with the weight of the night pressing in on her, she couldn't shake the sense that something important had just slipped out of her grasp.
What was that?
Freya inhaled deeply, trying to steady herself. The cool air carried the earthy scent of damp soil and decaying leaves, grounding her, if only a little. Her mind raced, struggling to make sense of what had just happened. Who was he? What was he doing out here, alone, beneath the moon? She shook her head, trying to clear away the fog of confusion. The howls she'd heard earlier still echoed faintly in her ears—distant, haunting—sending a ripple of unease through her.
"Stay on the path," he'd said. "Don't linger."
She could still hear the low rumble of his voice, that strange mixture of authority and concern. Why had his words stopped her in her tracks? She didn't even know him. And yet, something about his warning had rooted her to the spot. What did he mean by 'don't linger'? What was out here that could be so dangerous?
The forest around her felt different now—alive in an unsettling way. The shadows stretched longer, darker, and the trees seemed to lean in closer, as if they were watching her, waiting. Freya shivered, wrapping her arms around herself, her gaze flicking warily between the towering trunks. I need to go. Now. The longer she stayed, the more the forest seemed to close in on her.
With a steadying breath, she turned back toward the path that would lead her home. Her steps were slow and careful at first, but as the darkness deepened, her pace quickened. She hadn't meant to stay out so late, and her grandmother would surely be waiting up for her. Gran's always warned me not to be in the forest after dark. The old woman's voice echoed in her head: "There are things in those woods that you don't understand. You don't belong there after the sun sets."
Freya had always dismissed it as superstition, the kind of stories elders told to keep people from wandering too far. But tonight, those words carried more weight, as if they were laced with a truth she hadn't been ready to see.
