All Chapters of Howl of the Forgotten: Chapter 111
- Chapter 120
134 chapters
When the Wolf Finally Wakes
Gunfire tore through the warehouse like a storm of steel and thunder.It came from every angle—roof, rafters, shadows, behind crates, above the catwalks—dozens of rifles firing in brutal, relentless bursts. The air filled with sparks, ricochets, and the sharp burn of gunpowder.But Ashton didn’t flinch.Not anymore.Not after watching Bernard fall lifeless in his arms.Something inside him snapped—something old, buried, and monstrous.The part of him he tried to bury for years.The part he swore he’d never unleash again.But tonight…Tonight the wolf woke.And it was starving.He laid Bernard gently on the ground, his movements chillingly calm. Then he stood—slowly, as if rising from a grave—and lifted his head toward the catwalk where the masked man watched.“Ashton Bane,” the masked man taunted, voice echoing, “welcome back to the animal you always were.”Ashton didn’t reply.He didn’t speak.He let instinct take over.A bullet hissed past him.He moved before he consciously knew he
The Fire Beneath the Bones
For a long moment, Ashton didn’t move.Arden’s words struck him harder than any punch, harder than any bullet that had grazed him tonight. His father. Of all the ghosts Arden could’ve dragged back into the light… it had to be him.The man who taught Ashton discipline and silence.The man who vanished without explanation.The man whose death was the foundation of everything Arden built.Ashton’s grip on Arden’s throat tightened.“What do you know about my father?”Arden didn’t resist the pressure. If anything, he leaned into it, eyes gleaming with the unsettling calm of a man who believed he was already in control.“More than you ever let yourself ask,” Arden said, voice strained but steady. “He was the first to see the truth about what you are.”Ashton shoved him harder against the beam, the catwalk groaning dangerously beneath them.“Stop speaking in riddles.”“Oh, Ashton,” Arden whispered, “your father wasn’t who you think he was. He built the project. He designed you.”The metal un
The Wind Before the Storm
Night settled over the estate like a heavy blanket, pressing down with a stillness that felt unnatural. The corridors were quiet, too quiet, as though the entire house was holding its breath. Annabelle felt it immediately — that subtle shift in the air that always came before something big, something irreversible.She stood by the balcony, arms folded, staring into the night sky. The stars were unusually dim, blurred by drifting clouds. Her mind raced, replaying the conversations she’d had earlier with Ashton and Bernard. The truth was creeping closer, tightening around all of them like a vice.Ashton found her first.He stepped onto the balcony, stopping quietly beside her. His presence was warm, grounding, but she didn’t turn. Not yet.“You disappeared after dinner,” he said softly.“I needed some air.”“You needed space,” Ashton corrected.Annabelle finally exhaled, her breath shaky. “Everything is changing too fast. Every time I think we’ve reached the end of the chaos, another do
The Truth She Never Wanted to Tell
For a long moment, Annabelle stood frozen between the two men — Ashton on her right, Bernard on her left. The night air seemed to thicken around them, trapping her breath, her heartbeat, her fear. She had carried this secret for years, wrapped it in silence, buried it under new beginnings. But secrets had a way of clawing their way back up through the cracks.She closed her eyes.“When I was nineteen,” she began quietly, “I made a mistake… a mistake I spent years trying to fix and even longer trying to forget.”Ashton’s brows furrowed, but he didn’t interrupt. Bernard folded his arms, jaw tight, waiting.“I was working for a small publishing house,” she continued. “Barely surviving, barely thinking beyond the next day. And then I got involved with someone I shouldn’t have. Someone powerful. Someone dangerous.”Bernard’s eyes darkened. “Who?”Annabelle looked down at her hands, remembering the fear, the naivety, the helplessness.“Adrian Crest.”The name alone was enough to shift the a
The Man Who Wouldn’t Stay Buried
Annabelle’s breath left her chest in one sharp, broken gasp. The message on Bernard’s phone stared back at her like a ghost she thought she had buried years ago. Adrian Crest — the man who controlled her past — was no longer a memory lurking in the shadows.He was present. Watching. Confident.And far too close.Bernard tightened his grip on the phone, his jaw locking with a slow, gathering fury she had never seen in him before. “He’s taunting us,” he said quietly, each word a simmering threat. “He wants you rattled. He wants control.”Ashton stepped toward her, placing a reassuring hand at the small of her back. “Annabelle, look at me.”She forced her eyes upward. He held her gaze with an anchored calm that steadied her trembling. “We’re not going to let him near you. Not now. Not ever.”But Annabelle shook her head slowly.“You don’t understand,” she whispered. “Adrian doesn’t stop. When he wants something — or someone — he doesn’t walk away. He hunts. He waits. He destroys.”A cold
