CHAPTER 4 — Gone Before Morning

I didn’t mean to fall asleep. I told myself I was only resting my eyes, only letting the last of the adrenaline drain out of my veins, only giving my shaking hands a chance to remember they belonged to me. I sat on an overturned storage crate near the workbench, the garage lamp turned low, and listened to the wolf breathe.

In. Out. In. Out. A tide dragging itself back from the shore.

Outside, the forest made its own quiet music, wind through needles, something small skittering in leaves, the far off hush of night creatures negotiating space. I tried to match my breath to the wolf’s, like if I could synchronize myself to him, I could make the world stop feeling so sharp.

My eyelids lowered. My mind, traitorous, tender, slipped into a dream.

I dreamed of Kyle. Of that kitchen with its ugly light and its stale smell of coffee I hated, of his voice turning sweetness into a blade.

'You’re too sensitive, Nora. You make me do this. No one else would put up with you.'

I couldn’t move. Couldn’t speak. My chest felt chained.Then the dream changed—because something low and thunderous rolled through it.

A growl. A sound that meant enough. Kyle’s voice cut off like someone had slammed a door in his face.

A huge shadow moved between me and the dark, black fur, heat, weight. Protective.

I woke with a gasp, hand flying to my chest. For a moment, I didn’t know where I was.

The garage was dim, dawn barely seeping in around the window frames, turning dust motes into floating embers. My neck ached from sleeping upright. My mouth was dry, and my body still held that taut, humming aftershock of last night.

Then I looked down at the concrete floor. Empty. My heart dropped so sharply it felt physical.

“No,” I whispered, already standing.

The blanket lay rumpled near the exam table. The water bowl was tipped, a dark puddle spreading slowly. Used gauze wrappers and gloves sat where I’d dropped them, small proof that I hadn’t hallucinated blood and teeth and pain.

But the wolf, gone. I spun, scanning corners like he could have folded himself into the space between boxes. Absurd. Impossible.

The side door was still locked. The main garage door was still shut. My breath came fast. My thoughts came faster.

Had someone come for him? Had he dragged himself away and died alone somewhere under the trees?

Or worse, had my exhausted brain invented him from fear and folklore and too many late night romance pages?

Then I saw it. The narrow window near the back of the garage, small, high, the kind you don’t think about was cracked open. Not broken. Opened.

Cold air slid in, pine scented and damp. I stared at the gap until my eyes burned. Wolves don’t open windows, my brain insisted. But… something had.

I stepped closer. On the sill was a smear of dark, drying blood. Beneath it, faint scratches scored the wood, marks that looked like claws, or maybe nails, or maybe just desperate traction from a big animal hauling itself through.

My stomach twisted. “Okay,” I whispered, though I didn’t know what I was agreeing to. “Okay, I am going crazy. Maybe”

I didn’t let my mind leap straight to monsters. I wouldn’t. Moonbrook could keep its ghost stories. I’d come here to live in reality, messy, painful, fixable reality.

So I forced a rational explanation into place like a splint: A huge wolf, maybe a wolf dog hybrid. Smart. Terrified. Fueled by pain and instinct. It found a way out.

Or… Someone had been close enough to the garage to open that window.

Someone who knew where he was. That thought sat heavier than any myth. Because people were real. Cruelty was real. Chains were real.

I stared at the floor where the chain had been last night and realised with a jolt that I’d dragged it away from my line of sight at some point, like my hands had wanted distance from it even in exhaustion. It lay coiled near the wall, pale against the concrete like a dead thing.

I didn’t touch it. Not yet. I cleaned instead because cleaning was a language my fear understood.

I scrubbed blood from the floor until my arms ached, and my stomach stopped threatening to flip. I disinfected the table. I tossed used supplies. I reset my tiny clinic as if order could erase the fact that something wild had been in my care.

Then I made tea. Because tea was the closest thing I had to an anchor.

By midmorning, sunlight made the forest look harmless again, green, bright, and almost friendly. Birds hopped through the branches like the night hadn’t held pain at all.

It was infuriating, the way daylight lied. I was aligning syringes in a drawer when my phone buzzed.

A message from Grace:

Coming by with lunch. Don’t argue.

Relief loosened something in my ribs. I texted back:

Okay. I made tea.

Her reply came fast:

Good. Coffee is still poison.

I almost laughed. Almost. Because my eyes kept drifting to that cracked open window, to the dried blood on the sill. To the memory of blue eyes that had watched me like I mattered. And I hated that thought, too, because lonely people make meaning out of strange kindness. I refused to be that person.

Still… my hands wouldn’t stop shaking.

- - -

Grace arrived with a paper bag that smelled like sandwiches and stubborn love.

“I brought lunch,” she announced, stepping into my kitchen like she’d always lived there. “And fruit. And yes, I brought those little chocolates you like. Don’t give me that look.”

“I’m not five,” I muttered.

Grace arched an eyebrow. “You’re right. At five, you had better manners.”

