Chapter 2
1023 Words
It took three days.
On the fourth, she stepped inside.
Everything was the same. Her mother’s neatly folded blankets. Her father’s worn jacket draped over the chair. The faint scent of them still lingered in the air—familiar, comforting, unbearable.
Donna swallowed hard and forced herself forward.
She did not know what she was looking for. Nothing. Anything that proved they had not just… vanished.
It was the desk that stopped her.
A single envelope sat in the centre, her name written across the front in careful, familiar handwriting.
Donna.
Her chest tightened.
With unsteady hands, she picked it up and broke the seal.
Inside were documents. Numbers. Accounts.
At first, none of it made sense.
Then it did.
Her parents… had money.
Not a fortune. Nothing extravagant. But enough—more than enough for things that had always felt impossible.
Tuition.
Housing.
A way out.
Donna sank slowly into the chair, her mind racing as pieces began to fall into place.
They had been watching. Listening. Learning.
While the higher ranks managed pack wealth and spoke of investments, her parents had quietly followed, building something in the background, piece by careful piece.
For her.
A small, hidden safety net.
A future.
Her throat tightened as she found the note tucked beneath the papers.
Short. Simple. Written in her mother’s hand.
For when you are ready to choose your own life.
Donna stared at the words, her vision blurring.
They had known.
Not about the storm. Not about their deaths.
But about her.
About the way the pack treated her.
About the way she never quite belonged.
They had not tried to force her to stay.
They had given her a way to leave.
Her fingers curled around the paper as something unfamiliar settled in her chest.
Not grief.
Not quite.
Something steadier.
Something sharper.
For the first time since the accident, Donna lifted her head.
The pack had never been her future.
Now—
It did not have to be her cage.
Donna knew her time was short. Only a few weeks remained before she would leave, and with that quiet certainty, she began to let go.
She packed up the house piece by piece—some things carefully placed into storage, others given away to Goodwill. Each item carried a memory, but she had learned that not all memories needed objects to survive.
She chose only what truly mattered to take with her. At the top of that small collection was her mother’s handmade blanket, every stitch sewn with love, warmth, and a past she would always carry.
And somehow, despite it all, she felt ready.
Donna had lived her whole life in a pack that did not want her.
They never said it outright—not in front of the elders—but they did not need to. It lived in the way they looked at her, the way they laughed, the names that stuck.
Wolfless Donna.
Useless Donna.
The worst part was not the cruelty. It was how ordinary it had become.
By sixteen, she had stopped reacting. By eighteen, she had stopped caring—or at least, that’s what she told herself.
Because caring made it hurt. And she had things to do.
The pack lived deep in the forest, far from human cities, in a cluster of worn buildings that had been patched and repatched over generations. Strength mattered there. Loyalty mattered. Blood mattered.
Donna had none of those things.
She had never shifted.
Not once.
Every other wolf in the pack had their first shift by the time they were thirteen. Painful, messy, but celebrated. It was proof of who they were.
Donna had waited.
And waited.
And waited.
Until waiting turned into knowing.
She was not like them.
“Move faster, Donna!”
The shout came from across the yard. A boy—no, a wolf—leaned against the fence, arms crossed, watching her struggle with a stack of firewood that was just a little too heavy.
“Or is that too hard without a wolf to help you?”
Laughter rippled behind him.
Donna adjusted her grip and kept walking.
No reaction. No eye contact.
That was the rule she had made for herself.
They got bored faster that way.
What they did not know—what no one knew—was that Donna had been building something of her own.
At night, after the pack had settled, she studied.
An old laptop, a weak internet signal she had learned how to boost, and hours of work no one ever saw. Biology. Anatomy. Chemistry. Things that had nothing to do with shifting or pack hierarchy.
Things that made sense.
The human world had rules. Systems. Logic.
If something was broken, you could learn how to fix it.
That idea had hooked into her mind and never let go.
The letter had felt unreal in her hands.
A full scholarship.
Not just acceptance—recognition.
Donna read it three times before it truly sank in. Medical school. Everything she had worked for, everything she had pushed through the whispers and the isolation to achieve—it was finally hers.
And for the first time, she had the means to take it.
What with her parents’ savings her savings and the scholarship, she had enough to give her choices she had never had before-hosing, books, tuition, and bills Donna did not hesitate.
If she was leaving the pack, she was not coming back half-prepared.
Medicine alone would have been enough for most.
Not for her.
She applied for the veterinary program too.
At first, the university refused. The workload was too heavy. The schedules too demanding. No student had ever tried both pathways at once.
Donna did not argue.
She proved it.
Test scores. Prior coursework. Recommendations. She gave them no room to doubt what she could handle.
Eventually, they relented—with conditions.
She would be allowed to take overlapping modules where possible. Any scheduling conflicts were her responsibility. If her performance dropped, even once, the agreement would be revoked.
It was not permission.
It was a challenge.
Donna accepted it without hesitation.
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