Chapter 6

_Emma's POV_

I woke up slowly. For a moment, I did not remember where I was. The room was too quiet and too still.

Then everything rushed back at once. The broken window. The Hunters. Ryker. The wolves.

Everything hit me at once and my chest tightened. I sat up in bed quickly. My hand was already searching for the knife on the bedside table. It was still there. I did not even remember placing it down last night but I grabbed it anyway. Holding it made me feel slightly safer, even if I knew it was useless here.

The room I was in was large and unfamiliar. There were wooden walls and soft light coming through a narrow window. Everything looked too clean for what I had seen yesterday.

But I did not feel clean. My body still remembered the battle; the fear and blood. I pressed my fingers against my temple.

“Get it together,” I whispered to myself.

I got out of bed slowly. My legs felt weak as I walked toward the door. The moment I opened it, the smell of the place hit me; wood, metal, smoke and something wilder underneath that I could not name. It made my stomach twist.

From downstairs, I could hear voices. There was laughter and movement. Life was going on as if nothing had changed. It felt wrong. After everything I had seen, they were acting like last night had never happened.

I walked down the hallway carefully. I tightened my grip on the knife in my hand. Every step felt louder than it should have. When I reached the main hall, I stopped.

A long wooden table stretched across the room. People were eating, talking and drinking coffee. Like they were not the ones who had turned into monsters last night. My eyes moved across the room until I found him.

Ryker sat at the head of the table. He was calm and composed, like nothing in the world could reach him. But the moment I stepped inside, his gaze lifted and locked onto me as if he had already been waiting. I hated how easily he noticed me.

A few heads turned. The talking slowed down and the air shifted. I felt it immediately; I did not belong here. I was being watched and studied, like something foreign in their world.

I walked slowly toward the table and stopped near him. He did not speak at first. He just looked at me.

“You slept,” he said finally. It was not a question.

“I did not really sleep,” I replied.

One of the men at the table smirked but I ignored it. Ryker pushed a plate slightly toward me. I stared at it without moving.

“I am not hungry,” I said quietly.

“You are."

I frowned. “How would you know?”

His eyes stayed on me. “You did not eat yesterday.”

That annoyed me more than it should have. I pulled the plate closer anyway but did not eat. The silence around the table felt heavy.

Then Ryker stood. The sound of his chair moving made a few heads turn. He leaned slightly toward me, just enough that only I could hear him.

“I have work to handle,” he said quietly.

I looked up at him. “Now?”

He nodded once. The calmness in his face did not match how tense everything around him suddenly felt.

Before I could say anything else, he reached out and gently kissed me on the forehead. My breath caught in my throat.

Then he pulled back. “Stay inside the clubhouse."

It was not a request but an instruction.

I frowned. “I am not a prisoner.”

“I did not say you were,” he replied calmly. Then he turned and walked away without looking back.

The noise slowly returned around the table but it no longer felt normal. It felt like I was being left behind in a place I did not understand. I pushed the plate away and stood up. No one stopped me or even spoke to me.

I walked out of the hall slowly. My footsteps were echoing through the wooden corridor. The clubhouse was bigger than I expected. There were long hallways, closed doors and the distant sounds of movement.

I wandered without a clear direction at first. I was just trying to understand the place I had been brought into. A place full of people who looked human but were not.

Eventually, I found myself in a quieter section of the building. I stopped near a long hallway window. Outside, I could see the edge of the forest. The trees moved slightly in the wind. For a second, I felt almost calm. That was when I heard footsteps behind me.

I turned and saw a woman standing at the end of the hallway. She was very pretty. She smiled as she looked at me, like she had been expecting me to be exactly there.

“So,” she said softly, “you are the human Ryker brought back.”

I straightened slightly. “And you are?”

Her smile widened. “I am the only one here who is being polite to you,” she said.

I did not like her tone. She stepped closer. Her heels were clicking lightly against the wooden floor.

“You should not be walking around alone,” she added.

“I am not doing anything wrong,” I said.

She tilted her head slightly. “That depends on who you ask."

I felt my fingers curl slightly at my side. “I am not hurting anyone,” I said more firmly.

A soft laugh left her lips. “That is not how this works here,” she said.

She stopped in front of me now. Her eyes moved over me slowly, like she was studying something she had already decided that she did not like.

“You look so normal,” she said.

I frowned. “I am normal.”

That made her smile fade just a little. “No,” she said softly. “You are not.”

The way she said it made something uneasy settle in my stomach. She stepped even closer.

“Do you know what people like you do to people like us?” she asked.

“I have no idea what you are talking about,” I replied.

Her eyes sharpened. “You take attention,” she said. “You take space. You stand near things you do not understand.”

I held her gaze. “I did not ask for any of this.”

“That does not matter."

The hallway felt colder now. She leaned in slightly and lowered her voice. “You should leave."

I blinked. “What?”

“You do not belong here.”

I straightened slightly. “I did not ask to be here.”

“I am not talking about the place. I am talking about him. You are holding on too tightly for someone who does not care about you.”

“This is not the truth. I don't care about him,” I said quickly.

But even I heard the hesitation in my voice. She tilted her head.

“Ryker is not yours,” she said softly.

Something in my chest tightened. I forced myself to stay calm. “I never said he was.”

That made her pause. Then she smiled again. “Oh, but you will,” she said. “Everyone thinks they are different at first.”

I frowned. “You are mistaken.”

Her eyes darkened slightly. “I was with him before you even knew this world existed.”

The room went quieter. I felt it even without looking around. People were listening.

“You are human,” she said. “You are soft, breakable and temporary.”

“I do not know what you think is happening here but I am not interested in him.”

That was not entirely true. And I hated that I knew it. Her smile widened.

“That is what they all say,” she whispered.

I felt anger rise inside me. I took a step forward. “I am not here to compete with you.”

She laughed. “You already are. But what you don't understand is that I was here before you and I will still be here when he gets bored of you.”

That made my hands tighten. I did not like her. I did not like how she spoke...or how everyone was watching us. She looked at me for a long moment. Then she said again.

“Stay away from him.”

I stared at her. “No.”

That came out faster than I expected. Her eyes narrowed slightly.

“You do not understand what you are stepping into.”

“I understand enough,” I said.

Her expression changed. “He is mine.”

"I do not care.”

“Good,” she said. “Then it will hurt less when you lose.”

Before I could respond, she moved fast. One second she was in front of me. The next, her hand shoved my shoulder hard. I stumbled back. My foot slipped and I fell.

Pain shot through my side as I hit the ground. Everything went silent. I looked up. She was still standing there.

Around us, the pack members watched. No one moved. No one dared to help me. My breath was sharp.

The woman tilted her head. “You are so weak."

I pushed myself up slowly from the floor. My hands were shaking. But it was not from fear anymore. My heart was beating faster and there was something rising inside me that I did not understand.

I stood up fully. And for the first time, I felt something strange inside my chest. The air around me felt heavier.

The woman frowned slightly.

“What are you....” She did not finish.

A faint sound echoed inside my ears like something was responding. Something was waking up.

My breath caught as the air around me suddenly felt heavier, like it was pressing in from all sides.

And then I felt it clearly for the first time… something inside me was answering back.