Chapter 21: The Notebook
Chapter 21: The Notebook
Lena woke up with the notebook still pressed against her chest.
Morning light filled her room and for a moment she just lay there, staring at the ceiling, her mind already spinning.
She sat up slowly and opened the notebook, reading through everything she'd written in the early hours of dawn.
The dates were there. The first vision had come two weeks before she moved to Blackwood. The energy bursts started shortly after she enrolled at Crescent Ridge. The claw marks appeared three days ago. The symbols came after that.
Each event was marked with a date and time. Each moment her emotions spiked was noted. Every reaction from Ethan, Liam, and Caleb was documented.
Looking at it laid out like this, she couldn't deny it anymore. There was a pattern and it was accelerating.
The visions were getting more frequent. The energy bursts were getting stronger. The symbols were appearing faster. And the wolves around her were losing control more easily.
Whatever was happening to her was building toward something.
Lena closed the notebook and tucked it carefully into her bag. It felt dangerous carrying it with her, like she was walking around with evidence of something she didn't fully understand. But she couldn't leave it at home either at least not when she might need to reference it.
The drive to school was quiet. Caleb didn't mention the previous night.
He didn't bring up his loss of control or the marks on her arm. He just drove in tense silence while Lena stared out the window and tried to prepare herself for the day ahead.
She had to keep her emotions flat.
She had to control them. Caleb had warned her that every spike sent a signal to the forest, drawing attention she couldn't afford.
But controlling her emotions all day was going to be exhausting.
After the first period, Lena sat at her desk and focused on keeping her breathing steady, her heart rate even.
When someone whispered something about her being a freak she didn't react. When a student bumped her shoulder deliberately in the hallway she just kept walking.
She felt like she was holding herself together with sheer willpower.
By the second period her temples were starting to ache from the effort.
Ethan noticed.
She could tell by the way he was watching her, his gray eyes tracking her movements with more attention than usual. In their shared history class he didn't sit in his normal spot. He sat one row closer to her, angled so he could see her face.
The cold distance he usually maintained was still there but somehow, he felt closer. He stayed closer to her today without explanation, close enough that other students started noticing and whispering about it.
Lena was too focused on managing herself to care what they were saying.
During the third period she excused herself to the bathroom and splashed cold water on her face, staring at her reflection. She looked tired and strained, as if she was carrying a weight nobody else could see.
Which, in all honesty, she was.
She dried her face and took a deep breath, forcing herself to relax her shoulders, to unclench her jaw. She had to make it through the day – just a few more hours.
When she came back to class Ethan was standing in the hallway outside the door. He didn't say anything but he looked at her once and then walked away.
However, the fact that he'd been there, waiting to make sure she came back, said more than words could.
Lunch was the hardest part. The cafeteria was loud and crowded and full of emotional energy that pressed against Lena from all sides. She found her usual corner table and sat down, her hands clenched in her lap, focusing on staying calm.
Liam appeared halfway through the period. He didn't sit with her but he chose a table within her line of sight, close enough to watch. Their eyes met once across the cafeteria and something passed between them, an acknowledgment of the effort she was making.
Then he looked away and Lena went back to pretending to eat.
She had a free period after lunch. Instead of going to her usual spot, Lena headed to the academy library. She needed answers and she'd exhausted every other option she could think of.
The library was quiet and mostly empty. Lena made her way to the back shelves where the older books were kept, the ones students rarely touched. She started searching for anything that might explain the symbols appearing on her skin.
Ancient languages. Occult references. Werewolf history and lore.
She found nothing that matched.
After half an hour of searching, Lena was ready to give up. She pulled another book from the shelf and flipped through it, her eyes scanning symbols that were close but not quite right.
That's when she felt someone watching her.
She looked up and found the librarian standing a few aisles away. The woman was older, maybe in her sixties, with sharp eyes that seemed to see more than they should. She'd been watching Lena search for a while now, her expression unreadable.
Lena expected her to say something about putting the books back or being quiet. Instead the librarian just watched for another long moment, then walked over to a different section entirely.
When she came back, she placed a single book on the table beside Lena without a word.
The book was old. The leather cover was cracked and faded, the pages yellowed with age. There was no title on the spine, no author listed anywhere.
The librarian met Lena's eyes once, giving her a brief intense look, then turned and walked away without saying anything.
Lena stared at the book for a moment, her heart pounding. Then she opened it carefully.
The pages were filled with symbols.
Hundreds of them, drawn in faded ink, each one accompanied by what looked like notes in a language Lena didn't recognize. She flipped through slowly, her hands shaking, until she found it.
It was there on page forty-seven.
The symbol that had appeared on her arm
Lena's breath caught. She traced her finger over the drawing, comparing it mentally to what she'd seen glowing on her skin. It was the same. The curves, the angles, every detail matched.
There were notes beside it but they were in that strange language she couldn't read. She pulled out her phone to take a picture but the bell rang before she could.
Her free period was over.
Lena looked at the book, then at the clock, then back at the book. She needed more time.
She needed to read through the whole thing and find the other symbols.
She needed to see if there were explanations.
She gathered her things and carried the book to the front desk. The librarian looked up as she approached.
“Can I check this out?” Lena asked.
The librarian glanced at the book and something flickered across her face. “That one doesn't leave the library.”
“But I need to –”
“Library use only.” Her tone was firm. “You can come back and read it here.”
Lena wanted to argue but the expression on the librarian's face stopped her. She nodded and set the book down on the returns cart, memorizing the worn leather cover so she could find it again.
After her last class, Lena went straight back to the library. She needed to finish reading that book, and to understand what those symbols meant.
She made her way to the back section where she'd found it before, scanning the shelves.
The book wasn't there.
Lena searched the entire shelf, then the neighboring ones, thinking maybe it had been misshelved. She checked the returns cart.
Then the tables in case someone else was reading it but she found nothing.
She went to the front desk. The librarian who'd given her the book was gone, replaced by a younger woman Lena didn't recognize.
“I'm looking for a book,” Lena said. “It's Old, leather cover, no title. It was on shelf forty-two in the back section.”
The young librarian looked at her blankly. “I haven't seen anything like that.”
“It was there during my free period. Someone must have moved it.”
“I've been here all afternoon. Nobody's moved any books from that section.”
But Lena knew that wasn't true. She'd seen it there.
She had held it in her hands. She had found her symbol on page forty-seven – she was very sure of that.
She thanked the librarian and walked back to the shelf, standing in front of the empty space where the book had been.
Someone had removed it – between her free period and now, someone had deliberately taken that book off the shelf.
And the only reason to do that was because Lena had found it.
She stood there for a long moment, staring at the gap in the shelf, her mind racing. Someone was watching her. Someone knew she was looking for answers.
And they didn't want her to find them.
Lena pulled out her notebook and wrote down everything she remembered from those brief minutes with the book. The symbol on page forty-seven. The strange language in the notes. The way the librarian had looked at her before walking away.
She was being monitored. That much was clear now.
The ques
tion was by who, and what they were trying to keep her from learning.
Lena closed the notebook and slipped it back into her bag, her hand shaking slightly.