Table of ContentsEpisode 1 · 6 episodes availableIn this Season · The Ravenscroft ChroniclesReading order
About this story
They buried her alive two hundred years ago. Now she's back—and she's something even vampires should fear.
Nora Cross went onto a battlefield searching for her missing brother. Instead, she found three monsters who tortured her, turned her into a vampire, and sealed her inside a tomb.
She should have died there.
Two centuries later, Nora awakens in the custody of a man named Mercer, who promises her safety while secretly transforming her into something the supernatural world has never seen—a vampire-werewolf hybrid.
When High Lord Kael Ravenscroft raids Mercer's compound, Nora escapes, leaving behind the one thing that could reveal her identity.
But their paths are destined to cross again.
Captured by Mercer, Kael becomes the next subject of his twisted experiments. And when the powerful vampire lord finds himself imprisoned alongside the beautiful, dangerous woman he once tried to rescue, an unexpected attraction ignites.
Mercer wants to create an army of immortal, fiercely loyal soldiers.
What he doesn't realize is that he's bringing together two creatures who could destroy him.
And Nora hasn't forgotten the monsters who buried her.
Voice, speed & continuous listeningUses the voices already available on your device. Narration starts only when you press Play or enable continuous listening.View story content warnings
These warnings apply to the story as a whole.
Violence and blood
Torture (non-graphic)
Forced supernatural transformation
Captivity and imprisonment
Psychological abuse and manipulation
Trauma and PTSD
Death and murder
Revenge and vengeance
View story author note
Night of the Wolf is Book Two of The Ravenscroft Chronicles. While this story can be enjoyed as a standalone, I recommend reading Blood Ties first. You'll get to know several of the returning characters, understand their relationships, and discover the events that lead into Nora and Kael's story.
Happy reading!
From the story world
Two Hundred Years Ago
The first body I found was missing a boot.
I noticed that before anything else, which seemed like a strange thing to notice about a dead man. He lay facedown in the mud, one leg stretched out behind him and the other bent beneath his body. His remaining boot was polished black leather, the kind Damien used to complain took forever to clean.
For one horrible moment, I thought it was him.
I hurried forward, nearly losing my footing, and crouched beside the soldier. My hands shook as I reached for his shoulder.
"Please don't be Damien," I whispered.
I rolled him over just enough to see his face.
He was a stranger.
Relief hit me so hard I nearly cried, followed immediately by shame. This man had a family somewhere. Perhaps a wife waiting for him, or a mother who had begged him not to enlist. Someone would be devastated when he didn't come home.
"I'm sorry," I whispered, gently lowering him back to the ground before continuing my search.
The battlefield stretched across the valley beneath a smoke-darkened sky. Although the fighting had stopped hours ago, broken wagons, abandoned weapons, and shattered equipment littered the muddy ground. Small fires still burned among the wreckage, casting an orange glow over the fallen.
The smell was almost unbearable. Smoke, gunpowder, wet earth, and something else I didn't want to identify.
I'd tied a handkerchief over my nose and mouth before leaving the village, but it did little to help. Every breath brought another wave of nausea.
I wished I'd thought to bring a lantern.
The moon provided just enough light to make out shapes scattered across the field. Unfortunately, most of those shapes were men who would never stand again.
Some weren't dead yet.
A wounded soldier cried out somewhere to my left, begging for water. Another called for his mother in a voice so weak I could barely hear him.
I stopped, torn between helping them and continuing my search. Damien would have helped. That was the sort of man my brother was, even when it meant getting himself into trouble.
I turned toward the nearest voice.
The soldier lay against a broken wagon wheel, clutching his stomach. His uniform was filthy, his face pale beneath a coating of mud.
"Water," he rasped when he saw me.
I knelt beside him and pulled the small flask from my bag.
"Here. Slowly."
He drank only a little before turning his face away. I used a piece of clean cloth to wipe the dirt from his forehead, wishing I knew something about medicine.
"Can you stand?" I asked.
He shook his head.
"Is there someone nearby who can help you?"
