Shadows From The Past

~MONA'S POV~

I didn’t run because I was being chased.

I ran because my heart had cracked open and if I didn’t let the pain out, it was going to kill me from the inside.

Branches tore at my arms as I shoved past them, blind to everything except the fire blazing in my chest. My lungs burned. My feet—bare and already bleeding—pounded against the wet ground, but I didn’t stop.

“Damn you, Liam.” I choked, my voice ragged with tears. “You liar. You bastard.”

The forest swallowed my cries, uncaring. The night was thick around me, the kind that presses on your skin and whispers in your ears. I didn’t care. Let it swallow me. Let the whole world collapse for all I cared. At least it wouldn’t hurt like this.

I had trusted him. Loved him. Shared my deepest wounds with him. And what did he do? I saw him with her. Their clothes scattered across his dorm floor like discarded truths. Her hands on his skin. His mouth on hers.

Betrayal tasted like blood.

And I was choking on it.

I didn’t know how far I’d run. I didn’t care. I stumbled deeper into the woods, trying to outrun my own agony.

Then I felt it.

The air changed.

The wind stopped. The woods fell silent. No rustling leaves. No chirping crickets. Just... nothing.

Then I saw him.

He leaned against a tree, barely upright. His clothes were a pool of blood soaked to the brim. I meant it was little, his shirt was dark and wet, clinging to his pale, almost translucent skin. Blood pooled beneath him, black in the moonlight. The scent, metalish hit me like a wave.

I froze.

What the hell...?

But something pushed me forward. Stupid curiosity. It has always been my weakness.

I crept closer. “Hey...” My voice was barely audible. “Are you... okay?”

He didn’t shake nor move.

I took a step further, my heart banging like a war drum in my chest. My hands trembled. “I—I can call someone. I just—”

His eyes snapped open.

Red.

Not bloodshot. Not tired.

Glowing red.

My heart stopped.

I didn’t even have time to scream.

He lunged.

One second I was standing, and the next I was pinned against the tree, my back slamming into bark so hard I saw stars. His hand was on my throat—cold as death.

I couldn’t breathe. I couldn’t think. Just those eyes—burning into me like twin fires.

“You shouldn’t have come closer,” he said. His voice was low, rasping like wind through graveyard stones.

“What—what are you?” I gasped, struggling against his grip.

He didn’t answer.

He leaned in, his face inches from mine.

I felt his lips brush against my neck.

Then the pain came.

White-hot. Unbearable.

His fangs sank into my flesh and it felt like fire laced with lightning ripped through my body. I screamed—or I tried to—but the world was already spinning, tilting into blackness.

And then... nothing.

FOUR MONTHS EARLIER

I’ve never had a life worth envying. I wasn’t the girl with designer bags or vacations or even a stable roof over my head.

I was the girl with strange memories like I have lived before. My father is another nightmare of mine.

He had big dreams—brilliant ideas, he called them. Said he’d build a tech empire that would put us on the map. He borrowed money from men he shouldn’t have. Dangerous men. Men who didn’t take failure kindly.

His business collapsed. And so did he.

He disappeared, leaving Mom and me to face the fallout.

And the loan sharks? They came. Oh, they came.

“Your father’s debt is now your burden,” one of them sneered, pinning me against the alley wall behind the diner I worked at. “He owes us interest. Painful interest.”

I remember the smell of his breath—cigarettes and rot. I remember the bruises on my arm from where he grabbed me.

I remember Mom crying when she saw them.

“I’ll take on another job,” I told her, wrapping an ice pack around my wrist. “We can make it work.”

I was already working two jobs, in which one was waitressing during the day and the other cleaning offices at night. I barely slept. I was always tired, always behind.

Still, the threats kept coming.

One day Mom snapped.

“We’re leaving,” she said, tossing things into a backpack. Her hands shook. “I sold your grandmother’s jewelry. We’re getting out before they kill us.”

We left for Oak Haven, a place that lived only on the edges of rumor and fading maps. A place where we knew no one—where no one knew us. The bus hummed along the cracked road, a low, grating lullaby that did nothing to still the storm in my chest. I stared out the window, watching trees blur into each other, their branches clawing toward the skies like they were begging, for something they did never reach.

Mom sat beside me, silent, her hands held on tighter to her lap. She hadn’t said much since we boarded. But I understood. We were starting over… again. And yet, this time felt different. Heavier. More final.

I pressed my forehead to the cold glass. I didn’t really know what life had in store for me. Everything familiar had been stripped away—friends, school, the house with the squeaky porch swing. Gone. Still, despite the fear curling like smoke in my gut, there was something about Oak Haven that called to me. Like a whisper in a language I should’ve forgotten but never did. A pull in my blood, ancient and deep.

Was it madness to feel that?

I closed my eyes, seeking a moment of peace. Just a moment. The soft rumble of the wheels beneath us, the muted conversations of strangers—it all faded, like the world exhaled and went still.

Then it came.

A flash behind my lids. Suddenly. Bright.

An image—so vivid it couldn’t have been a dream. A blade. Long, sharp, glittering like silver caught in moonlight. It spun through the air, straight toward me. I gasped, trying to move, trying to scream—but no sound came. I lifted my arm to shield myself and that’s when I saw it. My skin... no longer smooth and human. Thick gray fur covered my arm, coarse and wild. My fingers were claws—curved and dangerous. And behind me... a tail. I had a tail.

“What the hell—?”

The knife was still coming.

I positioned myself for the pain, for the cold and sharp metal to pierce through bone and flesh.

But it never came.

Instead, just as the blade reached my chest, my eyes flung open.

I immediately sprang upright in my seat, breath uneven. My heart pounded like a war drum, sweat slicking my palms. The bus was still moving. Nothing had changed. And yet… everything had.

I looked down at my arms. Human again. No fur. No claws.

But the image—no, the vision—lingered.

I wasn’t dreaming. I *know* I wasn’t dreaming.

I rubbed my face, trying to will the fear away. It clung like a second skin.

Across the aisle, a man in a dark coat glanced at me. His eyes—too pale, too sharp. Like he’d seen what I saw. Like he *knew*.

I swallowed hard and turned back to the window.

We were getting closer.

And deep in my bones, I felt it stir.

Something ancient.

Something waking.

Oak Haven wasn’t just a place.

It was the beginning.

Or an end.

And I didn’t know which terrified me more.