Chapter 5

The night after the dream was long. I kept turning and turning until my back ached. The voice kept coming back like a sting soft and strange. Nora… I kept hearing it. I don’t understand this dream at all. What did it mean? Is the Moon Goddess playing tricks on me? Or is my head finally breaking from all the loneliness?

I drifted, and the sleep was thin. This time, nature came into the dream, wind through trees, the smell of wet earth. It felt safe for a little while, like a hand I hadn’t known I wanted. But peace never lasted. I woke with the beeping machine and sunlight in my face, my heart hammering like I had run a long way.

The nurse was there with her same glowing smile. She must keep a sun in her pocket because she always comes in like a bright thing. “Good afternoon, Nora. How are you doing today?” she said like she always asked and always meant it.

“Afternoon?” I muttered. For a second I lost time. Past two already? Where did the morning go? At home, I was up by seven. I go for a run in the cold air, come back, and help in the kitchen. Now I lie in a bed and someone fusses and calls me brave. It felt strange.

“I would like to use the restroom,” I said, my voice small but steady. I didn’t wait for permission. I swung my legs out of bed and stood. My legs felt both wobbly and like they had something to prove.

“Wow!” she gasped when I walked toward the door. Her surprise made me pause in the middle of the room. “You have fully recovered, Nora.” She came closer, eyes bright. “Remember, you couldn’t even stand three days ago.” Her voice was warm and a little proud. “I’m so happy for you.”

Her words sat weird in my chest. Happy for me? Someone actually happy that I could walk again? I forced a smile. “Thank you,” I said. My mouth did the thing it always did smile to hide everything else.

I went to the restroom and splashed water on my face. I watched the girl in the mirror. Dark eyes, a face that once could hold laughter easily, now thin and tired. The bandage around my head made my hair stick out funny. I blinked until the room stopped spinning and felt a little steadier.

When I came out, the nurse was ready with teasing eyes. “Let’s get that asshole off your head,” she said, poking at the bandage like it was a plaything. I laughed. It felt like a small crime to laugh, but I did. I sat on the bed edge so she could unwrap it. The bandage came off and the air hit my scalp cold. Nothing big under there, just the same head I had always had, but somehow unwrapped felt like starting again.

Then someone knocked. Not the soft polite knock. A confident knock. I looked at the door and my heart jumped because I knew that knock.

He walked in like he belonged in sunlight. Ellias. His face was familiar and kind, like a song you remember the first time you hear it again.

“How are you doing, Nora? I’m here to take you to your floor,” he said. His voice made my whole body warm and unsure.

“Ellias, one day I will just cut off that hand that you use to knock like the owner of this hospital,” the nurse joked and we all laughed. It felt like a tiny thing just a laugh but it landed in me like something soft and real.

“Thank you, Ellias, for everything,” I said, because I meant it. He nodded like it didn’t matter and smiled like he always does. For a second I wanted to ask why he kept coming back. Why did a warrior like him spend time visiting me? But the words got small and I swallowed them down.

Once the bandage was off, we left. The walk to the pack building was quiet. The air felt different outside: sharper, smelling of wet leaves and the distant smoke from the kitchen. The pack house stood like it had always stood tall and empty at the top. It has three floors that mean something. Omegas down low. Gamma and family on the first. Beta on the second. Alpha on the last. Only Alpha Johnson and his daughter sleep at the top. My room is on Gamma’s floor and I can never figure out why. There are plenty of empty rooms on other floors. I’m thankful for the gamma floor though if I were closer to Helen I might have stopped breathing.

We walked in silence through the hall. My steps echoed like someone counting time. I felt small. My chest is tight. The halls smelled of stew and old wood and the laughter that leaks out at night. People stared sometimes but looked away quickly when I caught them.

Then Helen stood there leaning like someone who never has to hurry. Her smile was sharp and false. “Finally back, Nora?” she said like she found the right shade of pretend concern. Her voice was full of that honey that makes bees die.

I felt my stomach drop. She moved closer to Ellias like she belonged to him somehow in a way I could not name. “Thank you, Ellias, for bringing my cousin home,” she said, all sugar and ice. I stared at her. Cousin. The name sounded strange on her lips. She had never called me family like that. Why pretend now?

Ellias looked at me for a second then at her. “I’ll see you tomorrow, Nora,” he said. His voice was soft and real when he said my name like that. Then he walked away with her, leaving me on the steps like an old shoe.

