All Chapters of Claimed by The Wolf l Ran From : Chapter 1 - Chapter 5

The video was still playing when Emily Carter shoved her phone into her jacket pocket and stepped out into the cold.Local Man Claims He Saw a "Werewolf" Near Blackwood Forest, the caption read, over shaky footage of a shadow that could have been anything — a deer, a dog, someone's uncle in a bad costume. Three hundred thousand views. Two thousand comments, most of them some version of I believe it!! with a crying-laughing emoji that suggested they did not, in fact, believe it."People will believe anything these days," Emily muttered, tugging her hood up against the wind.Behind her, the porch light of Sarah's house clicked off. Four hours of quizzing her best friend on the Krebs cycle had left Emily's voice hoarse and her patience thin, but Sarah was going to pass that bio final if it killed both of them. That was just how it worked. You showed up for the people you loved, even at eleven at night, even when your own homework sat untouched on your desk at home.Emily didn't scare eas

Stress. That was all it had been.Emily lay staring at her ceiling as gray morning light crept in around the curtains, running through the explanation for the fourth or fifth time like she could wear it smooth enough to believe. Finals were coming. She'd been up half the night helping Sarah cram. She'd gotten caught in a storm, spooked herself half to death cutting through Blackwood in the dark, probably tripped over an actual dog, and her exhausted, overworked brain had filled in the rest with nightmare logic. People saw all kinds of things when they were running on no sleep and too much adrenaline. It happened. It was practically science.She almost believed it, right up until she closed her eyes and saw gold again — patient, glowing, inches from her face.She was going to be fine. She just had to act normal. Normal was a muscle, and she was going to flex it until it stopped shaking."Emily." Her mother caught her wrist at the front door, turning her arm gently to look at the thin r

The light pulsed once, bright enough that Emily had to squint against her own wrist — and then it was gone, fading back into pale, ordinary skin as if it had never happened at all.For a long moment, nobody moved.The courtyard that had been screaming chaos thirty seconds earlier had gone utterly silent, dozens of faces turned toward her, toward the place on her arm where silver light had just been burning in broad daylight. Emily stared down at her own wrist like it belonged to someone else.Damien hadn't moved either. He knelt in the torn-up grass exactly where he'd landed after shifting back, and the look on his face was one Emily hadn't seen on him yet — not the cold disinterest from homeroom, not the fierce authority from the fight. Something closer to fear."What was that?" Emily's voice cracked as it came out, equal parts demand and plea. "Who are you? What am I?"Damien's jaw tightened. His eyes flicked past her — to the crowd of students still staring, to the teachers shoutin