Chapter 151 Chapter 151

Chapter 151 Chapter 151
Taylor's POV

The next day I decided to take a walk round the street, then I saw a flyer.

The flyer caught my eye on the community board outside the coffee shop, bright and simple.

Open auditions.

A small independent film shooting scenes partly in our territory and no experience necessary.

I stood there staring at it longer than I meant to, something warm sparking in my chest for the first time in weeks that had nothing to do with wolves, covenants, or danger.

"You should do it," Asher said that evening, when I showed him a photo of the flyer over dinner.

"You've spent this whole year fighting for your life. You deserve to chase something just because it makes you happy."

"I've never acted before," I said. "Not really and unless you count pretending to be your brother's girlfriend for months."

"That counts for something," he said, smiling. "You were convincing enough that half the school believed it."

Mom encouraged me too, practically pushing me toward the sign up sheet the next morning. "You need something that's just yours," she said.

"Something that has nothing to do with surviving anything."

So I signed up.



The audition took place three days later, in a rented studio space downtown, bright lights and unfamiliar faces crowding every corner.

I sat in a row of folding chairs with a dozen other hopefuls, my hands sweating despite Asher's encouraging texts buzzing steadily in my pocket.

"Taylor Whitman?" a woman called eventually, clipboard in hand.

I stood, my legs shakier than I expected, and followed her into a smaller room where two casting directors sat behind a table, bright lights trained directly on a small marked spot on the floor.

"Whenever you're ready" one of them said, gesturing toward the scene sides I'd been given to prepare.

I took a breath and started, the words feeling clumsy and unfamiliar in my mouth, my nerves climbing higher with every line.

The casting directors watched with unreadable expressions, occasionally jotting notes, and the pressure of their scrutiny built fast inside my chest.

Halfway through, one of them interrupted.

"Can you try it again, with more intensity this time? Really dig into the anger of the scene."

I nodded, swallowing hard, and started over, pushing harder into the emotion the way she'd asked, dredging up real feeling instead of performed feeling, memories of fear and fury from this past year surfacing faster than I expected.

Something shifted slowly in my chest.

I kept going, focused on the scene, on the anger the character needed, not realizing until it was too late that I was pulling from something far more real than fictional dialogue could contain.

"Taylor," the casting director said, her voice suddenly rise with alarm. "Your eyes."

I froze.

The bright studio lights caught something in the reflection of the mirror propped against the wall, and I saw it too, golden color flashing hard and unmistakable where my normal eyes should have been.

Panic came fast, and panic was exactly the wrong response.

The table beside me rattled violently, one of the studio lights flickering hard, glass cracking somewhere near the ceiling fixtures. Someone gasped.

A chair toppled over as another hopeful scrambled backward, phone already rising to record whatever was happening.

"I'm sorry," I stammered, my voice unsteady, Doran was surging fast and uncontrolled beneath my skin, the exact opposite of what I needed in this exact moment.

"I don't know what's….."

The table split clean down the middle where my hand had landed too hard trying to steady myself, wood cracking loud enough that everyone in the room flinched back at once.

"What is happening?" one of the casting directors asked, backing away fast, fear plain across her face.

I couldn't answer.

I couldn't explain any of it to people who had no idea werewolves existed, no framework for understanding gold eyes and cracked furniture and a girl who suddenly felt too strong and too dangerous to be standing in a small enclosed room with them.

"I need to go," I said, my voice breaking completely now.

I turned and fled, pushing past the stunned hopefuls still waiting in the hallway, ignoring the shouts calling after me.

The phones raised to capture my humiliating exit, and burst out into the parking lot gasping for air, tears streaming hot and fast down my face.



Asher say me twenty minutes later, curled against the side of my car, still shaking, my breathing ragged and uneven.

"Taylor." He knelt down fast in front of me, his hands finding my shoulders gently.

"What happened?"

"I lost control," I said, my voice cracking."In front of everyone, my eyes changed, the table cracked, someone probably has it on video right now."

I pressed my hands over my face.

"I thought this was over, Asher. I thought once Kessler and Yvaine were gone, Doran would just settle. But she's still right there, waiting to explode the second I feel anything too intensely."

"Hey." He pulled my hands gently away from my face, his expression steady despite the worry clearly written across it.

"You're not broken. You're not back where you started."

"It feels like I am," I whispered.

"I embarrassed myself in front of complete strangers. I scared them. I don't even know if I hurt anyone."

"Nobody was hurt," he said gently.

"Frightened, maybez but not hurt. And Taylor, this isn't the same as before. You're not facing an enemy trying to destroy you. You're facing something you never actually got the chance to learn how to live with, because every single time Doran surfaced this year, it was in the middle of a life or death crisis."

I sat with that for a moment, some of the panic slowly easing under the steadiness of his voice.

"What do I do now?" I asked quietly. "I can't keep flinching every time something makes me feel too much."

"We figure it out," Asher said simply.

"Together, because his isn't something that fixes itself overnight, but it's not something you have to face alone either."

I leaned into him, exhausted and humiliated, the bright hope of the audition now curdled into something painful and raw.

My phone buzzed against my hip. A message from Zara, gentle but worried.

Someone posted a video from the audition. It's not going viral or anything, don't panic. But I think you should see it before someone shows you a worse version of it.

I closed my eyes, dread settling heavy in my chest, and understood that whatever peace I thought I'd finally earned this year, learning to live with Doran was clearly only just beginning.