Howl of the Forgotten

The Fire That Didn’t Die

The warehouse district slept like a graveyard. Only the wind moved: scraping broken glass across concrete, rattling rusted chains that hung from old crane arms, sighing through hollow window frames like it remembered screams. Luca stood with his hands buried in his coat pockets, staring at the skeleton of the old Underhaven warehouse. The sky was heavy with clouds, swollen and dark—like it knew this place carried storms of its own.

Mira stood a few feet behind him, arms crossed tight, as if bracing against something she couldn't name. “You don’t have to do this tonight,” she murmured. Her voice stayed quiet, careful, as though loud words might wake something sleeping.

“I do,” Luca said.

He didn’t look back at her. He couldn’t. His chest felt lined with ash. The charred beams. The smell of burnt wood. The blackened doorway yawning like a mouth. His feet moved on their own, crunching gravel.

The police files had said the fire was electrical. Faulty wiring. Accident.

They’d lied. He could feel it in the marrow.

The Underhaven had been the pack’s sanctuary. Their heartbeat. Their ground. And someone had tried to burn it out of existence — but embers don’t always die. Sometimes they sink beneath the ruins, waiting.

He stepped inside. The air was still, layered with old soot and damp. Each breath tasted like memory and ghost.

He’d danced here. Fought here. Bled here.

He had lived here.

And he had died here too — at least the version of him that remembered anything.

Mira followed in silence, boots crunching shards of blackened timber. She stopped next to him, not touching, just present. That was something. She knew enough not to break the wrong moment.

“What does it feel like?” she asked.

Luca closed his eyes. His pulse slowed. The silence grew dense.

“Like… someone else’s dream,” he whispered. “Like I walked through fire, but my soul stayed behind.”

He didn’t know if he made sense — but Mira nodded like she understood anyway.

He took another step into the ruins. A charred staircase collapsed under his boot heel. He steadied himself, hand catching a scorched support column. Something under the ashes cracked dryly. Paper. Wood. Maybe bone.

Mira knelt and brushed aside soot, revealing a blackened picture frame. The glass had melted into warped ripples; the photo behind was half gone, but the surviving edge showed a laughing mouth—sharp canine teeth showing behind a too-wide grin.

Luca’s lungs froze.

That smile was his.

Before the fire.

Before the forgetting.

Mira didn’t speak. She didn’t have to.

The memory slammed into him without warning.

Music. Heat. Bodies moving, pulsing to bass that rattled the metal beams overhead. The Underhaven wasn’t just a nightclub; it was a den of breath and sweat and heartbeat. The pack danced like wolves ran — in circles, in rhythm, in hunger.

He stood above them on the balcony, watching her move through the crowd below. Silver. That was the color he remembered. Silver dress. Silver laugh. Silver eyes that burned like the moon reflected in still water.

Calla.

His chest tightened. A sharpness tore behind his ribs.

Calla, calling his name.

Calla reaching for him.

Calla with her hands tangled in his, their foreheads touching, breath shared—

Then the memory fractured. Shattered. Something else forced its way in.

Smoke. Screaming. Wood cracking, the groaning shriek of metal beams giving way. Flames devouring everything. The air too thick to breathe. He was coughing, dragging someone—he couldn’t see her face—just the sound of her gasping.

He tried to go back for others. Couldn’t. The heat was too much. His skin blistered. His throat burned. Something slammed into his skull—

Then darkness.

Then nothing.

His hand trembled around the burnt railing.

Mira touched his shoulder, gentle but grounding. “Luca? Hey. Hey—come back.”

He blinked hard. The room steadied.

His voice was rough, raw. “Calla was here. That night.”

Mira went still. “I thought she died years before the fire.”

Luca shook his head slowly. “No. She was here with me. She was the last thing I remember.”

Mira’s jaw tightened with something that looked like pain — but not for herself. For him. She had known Calla too. Knew what she had meant.

Or what Luca thought she had meant.

“We have to consider,” Mira began carefully, “that maybe she wasn’t the victim.”

Luca didn’t answer. Couldn’t.

Because a shadow moved in the corner of the room.

A sound. Like a low, dragging breath.

Both of them turned.

Something shifted behind a fallen doorway, a shape rising slow from the dark like a figure made of smoke and scar tissue.

Luca inhaled, and the scent hit him:

Wet fur.

Blood.

Old rage.

Pack.

His heart slammed against his ribs so hard it hurt. His skin prickled. His bones felt too tight inside him.

Mira’s voice came low, controlled: “Luca… you’re changing.”

He clenched his jaw. The moon didn’t command him tonight — but memory did. Instinct. Recognition. The presence ahead wasn’t enemy.

It was kin.

The shape stepped into what remained of the moonlight filtering through the broken roof.

A man — or what once was one. Broad shoulders. Scar carved from brow to jawline. One eye clouded white. The other burning amber like a dying flame that refused to go out.

“Kai,” Luca breathed.

His brother.

His second.

The Beta of the Underhaven Pack.

The figure’s gaze locked onto his. No hesitation. No uncertainty. Just the crushing weight of everything that had been lost.

“You came back,” Kai rasped.

Not a question.

A wound.

Luca swallowed. “I didn’t know how to find you. I didn’t know anything.”

Kai stepped closer. His boots left prints in ash. “Because someone stole you. Took your name. Your memory. Your pack.”

The clouds shifted. A thin sliver of moonlight poured through the broken ceiling. The light hit Luca’s face — and something deep inside him opened like a door long barred shut.

Kai saw it.

He bowed his head.

And whispered:

“Alpha.”

The word hit Luca like a blow.

His knees nearly buckled.

Mira took in a breath—sharp, surprised, maybe frightened.

Because if Luca was truly Alpha again…

Then the city would feel it.

The underworld would feel it.

The enemy who burned this place would feel it.

Kai’s voice was gravel and grief. “We tried to find you. We searched the rivers. The tunnels. The morgues. We thought you died in the fire. But then—” His jaw tightened. “Word spread. The underworld whispered. A ghost walking. A wolf with no name.”

Luca stepped closer, breath tight. “Who did this?”

Kai’s good eye glowed wild amber. “The Order of the Veil.”

The name rang like cold metal.

Luca didn’t remember it—but his body did. His pulse clenched. His teeth ached.

“They wanted the pack broken,” Kai continued. “So they took the one thing we couldn’t fight without.”

“Our unity,” Luca whispered.

Kai nodded once.

“And Calla?” Luca forced the question out, meaning cutting like a blade.

Kai’s answer was quiet, but merciless:

“She led them.”

The warehouse fell silent.

Even the wind stopped.

Mira moved like she might steady him—but Luca lifted a hand, stopping her.

He didn’t collapse.

He didn’t scream.

He didn’t break.

He just breathed — slow, terrible.

The betrayal was a cold, perfect thing.

A howl forming somewhere deep inside him.

Kai took another step forward. “We’re not alone anymore. The pack isn’t gone. Just scattered. Hunted. Waiting.”

Luca closed his eyes.

When he opened them, amber burned in the dark.

“We find them,” he said.

Kai bowed his head again — but now it wasn’t to an echo of an alpha.

It was to the return of one.

Mira exhaled — not relief, not fear — but something like awe.

The night outside shifted.

The city felt it.

Somewhere far away, a howl rose.

Not mourning.

Calling.

Answering.

The forgotten were waking.