Chapter 14 – Wolves in the Waiting Room
1231 Words
The clinic was too bright after the den.
Sterile white walls. Posters about flea control. The faint buzz of the fluorescent lights. I stood behind the reception counter, fingers tapping a restless rhythm that had nothing to do with appointment slots and everything to do with circles and knots and wolves who’d heard too much truth last night.
Dris slid a file across the counter without looking up. “You’re going to drill a hole through the laminate if you keep that up.”
“Occupational hazard,” I said. “Some of us vibrate under stress.”
“Some of us vibrate under any conditions,” he muttered. “You’ve had three cups of coffee.”
“Two and a half.”
He raised a brow. “And a half cup of trauma. Which, by the way, you still haven’t actually talked about.”
I opened my mouth. The bell over the door chimed.
Three teenagers shuffled in, smelling of rain and metal and cheap cologne. To Dris, they probably looked like kids from the local high school. To my nose, they were all wolf: one Maalik boy I recognized vaguely by scent, two from allied lines that spent more time town-side.
One of them—slight, dark-haired, a hoodie pulled up despite the mild weather—held his arm awkwardly against his chest.
“Walk-in?” Dris asked, switching into professional mode. “What happened?”
“Dog fight,” the boy muttered. “It’s… nothing.”
The lie scraped over my skin like sandpaper.
“Back room three,” I said. “I’ll take it.”
Dris shot me a look that said we’d be revisiting the “trauma” topic, then gestured them through. I followed, closing the door behind us.
The exam room felt smaller with three restless teenage wolves in it.
The injured boy hopped up onto the table, wincing. I snapped on gloves, the powder smell oddly comforting.
“Name?” I asked.
He hesitated. “Kyle.”
Right. Human alias.
I rolled up the sleeve of his hoodie.
Bite marks. Deep, almost to the bone, already knitting wrong. Pattern said wolf, not dog. The skin around them was mottled with a faint, bluish tint that had nothing to do with bruising and everything to do with magic.
My resonance surged before I even touched him.
Cold, prickling energy crawled under his skin, like the echo of a screaming chorus tamped down hard. Not just his own fear. Not just his attacker’s fury.
Something older. Structured.
“If this was a dog,” I said calmly, “it was from one hell of a breeder.”
His two friends stiffened.
“We can go,” one said quickly. “It’s fine, we’ll—”
“You’ll sit,” I cut in. “Unless you want his arm healing crooked.”
I met Kyle’s eyes. Beneath the teenage bravado and the pain, his wolf stared back at me, wide and rattled.
“Who bit you?” I asked, gentler now.
He swallowed. “Just… one of the older guys. We were messing around. He got… weird.”
Weird. Sure.
“When?” I pressed.
“Last night,” he said. “Right after… uh. The meeting.”
Of course.
I cleaned the wound, letting my resonance slide deeper than my fingers. The bite’s energy was jagged, saturated with the same wrongness I’d felt in the training ring with Taro. A familiar cadence threaded through it, like the echo of a chant.
“Did he say anything?” I asked. “When he bit you?”
Kyle’s face went a little gray. “He said… ‘hold still, the circle knows what to do.’ But his voice was wrong. Like… doubled. And then he looked scared, like he hadn’t meant to.”
One of the friends cursed under his breath.
I tamped down my own answering spike of fear.
Maera had been right: the circle wouldn’t wait politely while we debated ethics in the hall. It was already creeping in through the cracks, hitching rides in unstable wolves.
“All right,” I said. “Good news: the arm will be fine. Bad news: whoever bit you had no idea what he was channeling.”
Kyle blinked. “Channeling what?”
“The same ritual that messed with my life,” I said bluntly. “And with the kids who are missing. You remember Tavis and Kiva?”
His throat bobbed. “Everyone does.”
“The circle in the woods is waking up,” I went on. “And it’s using people who don’t know better. That ‘older guy’ needs to see Maera. Today.”
Panic flared from his friends. “He’ll get in trouble,” one protested. “He didn’t mean—”
“I don’t care if he meant it,” I snapped, sharper than I intended. Kyle flinched; my resonance caught the thud of his heart.
I exhaled, backed off half a step.
“Listen,” I said, softer. “I’m not going to let the elders turn this into ‘bad pups acting out’. This is on the ritual. On the knot. But if we don’t track where it’s leaking, it’s going to keep grabbing whoever’s closest. You, your sisters, your friends.”
Kyle stared at his bandaged arm. “They said the old alpha did what he had to,” he murmured. “My dad did. Last night.”
“Your dad’s scared,” I said. “Scared people cling to old stories. You don’t have to.”
He looked up, something stubborn kindling behind the fear.
“What do you need?” he asked.
“Names,” I said. “Who bit you. Who’s been hanging around the circle. Who’s talking about ‘fixing’ fate.”
His jaw worked. “You’ll protect them?” he asked. “From… us?”
My chest tightened.
“I’ll protect all of you,” I said. “From that thing in the woods. Even if it means dragging some elders’ secrets into the light.”
He nodded slowly.
Outside, I heard the clinic bell chime again. Human clients. Different world, same building.
“Dris is going to come in and tell you about antibiotics,” I said. “You tell him it was a raccoon or whatever. Then you go straight to Maera with the real story. If anyone gives you trouble, you say Liora sent you.”
The friend who’d been quiet so far snorted. “That’s supposed to help?”
“In this house?” I said. “Yeah. It is.”
They exchanged glances. Fear. Loyalty. Recklessness. All the things that made pack both beautiful and terrifying.
As I stripped off my gloves, my resonance brushed briefly against each of them. Threads. So many fragile, living threads.
The knot in the trees wasn’t just old ink and stone circles.
It was here, in bite marks and whispered phrases, in boys who hurt each other without knowing why.
I stepped out into the hallway and nearly collided with Maera.
She’d come in without my noticing, silent as a knife.
“Trouble?” she asked.
“Leaking,” I said. “From your circle into your kids.”
Her eyes narrowed.
“Then we stop patching,” she said. “And start cutting.”
For once, we were completely in agreement.
- Writer