I watched them go. My chest was tight and I wanted to scream but had no sound left. He left me. Just like that. For a second the world moved slowly and I felt hollow as a drum.

I climbed the stairs to my room like an animal with a weight on its back. Each step was a small thing that pushed me forward. When I reached my door I slammed it hard and all the air left me.

My bed swallowed me. I let my tears fall the way they wanted to. They came fast and hot and messy. I sobbed until my throat hurt and my chest felt raw. I held my pillow and my body shook. I asked the same question I have been asking for as long as I can remember Why am I living? What am I for? What good am I if all I get is cruelty and fake smiles?

I hit the bed again and again with my head, like a child wanting the noise to stop. Pain is simple. Sometimes simple is easier than the tiny cuts of silence people give. Helen takes every small thing that could make me smile and crushes it under her shoe. Even Ellias. Even a little kindness. She will steal and spin and put on a curtain so everyone claps.

I calmed after a while but the ache stayed. It sits like a stone in my chest. I stared at the ceiling and my mind wandered back to the dream’s voice. Nora… I pressed my palm to my heart like I could hold the sound inside me. I whispered to the dark because I had no one to tell.

“Moon Goddess,” I said, voice barely there. “If you hear me, please. Please let me know what it feels like to be loved. Let me feel it once. Please.”

The words were simple and small and I said them like begging someone for a piece of bread. I felt foolish and fragile but I could not keep it inside me. My wish was not about power or revenge. It was about one small thing I want more than anything love. Not the kind Helen hands out like coins, but the kind that holds you. The kind that says you are not nothing.

The night grew quiet. The house sighed around me. I waited for thunder or an answer or the world to shift under my feet. Nothing came. Only my own breath and the slow beating of the heart that feels too big in my ribs.

I lay there and thought of the pack clearing. I remembered times I had watched from the edge when I thought no one could see. Fires. Howls. Old songs. People tied to the moon like they were children held tight. I always stood back and watched and wished I could step into the fire and become whole.

The wind outside moved the curtains and the moonlight cut a line on the floor. I counted the seconds between my breaths like they were beads on a string. I felt empty and hungry and so tired. I felt like I had been wearing a mask for so long that I forgot my face.

For a while, I remembered small things Ellias’s laugh, the nurse’s hand on my bandage, Helen’s fake voice. I thought of the way Ellias had said my name before he left. The warmth of it sat in me like a small match. I wanted to hold onto that light so bad. I wanted a life that felt like that light.

I drifted toward sleep and then woke again to a sound downstairs. Not loud—mostly a low hum of voices and the clatter of people preparing. The pack was getting ready. I could hear footsteps and the tinkle of metal. Someone laughed and the sound bounced up to my room like it wanted to tease me.

I pressed my ear to the pillow and listened. Preparations. The clearing will be full tomorrow. I imagined the fires and the drums and the old women singing the songs the Moon taught them. I imagined the whole world gathered around the moon and me in the middle of nothing.

My tears started again. Quiet at first, then steady. I let them fall and didn’t try to stop them. They were heavy and valueless and true. I felt like a child who keeps asking for a story and gets none.

I whispered again into the dark. “Please,” I said, “let me know what love is. Just once. Please.”

The room held my words for a long time. The moon painted my hands white. I closed my eyes. The house around me breathed and the world went slow. My body wanted to sleep but my heart was awake like a bird.

I thought of tomorrow then. I did not know what tomorrow held. I could feel something in the air tighten like a string pulled taut. I couldn’t say what would happen. I only knew I had to go through it, that I could not avoid the thing tied to the moon and the pack and the songs.

My fingers hooked under the pillow and I sucked the cloth to my face. Tears soaked the edge and the salt burned. I made myself a promise small and shaky but a promise.

If nothing else, I would go and stand. I would be there. I would see them and sing if I could. I would not hide. Maybe that was brave. Maybe it was stupid. Maybe nothing would come of it. But I could not keep living in the waiting. I needed to step into something even if it broke me.

My voice dried up at the thought and I pressed my palm to my chest like I wanted to feel my pulse steady. My eyes closed and the house whispers turned into memory and the rain outside tapped a soft rhythm.

I let the silence hold me a little longer and then I said out loud into the dark, the single word like a stone dropped in a deep well.

Tomorrow.