"Surgeons," he whispered. "They were taking men... toward the road."
I'd seen several wagons leaving earlier, but I hadn't realized they were carrying the wounded.
"I'll find someone."
His hand closed around my wrist.
"Don't go farther."
I looked down at him. "Why?"
His eyes moved past my shoulder toward the darkness.
"Something out there."
A chill worked its way down my spine. "What do you mean?"
"Men screaming. After the fighting stopped."
"There are wounded men everywhere."
He shook his head, his fingers tightening around my wrist. "Not like that."
Before I could ask another question, his grip loosened.
"Please," he whispered. "Don't leave me."
I stayed beside him for a few moments, torn between his plea and my desperate need to find Damien. Finally, I promised to send help.
He didn't look convinced, and I couldn't blame him.
Neither was I.
* * *
I'd never considered myself particularly brave. Stubborn, certainly. Damien liked to say I could argue with a brick wall until the wall apologized.
But walking across a battlefield in the middle of the night didn't feel particularly brave. It felt foolish, and I was beginning to wonder if Damien had been right about my stubbornness.
I'd never understood how men could decide their disagreements were worth so many lives. War had always seemed senseless to me, but standing among the dead and dying, this one seemed especially cruel. So many families would be waiting for men who were never coming home.
And I might be one of them.
I'd been warned not to come. The soldiers at the edge of the village had told me the battlefield wasn't safe, even though the fighting was over. There could be enemy patrols, wounded men who mistook strangers for threats, or thieves searching the dead.
One older officer had gone so far as to threaten to have me escorted home.
I'd thanked him for his concern, waited until he was occupied, and slipped away.
Damien would have been furious.
I could practically hear him now.
Nora, for once in your life, would you please listen to someone who knows what he's talking about?
"I'll listen when you come home and tell me yourself," I muttered.
My brother had always been protective of me, although I was twenty-five years old and perfectly capable of taking care of myself.
At least, I'd believed that until tonight.
Damien was five years older, and we'd been close for as long as I could remember. When we were children, he'd taught me to climb trees, skip stones across the river, and sneak biscuits from the kitchen without getting caught.
He'd also taken the blame when I broke Mother's favorite vase, something she hadn't discovered until years later.
He'd never let me forget it.
I couldn't imagine a world without him.
That morning, an officer had come to the house with a list of casualties. Damien's name hadn't been among the dead or wounded.
He was missing.
The officer had explained that the lists were incomplete and some men had become separated from their units. He assured me there was still hope, but I'd seen the pity in his eyes.
I hated that look.
So I'd packed a small bag with water, bread, clean cloth, and the little money I possessed, then set out to find my brother.
If Damien was wounded somewhere, I intended to bring him home.
And if he was dead...
I couldn't finish that thought.
Instead, I continued walking.
* * *
The moon finally broke through the clouds, revealing more of the battlefield.
I wished it hadn't.
Bodies lay everywhere, some alone and others piled together where the fighting had been especially fierce. Horses lay among the fallen, their saddles and harnesses twisted beneath them.
I tried not to look too closely, but every dark-haired soldier made my heart jump. Every familiar uniform sent me hurrying forward, only to discover another stranger.
After nearly an hour, my feet ached, my skirts were soaked with mud, and my hands had gone numb from the cold.
I stopped beside a broken artillery wagon and took a drink of water.
"Damien!" I called.
My voice carried across the field.
No answer.
"Damien Cross!"
Somewhere in the darkness, a man groaned.
I hurried toward the sound, calling my brother's name again, but the groaning stopped before I reached him.
"Hello?"
Silence.
Then I heard something that made me freeze.
Laughter.
Men's laughter, low and amused, coming from beyond a cluster of overturned wagons.
For the first time that evening, I felt something worse than fear for Damien.
I was afraid for myself.
I should have turned around, but if there were men alive and moving about, perhaps they'd seen my brother. Perhaps they knew where the wounded had been taken.
I gathered my courage and approached.
"Excuse me?"
The laughter stopped.
