Episode 09
1199 Words
The Wolf Within
The silence in Isla’s room was deceiving.
Outside, alarms were still echoing faintly through the lower halls, muted now, as if the chaos had been buried under layers of metal and orders. But inside her room, all she could hear was her own pulse. Loud. Sharp. Uneven.
She sat on the edge of her bed, gripping the sheets with white knuckles. Her chest rose and fell in stuttering breaths, the mark above her heart pulsing faintly beneath her shirt. It hadn’t faded. It hadn’t cooled and worse, it felt like something was watching her from inside her own skin.
Her body wasn’t in pain, not like before. But something was off. Her senses were too alert, her hearing too sharp. She could hear someone walking two doors down, hear the slow drip of a faucet down the hall, the ticking of her wall clock like a bomb.
She closed her eyes and whispered, “What the hell is happening to me?” There was no answer. Only the low hum of tension in her blood.
She grabbed her phone with shaking hands and did what every rational adult did in moments of existential crisis, she opened a browser. Her search history from the night before still stared at her.
Werewolf symptoms.
She hesitated. Then, fingers flying across the screen, she dug deeper.
Moonborn lore. Fated mates. Crescent marks and supernatural bonds.
One link led to another. A discussion board. An old forum filled with dated theories and arcane quotes.
“The Moonborn are not created, they are awakened. By blood, by bond, or by prophecy.”
Another thread spoke of symptoms: heightened senses, heat under the skin, emotional overload, dreams turning to memories. She swallowed hard.
Then she found something that made her breath catch: “The presence of a crescent mark indicates an early bond awakening. In rare cases, the mate bond with a cursed Alpha can trigger a hybrid transformation in the Moonborn before the first shift.”
Isla’s hands trembled as she let the phone slip into her lap. She pressed a palm to her chest, feeling the heat of the mark beneath her skin.
“No,” she muttered. “I’m not a werewolf. That’s insane.” But denial was growing thinner by the hour.
Her mind flashed with Kael’s voice, growling her name like a prayer. The way his hands trembled as he fought the urge to bite. The wall splitting from the force of his body. The way she hadn’t run and the way her body had burned for him. Not just with desire but with recognition.
She shook her head, trying to scrub the thoughts from her mind. “I’m not like him.” But the words didn’t feel true anymore.
The day dragged on, every second stretched like a rubber band about to snap. Isla couldn’t concentrate. During her rounds in the medical wing, she found herself standing too still, listening too hard. She could hear the thrum of heartbeats in patients three rooms away. Hear the flutter of wings outside a closed window. Her senses were betraying her and worse, so was her temper.
A patient growled at her when she entered his room, just a low, irritated noise, but something inside her snapped. Her vision went white for a moment. She clenched the clipboard so hard it cracked. She had to excuse herself before she did something she couldn’t explain.
In the breakroom, she nearly collapsed onto a stool, pressing her fingers to her temples.
“Rough day?”
The voice startled her. Rosie stood at the doorway, holding a steaming cup of tea.
Isla tried to fake a smile. “Just... tired.” Rosie stepped inside, her gaze sharp. “You’re shaking.” “I’m fine.”
Rosie didn't buy it. “Isla, did something happen with Kael again?”
She didn’t answer right away. Then softly, “I think I’m becoming like him.”
Rosie blinked, stunned. “You mean….like a wolf?”
Isla nodded slowly. “I’ve been feeling things. Hearing things. My eyes…” She trailed off, rubbing them like it would erase the memory.
Rosie walked over and placed the tea in her hands. “You need to be careful. If your wolf is awakening and you don’t know how to control it... things could go bad real fast.”
“How do you even know all this?” Rosie gave a tight smile. “You’re not the first Moonborn they’ve tried to hide.”
That sentence hit Isla like a truck. She stared. “What?”
But Rosie didn’t elaborate. She just walked out, leaving Isla reeling.
That night, the storm began.
Rain lashed against the windows of her room. Thunder rolled across the sky like something monstrous prowled above.
Isla curled up under her blanket, but the burn in her chest wouldn't stop. Her mark had started glowing again—subtle, but constant.
She gritted her teeth, curled tighter into herself.
The pain came in waves. Her muscles seized, stretched, then snapped back. Her spine burned. Her fingertips throbbed.
She rolled onto the floor, trying not to scream.
But then came the voice.
Not Kael’s, not hers. A third presence.
It was older, darker.
“You were never meant to stay human.”
She cried out, clutching her chest. Her vision blurred with tears and silver light.
“No,” she gasped. “No, please…”
But the transformation had already begun.
Her bones bent. Her back arched. Her hands slammed into the floor—claws now, not fingers.
She crawled toward the mirror.
Her eyes met her reflection.
And it wasn't her anymore.
It is something wild.
Silver eyes, sharp ears, canines pressing against her lips.
Immediately the storm outside cracked again, and in that moment of brightness, a vision surged through Isla’s mind—not a dream, not imagination.
It was a memory and it was not hers.
She stood on a battlefield soaked in rain and blood. Wolves—huge, monstrous—tore into one another. Kael was at the center, snarling, covered in scars. Alone. Surrounded. He looked up at her through the storm—through time.
And he whispered her name.
She gasped and clutched her chest.
Back in her room, she stumbled away from the mirror. The power surging inside her wasn’t just trying to shift her body. It was showing her truths.
Things she wasn’t ready to see.
She backed against the far wall, breathing like she’d just run a marathon.
Rosie’s voice echoed in her mind: “You’re not the first Moonborn they’ve tried to hide.”
What did that mean? Had there been others like her? Had they all gone mad? Had they all become… this?
And then Kael was there.
Through the cracked window, lightning flashing behind him like a crown.
His eyes met hers. Glowing and present.
Isla didn’t move, neither did he.
For one suspended second, the bond between them pulsed so violently she swore the floor trembled.
Behind him, a flicker of violet.
Vespera.
Watching from the treeline like a vulture.
A warning flashed in Kael’s eyes.
Then she heard a whisper in her blood.
Run.
- Writer
