Bloodline of Ash and Fang

CHAPTER FOUR : THE BROTHER'S TEST

The old BMW’s engine ticked as it cooled in the silent driveway, a sound that seemed to measure the heavy silence inside the car.

“Remember,” Jeremy said, his voice low and strained, stripped of its usual easy-going charm. “Not a word to anyone. Not even your mom.”

Damian gave a numb nod, the weight of the secret—of the bloody glyph, of Jeremy’s fear—pressing down on him like a physical force. “Yeah. I remember.”

He slipped out of the car and watched Jeremy’s taillights disappear down the street, swallowed by the pre-dawn gloom. The house was dark. His mom was still at her shift in Bloodhaven. Cassie was asleep. He was alone with a truth that felt like a live wire in his brain, sparking and dangerous.

DAMIEN

The key turned in the lock with a click that echoed too loudly in the sleeping street. Damian slipped inside, leaning against the closed door as if he could physically shut out the memory of the woods. The familiar scent of home—lemon cleaner, old books, the faint hint of his mother’s perfume on her coat by the door—usually meant safety. Now it felt like a thin veneer over something terrifying.

You shouldn’t have been able to see it.

Jeremy’s words played on a loop.He had seen it. The confirmation was a relief, but the terror that came with it was a cold, sharp knife in his gut.

A floorboard creaked upstairs.

Damian froze, every muscle tense, his heart leaping into his throat.

A small, sleepy figure appeared at the top of the stairs, haloed by the weak light from a nightlight. Cassie. She rubbed her eyes with one fist, her warm brown hair a messy tumble around her shoulders, making her look younger than fourteen.

“Damian?” her voice was thick with sleep. “Where’d you go? I heard the car forever ago.”

His mind raced, scrambling for a lie that wouldn’t scare her. “Couldn’t sleep. Just went for a drive to clear my head.” The words sounded hollow even to him.

She padded down the stairs, her movements quiet as a cat’s. She stopped in front of him, her head tilted, a mischievous glint cutting through the sleep in her hazel eyes. “A drive? At four in the morning? Did you finally snap and decide to become a street racer? Because if you did, you have to take me for a ride. I’ll be your navigator.”

Despite the fear coiling in his stomach, a faint, weary smile touched his lips. Her fox-like playfulness was a tiny, glowing anchor to normality. “Yeah, that’s it. You caught me. The underground racing scene in Raven Falls is thriving. I’m their newest star. We meet near the dumpsters behind the diner. It’s very glamorous.”

She grinned, a quick, bright flash in the dark, but it softened as she studied his face, her intuition seeing right through him. “You look weird. Are you okay? For real?”

The genuine concern in her voice undid him. He pulled her into a quick, tight hug, resting his chin on the top of her head. She felt small and solid and real. “I’m okay, Cass. Just… stuff. Weird stuff. Guy stuff. Don’t worry about it.”

She hugged him back just as tightly for a moment before pulling away. “Mom’s gonna be home soon. You should try to get some sleep before she starts asking her own questions. You know she’s like a vampire detective when she’s tired.”

“I will,” he said, his voice softer now. “You should too. Go on, back to bed.”

She gave him one more searching look before nodding and turning to climb the stairs. “Don’t do anything else stupid before sunrise,” she whispered over her shoulder, her playful tone returning before she disappeared into the hallway.

The moment she was gone, the fragile serenity shattered. The silence of the house was no longer comforting; it was a listening silence. He was alone again with the secret.

He paced the living room, too wired to sit, too scared to look out the windows. The woods felt closer now, as if the darkness from Hollow Pines had followed him home and was pressing against the glass.

He stopped in front of a framed family photo on the mantel. His father, Alexander, had his arms around a smiling Lilith. Damian, about ten, was grinning in front of them, with baby Cassie in his mother’s arms. His father’s smile was easy, warm. It gave no hint of secret rituals or bloody glyphs.

A sudden, searing pain lanced through Damian’s temple. He winced, squeezing his eyes shut.

‘—don’t forget who you are—’

His father’s voice,desperate, choked.

The memory wasn’t just sound this time. A flash of visual clarity, brutal and short.

The glint of a silver ring. A heavy, masculine signet ring, engraved with a complex, elegant crest—a raven in mid-flight, its wings sweeping over a full moon. A hand, wearing that ring, swinging something dark and heavy.

A snarled voice, full of hate: “Joseph!”

Damian gasped, stumbling back from the mantel as the pain receded. He was breathing heavily. Joseph. The name was a key, turning in a lock he didn’t know existed. And the ring… he’d seen that crest before. Somewhere.

A creak from outside.

His head snapped up. It wasn’t the house settling. It was outside. On the porch.

His blood ran cold. Moving on pure instinct, he darted to the light switch and flicked it off, plunging the room into darkness. He dropped to his knees, crawling to the window and peering cautiously through the slats of the blinds.

There, at the tree line just beyond their yard, a figure stood.