I stepped around the nearest wagon.
Three men stood among the bodies.
They weren't dressed like soldiers. One wore an expensive dark coat, another a loose white shirt beneath a waistcoat, and the third had removed his jacket entirely.
For a moment, I thought they were thieves searching the dead.
Then the man in the white shirt straightened.
Something dark glistened around his mouth. He wiped it away with the back of his hand, then smiled when he noticed me, revealing teeth that looked unusually sharp.
At his feet lay a wounded soldier, his chest rising and falling in shallow, uneven breaths.
"Still alive," the man remarked, glancing down at him.
"Not for much longer," said the man in the expensive coat.
The third man watched without comment.
The man in white crouched beside the soldier and lowered his head toward his neck. At first, I thought he was listening for the man's breathing.
Then the soldier cried out.
The stranger raised his head, and I saw fresh blood on his lips.
He'd been drinking the man's blood.
I stumbled backward, unable to look away. No ordinary man would do such a thing. And those teeth...
The stranger turned toward me again, exposing two long, pointed fangs.
Dear God.
Demons.
I'd heard stories about evil creatures that walked among men, wicked things that preyed on the living. I'd always believed they were tales meant to frighten children into behaving themselves.
Now one of those creatures stood only a few feet away, watching me.
The man in the expensive coat turned.
"Well, now. What have we here?"
"I'm sorry," I stammered. "I didn't mean to interrupt."
The words sounded ridiculous even as I said them.
The man in white rose slowly to his feet. His eyes were strangely bright, almost luminous in the moonlight.
"A woman?" he said, sounding delighted. "Out here?"
"Apparently," the third man replied.
Their amusement frightened me more than anger would have.
I wanted to run, but my legs seemed unwilling to cooperate.
"I'm looking for someone," I managed. "My brother. I thought perhaps you'd seen him."
"Your brother?" the man in the expensive coat repeated.
I nodded. "His name is Damien Cross. He's a soldier. Dark hair, amber eyes, about six feet three inches tall."
The man in white exchanged a glance with his companions.
"Cross," he repeated thoughtfully.
My heart leaped.
"Do you know him?"
"Perhaps."
"Please. If you've seen him, I need to know."
The man in the dark coat approached. He was handsome in a severe sort of way, with pale skin and carefully arranged dark hair. He carried himself like someone accustomed to being obeyed.
"You're a long way from safety, Miss Cross."
"I know."
"Does your family know you're here?"
"My brother is my family."
"How touching."
His expression remained indifferent.
"Please, sir. Have you seen him?"
He glanced toward his companions. "Have we seen a dark-haired soldier named Cross?"
"Possibly," the man in white replied.
My gaze dropped to his hands.
He was turning something around one finger, a gold ring that caught the moonlight.
I stared.
It was a heavy signet ring, with a small ruby set above the Cross family crest—a wolf beneath a crown.
I'd seen that ring thousands of times. Our father had worn it before his death, and Damien had inherited it when he came of age.
And now it was on a stranger's finger.
"Where did you get that?"
The man looked down. "This?"
"That's my brother's ring."
"Is it?"
"Yes! Where did you get it?"
The three men exchanged another look.
"Found it," he said.
"Where?"
"On a soldier."
My chest tightened. "Was he alive?"
He tilted his head. "When?"
"When you took it!"
"Such a spirited little thing."
"Answer me!"
His expression changed. I swallowed, suddenly aware that I was demanding answers from a creature I'd just watched drinking a dying man's blood.
"I would be careful with that tone," he warned.
"Please. I only want to know what happened to him."
The man in the expensive coat glanced at his companion.
"Well? Was her brother alive when you took the ring?"
The man in white pretended to consider the question.
"There were so many soldiers. It's difficult to remember."
"Please," I whispered.
"Perhaps he was already dead," the man continued. "Or perhaps he was still breathing."
The third man chuckled.
I looked from one to the other, realizing they were enjoying this.
"You know what happened to him," I said.
