Chapter 152 Chapter 152

Chapter 152 Chapter 152
Taylor's POV

The video wasn't as bad as I feared, but it wasn't good either.

Grainy, shaky footage, my eyes flashing gold clearly visible even through the shaky camera work, the table cracking loud enough that the person recording gasped audibly.

The caption underneath read simply, this girl lost it at an audition today, no idea what happened but it was wild.

It hadn't gone far.

A few hundred views, mostly confused comments speculating about special effects contact lenses or some kind of prank.

Nobody outside the pack would ever guess the truth. But that didn't make watching it any easier.

"I look unhinged," I said, staring at Zara's phone, my stomach twisting.

"You look scared," Zara corrected gently.

"There's a difference, even if strangers online can't tell it apart."

I appreciated her trying, but the shame sat heavy regardless.



Maria came by that evening, along with Willow, both of them settling into our living room with the same calm patience they'd shown all year.

"I need to understand what's happening to me," I said, once everyone had settled.

"I thought once the danger passed, Doran would just quiet down. Instead she's still right there, ready to surface the second I feel anything too strongly."

"That's actually normal," Maria said gently. "More normal than you might think."

"How is any of this normal," I asked.

"Because Doran didn't wake up gradually, the way most wolves do," Maria explained.

"She surfaced entirely in response to crisis after crisis, trauma stacked on trauma for over a year straight. That's not a gentle awakening. That's survival mode, activated again and again until it became the only pattern your body fully learned."

"So she doesn't know how to be calm," I said slowly.

"She's never had the chance to learn," Willow said. "Just like the rest of us, honestly. Most of the silent bloodline struggled with exactly this once we finally stopped hiding. Strength without control is just as dangerous as suppression was, in a different way."

"How did you learn control," I asked.

"Slowly," Willow admitted.

"Small, low stakes situations, deliberately, over and over, until our bodies finally understood that not every strong feeling means danger." She smiled faintly.

"It's not glamorous and no big dramatic battle to win. Just patient, boring practice."

I sat with that, some of the shame from the audition slowly settling into something more manageable, understanding instead of humiliation.

"I don't know where to start," I admitted.

"We start together," Willow said.

"The bloodline's already been building something like this for ourselves. You're welcome to join, properly this time, not just as our Alpha showing up in a crisis."



Over the following weeks, I started spending afternoons with Willow and the others, small deliberate exercises meant to teach my body that strong feelings didn't automatically mean danger anymore.

We practiced simple things at first.

Sitting with frustration without letting it build into fury.

Feeling embarrassed without letting shame spiral into panic into Willowbrook taught me breathing patterns passed down through generations of suppressed wolves who'd learned, out of necessity, how to hold power steady instead of letting it explode.

It was slow. Frustratingly slow, some days, especially when old fears resurfaced without warning, my chest tightening at sounds that reminded me too closely of danger long since passed.

"You're not going to master this in a week," Willow reminded me gently, after a particularly rough afternoon where I'd nearly lost control again over something as small as dropping a cup.”

"You spent over a year training your body to treat every strong emotion as an emergency. Unlearning that takes real time."

"I hate being patient," I admitted, frustrated tears stinging my eyes.

"I know," she said. "But you're not doing this alone anymore. That's the whole difference now."



Asher showed up most evenings after training, sitting with me quietly while I worked through whatever exercises Willow had assigned that day, steady and patient in exactly the way he'd always been.

"You don't have to fix this fast for my sake," he said one evening, noticing my frustration building again after a difficult session.

"I'm not going anywhere, whether this takes weeks or years."

"I just want to feel normal again," I admitted. "Or whatever normal means now."

"Maybe normal isn't the goal," he said gently.

"Maybe the goal is just learning to live comfortably with what you actually are, instead of chasing some version of yourself that never has to work hard at anything."

I thought about that for a long while, curled against his shoulder on my porch steps, the evening settling quiet and warm around us.

"I think I'd like to try the audition thing again eventually," I admitted.

"Not right away, but eventually. I don't want one bad day to convince me I don't get to want things for myself anymore."

"Then we'll get you there," Asher said, squeezing my hand. "Slowly. However long it takes."

I leaned into him, grateful beyond words for the steady, unglamorous kind of love he offered, nothing dramatic or urgent about it, just patient presence through every difficult, ordinary day.

Mom stepped out onto the porch a while later, setting down two cups of tea without a word, the same quiet support she'd offered all year.

"You're doing better than you think," she said, sitting down beside us.

"I've watched you grow so much this year, Taylor. This is just another part of that growth. Slower, maybe. But real."

I looked between her and Asher, grateful for the found family surrounding me, and understood that whatever the road ahead actually looked like, learning to live with Doran instead of just surviving her, I wasn't walking it alone.

That, more than anything else this year had taught me, felt like the truest kind of victory.