THE ICE WOLF

Chapter 5 Losing My Mind

Marinette

By the time I got home, my hands were still shaking.

The bakery lights downstairs were on, glowing warmly through the front windows, and the smell of fresh bread hit me the second I stepped inside. Normally, it would’ve made me feel better. The bakery had always felt safe to me. Familiar. My parents worked almost every hour of every day, and somehow the smell of sugar, cinnamon, and warm dough always made the building feel alive.

Tonight, it did absolutely nothing.

“You’re late!” my mom called from the kitchen. “Did the hockey boys start a riot or something?”

I froze near the front door. If only she knew.

“I had equipment problems,” I answered quickly while pulling the broken camera closer against my chest.

My dad walked out from the back kitchen carrying a tray of croissants. “Equipment problems don’t usually make people look like they’ve seen ghosts.”

“I’m fine.”

Both of my parents gave me identical looks. Parents somehow always knew when something was wrong.

I forced myself to walk normally across the bakery floor while customers sat near the front tables eating desserts and drinking coffee. Everything looked painfully normal. A little kid laughed near the display counter while my mom wrapped pastries into paper bags. Somebody complained about extra frosting on a cupcake.

Meanwhile, I had just spent the last hour learning that werewolves apparently existed.

Amazing.

“Marinette,” my mom called again before I reached the stairs. “You’re still coming down to help tomorrow morning, right?”

“Yeah,” I answered automatically.

Then I hurried upstairs before either of them could ask more questions.

My room sat at the very top of the building inside the attic space above the bakery. Slanted ceilings. Tiny windows. Always slightly too warm because of the ovens downstairs. I normally loved it.

Tonight, it felt too quiet.

The second I shut the door behind me, I dropped the broken camera onto my desk and paced the room aggressively.

“Okay,” I muttered to myself. “Either I’m losing my mind or hockey players are secretly monsters.”

Saying it out loud somehow made it sound worse. I grabbed my phone immediately and called Alya.

She answered on the second ring. “If this is about hockey again, I swear—”

“Come over.”

A pause.

“You sound insane.”

“Please just come over.”

Another pause.

Then her voice changed completely. “What happened?”

“I’ll explain when you get here.”

Thirty minutes later, Alya climbed through my attic window holding iced coffee and enough concern to make me nervous.

“You look terrible,” she announced immediately.

“Thank you.”

“No seriously, you look like you survived a murder documentary.”

Honestly, not far off.

Alya dropped her bag onto the floor and studied me carefully. She’d been my best friend since middle school, which meant she could usually tell when I was hiding something within five seconds.

Tonight, it took her two.

“What happened?”

I pointed silently toward the broken camera sitting on my desk.

Her eyes widened immediately. “Oh no. Ramirez is gonna kill you.”

“I don’t care about the camera.”

“That sentence alone tells me this is serious.”

I sat heavily on the edge of my bed while trying to figure out where to even begin. Every time I replayed tonight in my head, it sounded more ridiculous.

Gold eyes. Growling. Alpha. Little wolf.

“Marinette.”

I looked up.

Alya had stopped joking now.

“What happened at the arena?”

I swallowed hard. “You can’t laugh.”

“That bad?”

“You also can’t tell anybody.”

“Okay…”

“And you might think I’m crazy.”

Alya sat beside me slowly. “You’re starting to scare me.”

Good.

At least someone else was scared too.

I took a deep breath. “I think Adrien Agreste is a werewolf.”

Silence.

Alya blinked once.

Then twice.

Then she burst into laughter so hard she nearly dropped her coffee.

“Oh my God,” she wheezed. “Okay wait—you’re serious?”

“I said don’t laugh!”

“I’m trying not to, but this is insane!”

“I know it sounds insane!”

“You think?”

I stood up immediately and started pacing again because frustration suddenly felt easier than fear. “His eyes changed, Alya! I saw it! And there were these other guys talking about packs and Alphas and one of them literally called him little wolf!”

Alya slowly stopped laughing.

“Wait,” she said carefully. “You’re not joking.”

“No!”

Her expression shifted slightly. “Okay… explain everything from the beginning.”

So I did.

I told her about the fight during the hockey game. About Adrien pinning another player against the glass hard enough to scare everyone around him. I told her about his eyes looking gold under the arena lights and how the hallway conversation became increasingly weird.

Then I told her about Damian.

By the time I finished, Alya looked unsettled enough to finally stop making jokes.

“That’s…” She hesitated. “Actually creepy.”

“Thank you.”

“But werewolves?”

“I KNOW HOW IT SOUNDS!”

Alya stood and grabbed the broken camera from my desk carefully. “Did you record any of this?”

