Chapter Seventeen: The Voice That Wasn’t There
606 Words
Jason woke like something had pulled him out of sleep.
Not gently.
Not naturally.
Like a thread inside him had been tugged hard enough to snap him awake.
His eyes opened instantly.
The shack was dark except for the low glow of the dying fire. Snow pressed faintly against the outer walls, muffling the world outside into a thick, distant silence.
For a moment, Jason didn’t move.
He listened.
Nothing unusual.
No footsteps. No wind breaking sharply. No warning.
Still, his chest felt tight.
Then—
You’re awake.
Jason froze.
The voice wasn’t outside.
It wasn’t in the shack.
It was inside him.
His breath stopped for half a second.
His body went completely still, muscles locking as instinct surged up faster than thought. He sat up sharply, scanning the room as if someone might be standing there.
But there was no one.
Only the fire.
Only the snow.
Only silence.
“…What?” he whispered before he could stop himself.
The voice didn’t answer immediately.
Then, clearer this time—
Finally.
Jason’s heart pounded once.
Hard.
He pressed a hand to his chest like he could physically hold the sound in place.
His mind moved fast, too fast.
Pack. Moon. Change. Wrong. Silence.
The thing they said should have been there.
The thing that wasn’t.
“…My wolf?” he breathed, barely audible.
A pause.
Then the voice replied.
I’ve always been here.
Jason’s throat tightened.
“No,” he said immediately, sharper than intended. “You weren’t.”
The voice didn’t argue.
Instead, it shifted—like something turning its attention fully toward him for the first time.
You stopped listening.
Jason stood up quickly now, backing away from the sleeping corner as if distance mattered inside his own mind.
“That’s not how it works,” he said under his breath. “I tried. I—nothing was there.”
The fire crackled softly.
The voice answered, quieter.
You were not ready.
Jason’s fists clenched.
That word hit harder than expected.
Ready.
All those years.
All that silence.
All that rejection.
“I was a child,” he said, voice tight.
A pause.
Then—
You still are.
Jason went still.
That landed differently.
Not like insult.
Like truth.
Outside, the wind shifted against the shack. The sound grounded him for half a second, but the voice didn’t fade with it. It stayed, steady and close, like it had been waiting for him to stop running long enough to hear it.
Jason swallowed.
“…Where have you been?” he asked, quieter now.
The answer came slowly.
Waiting.
His breath trembled slightly.
He didn’t like that answer.
Because it meant something had always been there.
Something he had been blamed for not finding.
Something he had survived without understanding.
He turned toward the fire, staring into it like it might explain anything.
“…Why now?” he asked.
The voice didn’t respond right away.
Then:
Because you are no longer alone.
Jason froze again.
His eyes narrowed slightly.
“…What does that have to do with anything?”
The voice didn’t explain.
Instead, it simply said:
You are waking.
A pause.
Then, softer—
We are waking.
Jason’s stomach tightened.
That word didn’t feel like comfort.
It felt like change.
Outside, the snow continued to fall.
Inside the shack, Jason stood very still, listening to something that had always been inside him finally speak clearly for the first time.
And for the first time since being cast out—
he wasn’t sure whether what he had found was something he had been waiting for…
or something that had been waiting for him.
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