Seven: Wren

I claw my way back to the surface in a tangle of sweat-soaked sheets and the relentless thud of my own heart, which feels too big and too fast for the cage of my ribs. The fever’s not just heat now—it’s kinetic, a storm of muscle spasms and twitches that jerk my limbs in every direction at once. My arm bangs against the wall, a raw bolt of pain reminding me the wounds should be open, bleeding. Should be, but aren’t.

I manage to kick free of the blanket, rolling half off the mattress and onto the warped floorboards. The shock of cold against my skin jars me, makes the world snap into focus for a split second—long enough to see that my right arm isn’t dripping blood, but bound up in the same ugly strips of bedsheet I remember. I flex my hand, expecting agony. There’s pain, yeah, but it’s a dull echo, nothing like the bone-deep misery from before.

I drag myself upright, teeth chattering with the leftover charge of fever. My body feels hollowed out and refilled with something sharp, electric. I tug at the makeshift bandage with my left hand, unspooling it clumsily. It sticks to the scabbed-over wound, rips the new skin, and I brace myself for the red bloom of blood. There is some, but only a smear—no fresh torrent, no pulsing leak. Just a bite mark, pink and ugly, the edges already puckering together. It’s hot to the touch, but not festering. Healing. Too fast.

I stare, dumb, for a few seconds, then scrape my nails along the line of punctures. The sensation makes me shudder—not pain, but something deeper, a thrill that goes bone-deep and leaves my hands trembling.

Another sound cuts the air—closer this time, right at the edge of the buildings, maybe even inside the courtyard behind my apartment. A wolf, the same voice as before, but now I can hear the texture of it: the inhale before the note, the low rumble under the howl, the shape of the mouth that made it. My own mouth opens in response, and before I know what I’m doing, I let out a sound—not a howl, not a scream, just a weird, choked yelp that catches in my throat and dies in the air.

It’s ridiculous. It’s mortifying. I laugh, half out of shock, but the sound is wet and animal.

I curl forward, hands on my knees, trying to get control. Instead of normalcy, I get a rush of sensation: the faintest trace of every smell in the apartment, the stink of old coffee, the rotten fruit in the garbage, the iron tang of blood clinging to my skin. And underneath it all, the pine. The living, sap-dense, cold-breathing forest. It seeps in from the window and coats the inside of my head. My vision flickers and for a second, the trees are there again, crowding the edges of the room, branches scraping the walls, the moon pressed hard against the glass.

I squeeze my eyes shut and focus. It’s a trick I used to ground myself after panic attacks: name five things you can see, four you can touch, three you can hear, two you can smell, one you can taste. I try it now, but every answer is wrong. The apartment’s real, but layered underneath is the ghost of the woods, the sense that I’m not alone in here, that something’s pacing just out of sight, waiting for me to drop my guard.

There’s a sharp, sour taste in my mouth—blood and spit and something chemical. I run my tongue along my teeth and feel them all, whole and unbroken, but the canines are longer than I remember, pressing against the inside of my lip.

“Stop it,” I say, willing my brain to shut up, to let the weirdness go. But it doesn’t. If anything, the sensations crowd closer. I can hear my neighbor, three doors down, singing along with the radio. I can hear a mouse in the wall, chewing on insulation. I can hear the wolf in the courtyard, breathing. Waiting.

The fever breaks as abruptly as it started. One minute I’m burning up, the next I’m icy clear, mind sharp as a razor. I sit back on the mattress, or what’s left of it, and flex my hands. The wounds are already closing, skin shiny and new, as if the bite was days old instead of hours.

I should be terrified, but what I feel is a shaky, uncertain awe. I’ve never healed from anything this fast—hell, my last paper cut took a week. I poke at the scab again, and this time, it doesn’t even hurt.

The moonlight in the window is fading, replaced by the muddy blue of almost-morning. I stand, legs uncertain under me, and hobble to the bathroom. The face in the mirror looks like me, but not. The skin is pale, the eyes sunken, but there’s a brightness to them, a weird intensity that I’ve never seen before. I lean in closer, inspecting the iris. For a second—just a flicker—they catch the light and flash silver, the same cold shimmer as the wolf’s eyes in the woods.

I jerk back, heart hammering, then force myself to look again. Just brown now, plain and tired and unremarkable.

But I know what I saw.

I stagger back to the bed, wrap myself in the least disgusting blanket, and curl into a ball. I stare at the wall and wait for fear to settle in, for the panic to catch up to what just happened.

Instead, I feel…hungry. And restless. And weirdly, impossibly alive.

I close my eyes, willing sleep to take me, but it’s a long time before I drift off. Even then, I dream of forests and silver eyes and a pulse that’s no longer just mine.