Most people think monsters hide in the dark.
They're wrong.
The real ones smile at you in grocery stores, hold doors open, and pretend they're human.
I know because one of them had been watching me for weeks.
My name is Rowan Ashford, and until yesterday, I thought I was losing my mind.
It started with whispers.
Not voices exactly—more like someone speaking underwater, just beyond the edge of hearing. Every night at exactly midnight, I'd wake to the same impossible sound, followed by the feeling that someone was standing outside my bedroom window.
Whenever I looked...
Nothing.
Just the old oak tree swaying beneath the moonlight.
At first, I blamed stress.
College wasn't exactly forgiving. My rent was overdue, my fridge held half a bottle of water and takeout sauce packets, and working double shifts at Hollow Grounds Coffee barely paid enough to keep the lights on.
Still...
Normal people didn't wake up with muddy footprints leading from their bedroom window to the middle of the forest.
I stood on my apartment balcony that morning, staring down at the trail in the damp earth below.
The mud still glistened from last night's rain, dark and slick under the pale morning light. Each footprint was sharply defined, pressed deep into the ground as if whoever made them had stood there for a long time before walking away.
Not running.
Not sneaking.
Walking.
Like they wanted me to follow.
A faint chill clung to the air, carrying the scent of wet soil, crushed leaves, and the distant rustle of branches shifting in the wind.
"What the hell..."
The footprints disappeared into Blackwood Forest, the one place every local avoided after sunset.
They said people disappeared there.
They said strange lights floated through the trees.
They said if someone called your name after dark...
...you should never answer.
I used to laugh at those stories growing up.
Now they didn't seem very funny.
Especially because, for the past three weeks, I had been dreaming about the forest.
And him.
I never saw his full face in the dreams.
Only pieces.
A black coat moving through silver mist.
Long pale hair catching moonlight.
A hand reaching for mine.
A voice whispering my name like he had known it before I did.
Sometimes I woke up with tears on my face.
Sometimes I woke up whispering a name I didn't understand.
Lucien.
I'd never met anyone named Lucien.
At least, that's what I kept telling myself.
Then again, everyone in Riverside knew the rumors about the old Vale estate at the edge of Blackwood Forest.
YOU ARE READING
Moonbound Hearts
Romance🌙 Moonbound Hearts 🌙 By Quincy V. "Some destinies are written in blood. Others are written beneath the moon." Rowan Ashford has spent his entire life believing the strange whispers in the dark were nothing more than nightmares. Until they start wh...
