Was a Sleepless Night taking a Toll

The night stretched on like a taut string, every sound magnified. The hum of the overhead lights pressed against my eardrums, insistent and sharp, while the ticking of the old clock marked each passing second like a countdown I could feel in my bones. Even the restless shuffle of the wolf’s paws against the blankets seemed deafening in the silence, each movement precise, deliberate, yet charged with an animal unease that made my stomach tighten.

I tried to lose myself in paperwork, fingers moving almost mechanically over charts and scribbled notes. Dosages, recovery rates, herbal mixtures, sutures. I told myself that if I focused on the mundane, the impossible that had intruded into my life could be ignored. But my attention drifted to him constantly. That wolf. The one who shouldn’t be speaking, shouldn’t be here in my little clinic, shouldn’t have eyes that seemed to pierce through the dim light and see something in me I hadn’t even admitted existed.

The memory of those crimson eyes burned in my mind like a fire I couldn’t douse, searing in their intensity. I shivered despite the warmth of the small heater humming at my feet. I pressed my palms to my cheeks, trying to shake away the images, trying to rationalize.

“Why am I so obsessed with a wolf?” I murmured, more to myself than anyone else, and the very same moment, Chicken Nugget shifted beside me, ears pricking. The little dog’s hackles lifted, his short fur standing on end for just a heartbeat. He gave a single, sharp bark in the wolf’s direction, almost as though confirming my thoughts.

I glanced up, my chest tightening, and my breath caught in my throat. The wolf was stirring again, muscles coiling beneath the dark fur like a spring ready to snap. His movements were more violent this time, a twitch of limbs, a flick of his tail, subtle shifts that made the blankets rustle ominously. A low growl rolled from his chest, guttural and strange. It wasn’t a normal sound. Not entirely. Not just a growl. It carried an unfamiliar cadence, an edge of awareness I couldn’t place.

“Shh,” I murmured softly, already on my feet and moving closer. The instinct to comfort overrode the caution screaming in my mind. Chicken Nugget stayed by my desk, alert, ears swiveling. “You’re safe,” I said, my voice gentle, coaxing, as if speaking to a child. My hands hovered over his sleek, dark fur, trembling slightly despite my attempts at composure.

But as I leaned over, the sound sharpened. It wasn’t just a growl anymore—there was something there. Something deliberate. Something like… words. My heart froze, thudding so hard against my ribcage that I thought he could hear it.

It wasn’t clear at first. The syllables were broken, harsh, guttural almost beyond comprehension. But I could swear I heard him say, “No… stop…”

My eyes widened. I recoiled instinctively, stepping back as if the very act could dissolve the impossible reality before me. Rationality scrambled to catch up.

I am just hearing things. Sleep deprivation. Stress. Long hours, too many nights alone with humans too fragile and wolves too unpredictable. That’s all it is.

I tried to convince myself, even as my pulse hammered against my temples. But the sound echoed inside me too clearly, too precisely, for me to ignore.

Swallowing a tremor of fear, I knelt again beside him, brushing my fingers lightly over his fur. It was warm under my palms, soft in ways that contradicted the lethal power in his stance. “Can you… understand me?” I whispered, voice shaking.

For a heartbeat, it seemed nothing happened. The twitching stopped. The growl faded into the quiet rustle of blankets. I dared to hope it had been coincidence.

Then his ears tilted back, his head turned deliberately toward my voice, and I realized with a jolt that the timing was too perfect, the motion too intentional.

I gasped, the sound sharp in the small room. “No. No, no, no. This is not happening.” My mind raced. My hands tightened on the blankets. The rational part of me—everything I had built as a healer, as a human trained to trust in what I could see and measure—screamed to flee. To call this madness something explainable: auditory hallucination, exhaustion, too many nights alone with dangerous creatures.

I looked around frantically for my trusted companion, Chicken Nugget, as if the small dog’s presence could anchor me back in reality.

He gave me a look that seemed far too knowing, intelligent even, and his tail wagged once, slow and steady, like he was acknowledging something unspoken between us. I swallowed hard. He can’t know. He’s a dog. Dogs don’t know words… not like that.

I really have lost it. The all-nighter, the relentless patients, the constant adrenaline of tending to wolves and humans alike… it’s doing this to me. That has to be it. There’s no other explanation.

Shaking uncontrollably, I retreated to my desk, pressing my forehead against the cold surface and trying to ground myself in the familiar tasks of scribbling notes about dosages and wound recovery. I repeated it like a mantra: I will not go over there again until morning. I will not encourage this.

And yet… every few minutes, that low, strange rumble echoed again. Low, slurred, deliberate. Each time it rang, my chest tightened, my stomach knotted, and my rational mind balked at the impossible.

Finally, exhaustion claimed me. My body sagged against the desk, and I drifted into a half-sleep that was neither fully conscious nor fully unconscious. In the darkness behind my eyelids, I dreamed.

I dreamed of crimson eyes. Eyes that burned hotter than any fire I had ever seen. A body radiating heat, impossibly close, impossibly dangerous. A presence pressing into me like a tide, a voice whispering my name in tones I didn’t recognize but somehow knew. The sound of it—raw, urgent, intimate—echoed in my dreams, filling me with both fear and longing I didn’t want to acknowledge.

When I awoke, the first tendrils of dawn were bleeding gray light through the windows. The wolf lay silent, chest rising and falling with even, slow breaths. He looked… at peace.

But the memory lingered, chilling me even as it thrilled me in equal measure. The impossible had happened. My senses, my mind, my very life had borne witness.

I hadn’t imagined it.

He had spoken.