Tall, broad-shouldered, utterly still. It was just a darker shape against the dark woods, but it was watching the house. Watching him. And for a split second, as a cloud shifted and a sliver of moonlight caught its face, Damian saw two points of faint, silvery-blue light where its eyes should be, like distant, cold stars in the deep dark.

The promise he’d made to Jeremy curdled in his stomach. The kind of people who use wolfsbane and blood glyphs… they’re not messing around.

He fumbled for his phone, his hands shaking so badly he nearly dropped it. He didn’t call the police. He called the only person who would understand.

JEREMY

Jeremy didn’t go home. He drove straight to the oldest and most imposing house on the highest hill overlooking Raven Falls. Blackthorn Manor. The ancestral seat of the Ravenholtz family. The stones of the place seemed to hum with a power he’d always been told was his birthright, a potential that lay within him, restless and untapped.

He found his older half-brother, Marcus, in the library. The room smelled of aged paper, leather, and the faint, sharp scent of the herbs used to preserve the oldest, most dangerous texts. Marcus was examining one such book, its cover etched with runes that seemed to shift under the lamplight.

“Pup?” Marcus said, not looking up from the page. His voice was a low rumble, accustomed to command. “It’s four in the morning. This had better be because you’ve finally decided to learn what it means to carry our name.”

“I need to talk to you.” Jeremy’s voice was tighter than he intended, the panic he’d been holding back seeping through. “It’s important. And you can’t tell Dad.”

That got Marcus’s full attention. He closed the book with a definitive soft thud, the sound final in the quiet room. He took in Jeremy’s pale face, the slight tremor in his hands. “Sit. Before you fall down. What happened?”

The story spilled out of Jeremy in a rushed, hushed torrent—the body at The Falls, the wolfsbane, the Blood Glyph. But most importantly, the impossible part. “He saw it, Marcus. Damian. He saw it before I did. He described it while I was still looking at a patch of dirt and smelling bitter weeds.”

Marcus was silent for a long moment, his expression unreadable. Then he issued a soft, simple command. “Show me.”

It wasn’t a request. It was an order from one wolf to another. Jeremy didn’t just look at him; he let his focus drop inward. The world sharpened at the edges. His soft blue human eyes were swallowed whole, the irises transforming into a swirling, stormy vortex of brilliant beta-gold with a hint of Sun-Gold and luminous silver. His pupils sharpened into vicious vertical slits. It was the unique, untamed signature of the Ravenholtz heir mixed with the blood of his mother's iron fang great clan…a power that was both a birthright and a question mark.

Marcus studied the chaotic, beautiful storm in his brother’s gaze for a long second, his own eyes remaining a steady, fierce beta-gold A brilliant, metallic gold, more intense and vibrant than a standard Beta's amber . He gave a slow, grim nod. “Now,” he said. “Explain the rest.”

“He has no scent!” Jeremy’s words were desperate. “Nothing. He smells like laundry soap and the cheap pizza we had for dinner. His mom smells like antiseptic and chamomile tea. There’s no mask that good. He’s human. But he saw it.”

Marcus rose and began to pace, a slow, measured circuit around the large oak desk. He was a strategist, his mind already sifting through possibilities and discarding them. “Our bloodline is one of the oldest, Jeremy. Among the strongest. But it does not rewrite the laws of nature for a human. Ever.” He stopped and fixed his brother with a hard, penetrating stare. “There are only two answers. Either our understanding is wrong, which I doubt, or his mother is not what she seems. Something capable of a perfect, seamless mask. Something… other.”

“So what do I do?” Jeremy asked, the question sounding too much like a plea.

“You need proof. Not suspicion. You need the Moon Stone. It doesn’t lie. It doesn’t care about scent or masks. It reacts to the essence of the wolf itself. It’s in Father’s study. In Bloodhaven.”

The blood drained from Jeremy’s face. The thought of breaking into his father’s inner sanctum, the heart of his power in the city, was sheer madness. “We have to go. Now. Before he finds out about any of this.”

Marcus’s response was a long, measured silence. He studied Jeremy, not as a brother now, but as a potential asset or liability. “No,” he said, the word flat and final. “We are not going. You are.”

Jeremy stared, bewildered. “By myself? Marcus, I can’t just walk into his study”...

“You think our father became Alpha by asking for help? You think he won’t smell the hesitation on you from a mile away?” Marcus’s voice was low, devoid of its earlier patience. He stepped closer, placing a firm, heavy hand on Jeremy’s shoulder. The grip was both supportive and merciless, a promise and a warning. “This is your test, Jeremy. You brought this problem to me. Now you will prove you are strong enough to be part of the solution. You will go to Bloodhaven. You will get the stone yourself. I will be there, watching from the shadows. But if you are caught, I will not save you. Do you understand?”

He leaned in closer, his voice dropping to a whisper that was all the more intense for its quietness. “This is how

you prove you are more than just our father’s favored son. This is how you prove you are a Ravenholtz.”