"Possibly." The man wearing the ring studied my face. "But where's the fun in telling you?"
I looked at the ring again.
Damien would never have surrendered it willingly. I'd once teased him that he'd probably insist on being buried with it.
The memory made my eyes sting.
"Give it to me," I whispered.
The man wearing it raised an eyebrow. "Excuse me?"
"The ring. It belongs to my family."
He studied me for a moment, then slowly removed it.
Hope flared in my chest.
Perhaps he was going to give it back.
Instead, he held it between two fingers.
"Come and take it."
His companions watched me with the same expression I'd seen on cats playing with mice.
They had no intention of helping me.
"I don't want any trouble," I said.
"Then you shouldn't have come here," the man in the dark coat replied.
I turned and ran.
* * *
I didn't get far.
One moment I was stumbling through the mud, desperately trying to put distance between myself and those horrible creatures. The next, someone was standing directly in front of me.
I screamed and tried to stop, but my feet slid out from under me.
Strong hands caught my arms.
"Careful," the man in white said. "You'll hurt yourself."
I struggled against him.
"Let go!"
He tightened his grip.
"Now, now."
I kicked him as hard as I could.
He looked down at his leg, then back at me.
"That wasn't very polite."
"Neither is grabbing a woman!"
For some reason, that amused him.
I twisted, trying to wrench myself free, but his grip was impossibly strong. It was like fighting against iron.
"Help!" I screamed. "Someone help me!"
The man in the expensive coat appeared beside us.
"Scream all you like," he said. "No one's coming."
I fought harder, but the man holding me barely moved.
"Please," I begged. "I haven't done anything to you."
"No," the dark-haired man agreed. "You haven't."
He reached out and brushed a loose strand of hair away from my face.
I jerked backward.
"But you have seen something you shouldn't have."
My mind raced. Even if I escaped, who would believe what I'd witnessed?
"I won't say anything," I promised. "I swear it."
"Of course you won't."
The man wearing Damien's ring approached and looked me over slowly.
"She's rather pretty."
"She is," the other agreed.
My stomach tightened.
"Please let me go."
The man with the ring lifted my chin, but I pulled away.
"Still feisty," he remarked.
"Perhaps we should keep her," said the one holding my arms.
"No!" I began struggling again. "Please! I have money. It's in my bag. You can have everything!"
The man wearing Damien's ring glanced toward my bag.
"Do we look as though we need your money?"
I stared at the ring.
It was the only proof I had that Damien had been somewhere on this battlefield. And perhaps the only thing left of him.
Tears spilled down my cheeks.
"Where is my brother?" My voice broke. "Please. Just tell me what happened to him."
The man looked almost bored.
"Does it matter?"
"Of course it matters!"
"Then perhaps you should have stayed home and waited for news."
Something inside me snapped.
I spat in his face.
For one glorious second, nobody moved.
Then his smile vanished.
He slowly wiped his cheek with the back of his hand, and the man holding me stopped laughing.
I knew I'd made a terrible mistake.
But I couldn't bring myself to apologize.
The stranger stepped closer.
"You're going to regret that."
He reached for me.
I screamed.
His hand closed around my throat, cutting off the sound. I clawed at his fingers, but he only tightened his grip.
His eyes glowed with an unnatural light, and when his lips pulled back, I caught another glimpse of those terrible fangs.
My grandmother used to warn us about demons and evil spirits, although Damien had always laughed at such stories.
I wished he were here now.
The man leaned closer.
"Let's see how long that courage lasts."
I tried to scream again, but no sound came out.
The edges of my vision darkened.
My last clear thought was of Damien. Of the brother who'd always protected me, who'd carried me home when I broke my ankle as a little girl, and who'd promised before leaving that he'd come back.
I'm sorry, Damien.
I'd gone looking for him because I couldn't bear the thought of leaving him alone among the dead.
Now, as the darkness swallowed me, I realized there would be no one coming to look for me.
And somewhere in that terrible moment, I heard one of the men laugh.
"Well," he said, "this should be entertaining."
End of Episode 1
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