Mated to a Shadowborne

Chapter 1

Hi! 
Thank you for giving my book a try! 
I hope you like it! 
-Ashley 

GRAYSON

Grayson didn't move, not even to breathe.

The air stilled in his throat at the sound of voices drifting through the trees.

He crouched beneath the sprawling roots of an old oak, dirt cold against his skin, shoulders pressed to bark as rough as stone. The canopy above swallowed most of the moonlight, leaving the forest in layered shadow, the kind that blurred edges and made depth hard to judge.

Two men were walking the trail ahead.

"—I'm telling you, if I have to sit through one more of Maggie's true crime documentaries, I'm confiscating the remote," one of them was saying, his tone edged with mock suffering. "I already know who did it. It's always the husband."

A quiet chuckle followed, low and familiar, accompanied by the steady crunch of boots through frost-hardened leaves.

"You're just bitter because you fall asleep halfway through and she finishes it without you."

"I work night rotation. That's not falling asleep — that's strategic resting."

"Sure it is."

Their laughter blended easily with the wind slipping through the trees, the sound relaxed and domestic in a way that felt almost absurd against the tension coiling in Grayson's muscles.

He did not move.

The shadows had already begun to gather around him, responding to his stillness the way water conforms to the shape of a stone. They pooled first at his feet, thickening in the hollows between root and earth, then slid upward along his calves and ribs in slow, deliberate strokes, like cool fingers mapping familiar territory. When his pulse slowed, they slowed. When his breath shallowed, they tightened, sealing him into the dark as if the forest itself had decided to claim him.

Like living ink, the shadows shifted, blended. And then, as if the night had swallowed him whole—

He was gone.

Not physically. Not literally. But the moment his foot touched the dark, it obeyed. Wrapped around him. Masked him from sight.

The patrolmen's voices lowered as they neared the bend in the trail.

"You read the last patrol report?" one of them asked, the easy humor thinning into something more attentive.

"Yeah. Border sighting, right?"

"A black wolf. South line."

The rhythm of their boots slowed slightly, and Grayson felt the change like a pressure shift in the air.

"Could've been a student pushing curfew," the second man offered, though without conviction.

"Not that far out. That stretch runs too close to the outer woods."

A pause settled between them, filled with the brittle whisper of wind through dead leaves.

"So, Shadowborne?" the second man spat quietly.

Grayson felt the shadows react before he did, tightening instinctively along his spine.

"Could be, but they've got their pretty little sigils now."

"With the rogue mess picking up again, I'm not ignoring it. I'll tell Rob to log the sighting."

"Yeah. Do that. Last thing we need is someone asking why we didn't."

Their conversation resumed its slow forward motion, boots grinding against gravel and leaf litter as they continued along the patrol path, but the casual ease from before had not entirely returned.