2

2

I forced myself back into bed, but sleep wouldn’t take me the way it used to. Not after that dream. Not after Adam’s voice steady and certain telling me civilians were being torn apart on the borders of Edgewater Falls.

My real name is Alotta, but no one calls me that. Not unless they’re trying to put me back in a place I fought like hell to leave.Everyone calls me Lotty. Even Adam.

I lay there staring at the ceiling, listening to the apartment settle pipes ticking, the refrigerator humming, the soft hiss of winter air against the windowpane. I shut my eyes and tried to count breaths like the therapist taught me years ago. In. Out. In. Out.

The moment my body started to drift, the sound of claws on metal scraped through my skull. Golden eyes. Lisa’s scream cut short. My own voice was raw as I woke up. I snapped my eyes open again.

“Enough,” I whispered.

But my hands still trembled as I pulled the blanket up to my chin and tried one more time, forcing my muscles to go slack, forcing my mind to go quiet.

I must’ve slept, because the alarm went off like a gunshot. I sat up, heart racing, disoriented. The sheets were damp. My throat tasted like fear and old memories.

The letter was still on the counter when I padded into the kitchen. Adam’s official seal stared up at me like a brand. Head of Emergency Medicine. Pack hospital. Edgewater Falls. War. Civilians. Organized attacks. Not acting alone.

I swallowed hard and poured coffee I didn’t want, just to have something hot in my hands.

By the time I got to the hospital, my body was running on autopilot. Scrubs. Badge. Gloves. The familiar scent of antiseptic and stale coffee. Fluorescent lights that made everyone look a little dead. I told myself this was the only world I lived in now.

Then the first ambulance rolled in.

“Twenty-eight-year-old male, blunt trauma, possible internal bleeding.” The gurney flew past me, wheels rattling, the patient’s skin already waxy, lips gone pale.

I stepped in without thinking. “Two large-bore IVs, type and cross, pressure’s dropping.”

Hands moved. Voices answered. A nurse slapped a BP cuff on as I pressed gauze to a wound that kept oozing through, red seeping between my fingers like it wanted out.

Not a bite. Not a claw. But my brain didn’t care. All I saw was blood. All I heard was Adam: They’re targeting civilians now.

The man’s eyes fluttered, unfocused. His mouth worked like he was trying to say something but couldn’t form the words. Panic surged through him anyway, feral and helpless. Like prey. My stomach twisted.

“Lotty?” a voice cut through. “Doctor?”

I blinked hard. “Sorry,” I muttered, shaking the fog off. “Keep pressure. Let’s move.”

We stabilized him, barely. Surgery took him from us like a thief. I watched the doors swing shut and felt something cold settle deeper in my ribs. One down. How many back home?

The next patient was a teenager with a deep laceration down his forearm. “Accident,” he kept insisting, eyes wide and too bright. But the cut had three distinct tracks, parallel like talons had raked him. I stared a second too long.

“What?” he snapped, defensive. “It was a dog.”

I nodded, because that’s what you do. You don’t accuse. You don’t push when shock is still wrapped around someone like a blanket. But my mind catalogued it anyway. Three tracks. Claw-like. Not a dog. Not really.

The morning blurred into a procession of pain: a woman with broken ribs from a “fall” down the stairs; an older man coughing blood, refusing to meet anyone’s eyes; a child with bruises shaped like fingers.

None of it was wolves. But all of it was people hurt by something stronger than them. And it wouldn’t leave me alone.

By noon, the ER felt like a battlefield without the dignity of calling it one. The beeping monitors were a steady drumbeat. The overhead announcements crackled with codes. The air was thick with sweat, iodine, and fear.

A trauma alert came in just as I was charting. The doors burst open and they rolled her through.

Adult female. Pale. Shaking. Wrapped in a blanket someone had thrown over her in the ambulance. Blood soaked through around her collarbone and across her shoulder in a messy, spreading stain.

“Animal attack,” the paramedic reported. “Found near the river trail. Blood loss is moderate. She’s conscious but…”

The woman made a sound half sob, half growl of pain. Her eyes snapped to mine like she recognized something in me she didn’t like.

“No,” she whispered. “No, no, no…”

I moved to her side, voice calm, hands steady. “Ma’am, you’re safe. I’m Dr…” I almost said Alotta. I almost said my real name, like I was back in a world where names mattered. Instead I cleared my throat. “I’m Dr. Lotty. Can you tell me what happened?”

Her pupils were blown wide. She shook her head so hard it seemed like it might snap her neck.

“It wasn’t,” she gulped, pain cutting the words short. “It wasn’t a dog.”

I froze. Not outwardly. Not enough for anyone to notice. My face stayed neutral, professional. Inside, the old fear snapped to attention.

“What did you see?” I asked softly.

She swallowed, throat bobbing. Tears leaked sideways into her hair. “Eyes,” she rasped. “Gold… like, like fire.”

My hands paused over the gauze. My breath caught, silent. Gold eyes. Not a myth. Not a dream. Real.

A nurse leaned in, peering at the wound. “It’s ragged. Looks like tearing.” The woman flinched at the word tearing, as if it slapped her. My skin prickled.