“I don’t know.”

That sentence changed everything. Both of us stared at the camera immediately.

Slowly, Alya looked up at me. “Marinette.”

My stomach dropped.

“No.”

“You might actually have proof.”

The room suddenly felt too warm.

I moved beside her quickly while she turned the damaged camera over carefully in her hands. The lens was cracked badly, but the storage light still blinked faintly near the side.

“It still works,” Alya whispered.

Panic crashed into me instantly.

“It probably didn’t record clearly,” I said quickly.

“You don’t know that.”

“I was moving around!”

“You were filming the entire night!”

Alya placed the camera onto my desk and reached for the playback buttons.

My heart started pounding hard enough to hurt.

“Alya…”

“If this thing caught glowing eyes on video—”

A sudden crash echoed from downstairs so loudly that both Alya and I jumped at the same time.

For one frozen second, neither of us moved. The broken camera in Alya’s hands almost slipped, and I could hear my own heartbeat pounding in my ears like it was trying to get out. Then my dad’s voice came sharply from below.

“Marinette!”

We ran down the attic stairs immediately, almost bumping into each other on the narrow steps. The smell of fresh bread and sugar filled the bakery like always, but tonight it felt different now.

My mom stood behind the counter with flour still on her hands, looking confused and a little worried.

“I don’t understand,” she said. “I thought I locked the door.”

My dad pointed toward the entrance. “It just opened on its own. The bell hasn’t stopped shaking since.”

Alya slowly stepped closer to me, quieter than usual now. She wasn’t joking anymore, which immediately made everything feel more serious than it already was.

“It’s probably just wind,” my mom said, forcing a small smile as she tried to calm herself.

“Marinette, Alya, can you help me clean up a bit? I don’t want the bakery looking like this in the morning.”

Alya nodded immediately. “Of course, Mrs. Rossi.”

She said it so fast I didn’t even get a chance to refuse. I opened my mouth to argue, but she was already moving toward the shelves, grabbing a broom like she was trying to distract herself from thinking too much.

So I helped too.

I wiped down the counter while my mom reorganized trays of pastries, and Alya swept near the entrance while glancing at the door every few seconds like she expected it to move again. I tried to focus on simple things like stacking boxes and straightening jars, but my mind kept going back to the arena.

Adrien’s face when his eyes changed.

Damian’s smile.

The way everything had suddenly turned strange without warning.

“Marinette,” my mom called gently. “Can you grab more flour from storage?”

“Yeah,” I said quickly.

I walked toward the back room, glad for a reason to move away for a moment. The storage area was small and dim, stacked with flour bags and baking supplies from floor to ceiling. I grabbed two bags and turned back toward the door, already thinking about how long it would take before I could go back upstairs and talk to Alya again.

Then my phone rang.

The sound made me stop instantly.

I pulled it out of my pocket and saw the name on the screen.

Vice Principal Ramirez.

I frowned and stepped slightly deeper into the storage room before answering. “Hello?”

“Marinette,” she said immediately, her tone sharper than usual. “I need to ask you something about tonight’s interview.”

My grip tightened slightly on the flour bag in my hand. “Is something wrong?”

“There’s been a request from the school board.”

I paused. “A request for what?”

A brief silence followed on the line, like she was choosing her words carefully.

“For any raw footage you may have captured during the post-game segment with Adrien Agreste.”

I blinked.

“What?”

“We’re reviewing materials from the game,” she continued. “And there’s a concern that something unusual may have been recorded during the interview or immediately after the match.”

My chest tightened slightly.

“I only filmed interviews,” I said slowly. “That’s it.”

“Yes,” she replied. “That’s why I wanted to confirm. But you were very close to the rink during the final moments, correct?”

I hesitated because I remembered Adrien looking directly at me. I remembered the way his eyes had seemed wrong for a second.

“I… was filming,” I admitted carefully.

“Good,” she said quickly, almost relieved. “If you captured anything—any reaction, any close-up footage of Agreste after the game—please do not delete it.”

That made me freeze.

“Ma'am is there a problem?”

Another pause.

Then her voice lowered slightly.

“Because the board wants to understand what happened tonight,” she said. “And your camera might be the only angle we have.”

I stood still in the storage room, staring at my phone like it suddenly weighed more than it should.

“So you want my footage?” I asked.

“Yes,” Ramirez confirmed. “If anything unusual was recorded, we need to review it immediately.”

“I’ll check it,” I said quietly.

“Good,” Ramirez replied. “And Marinette?”

“Yes?”

Her voice softened just slightly.

“Don’t edit anything out. Send everything you have.”

Then the call ended.