The Door Between the Hunter and the Hunted
Bernard didn’t open the door.He stood there — shoulders squared, jaw rigid, every line of his body silently announcing that nothing on the other side of that threshold would enter without a fight.Ashton positioned himself slightly in front of Annabelle, one hand behind him, fingertips brushing her forearm in a wordless order:Stay low. Don’t move. Don’t panic.But Annabelle… she could barely breathe.Adrian’s voice seeped through the wood like smoke. Smooth. Controlled. Dangerous in a quiet way that didn’t need volume to threaten.“Annabelle, open the door. You owe me a conversation.”Her stomach twisted in a cold knot.Owe him?She owed him nothing. Not after everything he had taken, twisted, manipulated, and branded into her life.But old conditioning was a stubborn animal.And his voice — that awful familiarity — clawed through her nerves.Bernard leaned close to the door without touching it. “Leave,” he said, tone clipped steel. “Now.”A short pause.Then Adrian laughed, low and
The Secret She Never Intended to Tell
Annabelle didn’t speak at first.She couldn’t.Her throat locked around the truth she’d run from for years — the truth Adrian had just dragged back into the room with one sentence on a piece of paper.Bernard watched her closely, arms crossed, posture sharp and assessing.Ashton moved slower — not with suspicion, but with concern. He crouched beside her again, voice steady:“Annabelle… what didn’t you tell us?”She wanted to answer.She tried to answer.But her chest pulled tight, breath snagging like her lungs had turned to wire. The room felt too small, too bright, too loud, even though no one was speaking.Bernard broke the silence first. “Did he force you to do something? Did he threaten someone close to you back then?”Annabelle shook her head.Ashton touched her hand gently. “Take your time.”A single tear slid down her cheek, and she swiped it away angrily. She hated crying like this — not from pain, but from shame that didn’t belong to her.Finally, she spoke, voice small but
Lines We Can Never Uncross
Bernard didn’t sit.He didn’t pace.He stood in the center of the living room like a man replaying equations in his head — the kind that predicted death, danger, and the fastest way to stop both.Ashton locked the door again and pulled the curtains shut. His movements were sharp, controlled, military-precise. He was thinking too — but unlike Bernard, Ashton thought like a weapon.Annabelle sat on the couch, hands clasped together so tightly her fingers turned white. For the first time since Adrian’s knock, she felt the weight of her past settling on her shoulders like an anchor she could no longer deny.Bernard broke the silence.“Annabelle,” he said quietly, “you’re not the same person you were when Adrian had control over you. You need to understand that.”“I know,” she whispered.“But he hasn’t changed.”“No,” Bernard said. “He hasn’t. That’s the problem.”Ashton pulled a chair in front of Annabelle and sat, leaning forward with his elbows on his knees. His eyes softened in a way t
Shadows That Refuse to Fade
The morning crept in with a gray quietness that felt too heavy for a new day. Nothing moved in the house except the slow breath of tension that had settled overnight. Annabelle woke with a start, her heart beating a little too fast, as if her body already knew something was coming before her mind could catch up.She sat upright, rubbing her face, trying to calm the unease curling in her stomach. The room looked the same—tidy, warm, safe—but she felt none of it. Because safety, she’d learned, wasn’t about walls or doors. It was about people. And the people in her life had begun to shift like sand under her feet.She got dressed slowly, rehearsing what she wanted—needed—to say to Ashton. Last night’s confrontation had left too many cracks, too many half-truths floating in the air like smoke. They couldn’t keep dancing around the shadows that kept growing between them. Not anymore.But just as she reached the staircase, she heard voices from below—low, tense, almost sharp. Ashton’s. Bern
The Lanterns in the Deep
The descent blurred into a silent fall, a sinking that Luca felt in bone and breath. The world above—the burning clubs, the broken memories, the echo of the vanished pack—collapsed into a faint smear of light as he followed the spiral stair beneath the ruins of the first den ever sworn to his name. The air grew colder. Older. It tasted like stone dust and storms long buried.The stair ended in a cavern wider than any tunnel he had crossed. It wasn’t natural—he felt that instantly. The walls were carved, shaped to mimic the ribs of something colossal, each arch rising like the bones of a mythic beast long dead. In the center lay a lake still as polished glass. Floating above it were nearly a hundred dim lanterns—each held not by rope, but by threads of suspended ash.He stepped closer. The lanterns shivered.Then they began to whisper.Not words—breaths. Lives. He felt them before he understood them. Every lantern pulsed with a faint reddish coil, like a heart trying to restart itself.