I huffed a laugh, and it felt good, real, warm. For a moment. Then she looked at me properly. Her gaze sharpened. “You didn’t sleep.”

“I’m fine.”

“Mm.” She set the bag down and caught my wrist, turning my hand palm up like she was checking for fever. “And you went outside last night.”

My stomach clenched. “What?”

She nodded toward my hoodie. “Dirt. Leaf bits. And you’ve got a scratch on your cheek.”

I lifted my hand to my face. A thin line of dried red. I hadn’t noticed.

Conflict made my throat tighten. My instinct was to retreat, to soften, to make myself smaller so the moment would pass. But Grace wasn’t Kyle. Grace didn’t punish honesty. Still, I hesitated.

“I heard an animal,” I said carefully. “It sounded hurt. I… checked. I tried to help, but it ran off.”

Not the whole truth. But not a lie with fangs, either. Grace studied me in a long silence that pressed against my skin. Then she sighed. “Nora.”

Her voice softened. Tired in the way people get when they care too much. “You can’t save everything,” she said. “Especially not out there.”

“Out there” meant the forest. The edge of my property. The place she’d warned me about since I arrived.

I swallowed. “People in town were talking,” I admitted. “About… beasts. About hunting. About silver.”

Grace made a face like she’d bitten into something sour. “Oh, for heaven’s sake.”

Her dismissal was so immediate, so irritated, that my shoulders loosened without permission.

“So you don’t think.” I began.

“I think small towns get bored,” Grace cut in, unwrapping sandwiches with brisk hands. “They make up monsters so they can feel brave about being frightened. And they talk themselves into feeling important.”

“But traps are real,” I said, quieter. I couldn’t forget the chain. The padlock. The deliberate way it had been used.

Grace’s movements slowed. For a heartbeat, her eyes flicked toward the window, toward the forest line beyond my yard.

“Traps can be real,” she said after a moment. “Poachers, idiots, men with too much pride and not enough sense. That’s real. So you stay out of the woods at night. Not because of fairy tales because of idiot people.”

That landed harder than any supernatural warning. People. Kyle had been “just people,” too, and look what he’d done.

I nodded, throat tight. “Okay.”

Grace pushed a sandwich toward me. “Eat.”

I did, because my body needed fuel and because Grace’s version of love was practical. Feed you. Fix what she can. Stand in the doorway like a guard.

Between bites, I said softly, “It was a wolf. I think. A really big one.”

Grace’s eyebrows rose. “A wolf that close to your house?”

“I know,” I said, and my voice went thin. “It was… different. Not like a normal wolf.”

Grace hummed, unimpressed. “Wildlife gets bold when people leave food out. Or when they’re injured and desperate.”

I stared at my tea. “Maybe.”

Grace snorted. “Nora, you read too many novels.”

Heat crept up my neck. She reached across the table and patted my hand. “You’re tired, and you’re healing, and your brain is going to try to turn everything into a sign. Don’t let it.”

I swallowed hard. Because she was right about one thing: I was healing. And healing makes you tender. It makes you see the world through bruised glass.

Still, when I closed my eyes, I saw that wolf’s gaze again, blue and steady, like deep water that didn’t lie.

After lunch, Grace left with one last stern reminder to lock my doors and call her if I heard anything “weird.”

I promised.

- - -

The afternoon became a blur of small, steady work: labelling drawers, stocking supplies, taping up my handwritten sign on the garage side door:

MOONBROOK ANIMAL CARE — WALK-INS WELCOME

(Please knock.)

Around four, the light tilted golden and the forest line glowed as if it were painted.

I stepped outside, tea mug in hand, because yes, I was still drinking tea and let the air fill my lungs.

Something moved between the trees. My breath caught. I squinted. A shape, dark, large, stood just inside the treeline for the briefest moment. It could have been shadow. It could have been my imagination arranging branches into the outline of last night’s fear.

I lifted my hand anyway, palm open, half embarrassed by myself. The shape didn’t come closer. Didn’t rush. It simply… shifted, and then vanished into the green.

I stood there too long, my hand still raised, feeling foolish and unsettled.

“I’m not buying into myths,” I whispered to the empty yard, as if the words could keep me grounded. “I’m not.”

An hour later, I was back in the garage reorganizing bandage wrap for the third time, because my mind wouldn’t sit still when I heard it:

A knock. Three firm raps on the side door. I froze. My heart jumped, then settled into something cautious.

I wiped my hands on my jeans and crossed the garage. “Hello? Moonbrook Animal Care.”

A man’s voice answered, deep, calm, roughened at the edges like gravel under water.

“I was told you might be able to help.”

The hairs on my arms rose for no logical reason.

“What kind of help?” I asked.

A pause.

Then, softer, like he didn’t want to startle whatever he held.

“A bird,” he said. “It’s hurt.”

My fingers tightened around the doorknob.

I unlocked the door. And opened it.