The Bitten Wolf
995 Words
CALLA
“You’re late, Miss Voss,” a voice said, cutting through the quiet of the room.
I froze in the doorway of the lecture hall.
I had expected a dusty old professor with elbow patches. Instead, the man standing at the chalkboard was… devastating. He wore a dark sweater pushed up at the sleeves, revealing forearms that looked like they were made from veins alone.
“The halls are a but confusing,” I managed to say, my voice sounding breathy even to my own ears. “I’m sorry.”
He finally turned around. He didn't smile. He just looked at me with eyes so dark they felt like they were pulling the air right out of my lungs. My entire nervous system short-circuited. He was easily twenty years older than me, but he had this heavy, magnetic presence that made everything else in the room blur.
“Sit,” he said, gesturing to the front row. “I don’t like repeating myself.”
I sat. I couldn't help it. I watched him as he turned back to the board and wrote one line in jagged big letters: All myths are confessions.
“Does that mean every story is a secret?” I asked, the words out of my mouth before I could stop them.
He paused, his hand still holding the chalk. He turned his head just enough to look at me over his shoulder. “It means every story is a way of telling the truth without getting caught. Especially the stories about monsters.”
He stepped away from the board and leaned against his desk, right in front of me. He was so close I could smell him—something like cold rain and cedar. It was a dark, forbidden scent that made my heart hammer against my ribs.
“Today,” he said, his voice dropping to a low, intimate rumble, “we talk about the bitten wolf. The girl who doesn't know she’s changed yet.”
“Is that a myth?” I whispered.
“It’s a warning,” he said. He didn't look at the rest of the class. He looked only at me. “She starts feeling things she shouldn't. A pull in her blood. A heat under her skin that doesn't go away. She thinks she’s sick, or maybe just… awake for the first time.”
I felt the mark under my shirt pulse. It was like he was reading my mind, or my body.
The tension between us was thick, like a wire stretched until it was ready to snap. I couldn't look away. I didn't want to.
“What happens to her?” a student behind me asked.
Emric didn't blink. “She realizes that the world she knew is gone. She finds herself drawn to things that should scare her. People who should be off-limits.”
The lecture lasted fifty minutes, but it felt like five. Every word he said felt like a touch. He talked about the ‘tether’ between a wolf and the one who changed her, and I felt a shiver run down my spine that had nothing to do with fear.
When the bell rang, I stood up, my knees feeling a little weak. I tried to hurry out with the others, but his voice stopped me.
“Miss Voss. Stay for a moment.”
I waited until the room cleared and I walked up to his desk, my pulse thumping in my throat.
“Did I do something wrong, Professor?”
“No,” he said. He stood up, and I realized just how much taller he was than me. He stepped around the desk, stopping just inches away. He didn't touch me, but I could feel the heat radiating off him. “I’m just noticing things.”
“Like what?”
“Like the fact that you aren't afraid of what I taught today,” he said softly. He reached out, his hand hovering near my arm, not quite making contact. “And the fact that you’re looking at me like you’re searching for a north star.”
“I’m just… interested in the subject,” I lied. My heart was going a mile a minute.
“If you start waking up in places you don't recognize,” he said, his voice a low warning, “or if that feeling in your chest gets too loud… come to me. Come to this office. At any hour.”
“Why?” I breathed.
He looked at me for a long time. His expression shifted—something pained and raw flickering in his eyes before he masked it with that cold, academic distance again.
“Because I know what it’s like to want something you’re not supposed to have,” he said. “Now, go to practice, Calla.”
I stumbled out of the room, my skin tingling. My head was spinning.
Did he know about the bite?
I pulled out my phone to text Wren, but there was already a message waiting from an unknown number. It had been sent while I was sitting in the front row, staring at Emric.
Don’t trust what Emric Ashford tells you. He left the pack but he never stopped protecting it. Ask him why he really stayed.
The pack? What type of pack?
I felt a cold drop of sweat slide down my back. I stopped at the end of the hall and looked back. The classroom door was wood, but it had a small glass window.
Emric was still standing exactly where I’d left him. He was staring at the door—staring at me.
Then, he tilted his head, his nostrils flaring slightly, like he was catching a scent. He looked directly at the glass, his eyes locking onto mine even from thirty feet away. It was like he could hear my heart through the walls.
I didn't wait for him to move. I turned the corner and ran.
- Writer