I forced my hands to move again, pressing gauze, assessing. The bite, if it was a bite, was wrong. Too wide. Too deep. There were punctures and then long rips as if something had clamped down and shaken. Not a dog. Something bigger.

I met the woman’s gaze again. “Do you know where you were exactly on the trail?”

She blinked hard, like she was fighting unconsciousness. “Near… the bend. Where the trees,” She sucked in a breath, eyes squeezing shut. “It came out so quiet. It didn’t sound like an animal.”

My throat tightened, and suddenly the ER felt too small. Too bright. Too full of human voices that didn’t understand what was hiding in the dark.

We got her stabilized. Pain meds. Antibiotics. Tetanus. A consult for surgery to repair what it could. Everyone around me moved like it was just another case.

But I couldn’t stop seeing Lisa in the dirt. Couldn’t stop hearing Adam say the attacks were organized. Couldn’t stop thinking: If they’re bold enough to hit civilians on trails… How close are they to home?

By the end of the shift, exhaustion sat on my shoulders like wet cement. My feet ached. My eyes burned. My hands smelled faintly of blood no matter how many times I scrubbed.

I should’ve gone home and collapsed. Instead, I drove with the radio off, silence pressing in from all sides. At a stoplight, my gaze drifted to my phone in the cupholder. Adam’s number sat in my recent calls like a bruise.

I told myself I was being irrational. I live in the human world now. Their war wasn’t mine. Their politics, their territory lines, their pack rules none of it had been my choice. Then the woman’s voice replayed in my head. Gold… like fire.

The light turned green. I didn’t move right away. Horns blared behind me and I jolted forward, heart pounding.

By the time I got back to my apartment, the sun was already dipping low, painting the windows orange. I kicked my shoes off, tossed my bag on the couch, and stood in the kitchen staring at the letter like it might change if I looked hard enough.

Head of Emergency Medicine. It wasn’t just a job. It was a leash. Or a lifeline. Or both. I poured a glass of water and didn’t drink it. My hands shook slightly as I set it down.

“No promises,” I whispered to the empty room. “No pack vows. No staying.” But the words felt thin.

Because something in me, something I’d spent years burying under long shifts and city noise and fluorescent lights had already started turning toward the howl of home.

I grabbed my phone and opened my calendar. My schedule was packed with double shifts, back-to-back coverage, the kind of workload that kept you too busy to think.

I stared at it until my vision blurred. Then I started cancelling. Not everything. Not dramatically. Just enough. Two weeks. A block of time I could justify as burnout, as needing to reset. Enough time to “visit family,” if anyone asked. Enough time to investigate. Enough time to see with my own eyes what was happening in Edgewater Falls. My thumb hovered over the screen when the request popped up: Reason for leave. I typed: Family emergency. It wasn’t a lie. I hit submit.

A strange calm spread through me, the kind that comes when a decision is made even if you don’t want to admit it’s a decision.

I picked up the letter again, rereading the lines, seeing the crisp authority behind them. Adam didn’t beg. He didn’t apologize. He didn’t soften it with brotherly affection.

He offered a job like an Alpha throwing a rope to someone sinking. And he expected me to grab it.

I exhaled slowly and scrolled to his number. The clock read 7:18 p.m. Not 4:30 a.m. anymore. Not a half-awake impulse call. This would be real. I hit dial.

He answered on the first ring, like he’d been waiting. “Lotty.”

I closed my eyes, gripping the phone tight. “I’m taking time off.”

A pause. Controlled, measured. Then, “You’re coming.”

“I didn’t say that,” I snapped, reflex sharp. “I said I’m taking time off. I’m coming to look. To understand what’s happening.”

His breathing was steady on the other end. “Good,” he said simply.

I frowned. “Good?”

“You need to see it,” Adam replied. “Not what they told you. Not what you remember. What it is now.”

Something in his tone made my stomach turn. “What aren’t you saying?”

A beat. Then, quieter, with the weight of a man who carried a pack on his shoulders. “Dark Mountain isn’t just pushing borders anymore,” he said. “They’re hunting. And they’re getting bolder.”

My grip tightened until my knuckles ached. “I’m not promising to stay,” I said, voice rough. “I’m not promising to take your job. I’m not promising anything.”

“I know,” he said. “Just get here.”

I swallowed hard. “And Adam?”

“Yes?”

My voice dropped to something sharper. “If I come home and I find out you kept things from me, about Lisa, about why I was sent away, about any of it…”

His voice cut in, low and absolute. “I won’t lie to you.”

I didn’t fully believe him. But I wanted to. My gaze slid to the window, to the darkening sky, to the first pale hint of the moon rising. Home was calling. And this time, I wasn’t sure I could ignore it.

“I’ll be there,” I said finally. “To investigate.”

Adam exhaled on the other end, a sound so subtle it almost felt like relief. “I’ll send someone to meet you at the edge of town,” he said.

I stiffened. “I can get there myself.”

“You can,” he agreed. “But you won’t. Not with Dark Mountain sniffing around.” The Alpha in him showed again, steel wrapped in calm. I hated how familiar it felt.

“Fine,” I bit out. “Send whoever you want.”

“Lotty,” he said, softer now. “Be careful.”

I ended the call before he could say anything else. Then I turned back to my kitchen, to the letter, to the life I’d built far away from wolves and war. And started packing anyway.