Chapter 4 Something's Wrong With Me (Ember's POV)
I slammed the bathroom stall door behind me and collapsed onto the toilet seat, staring at my hands. My nails were still too long and too sharp, but as I watched, they began to shrink back to normal length. The process felt like reverse growing pains, a dull ache in my fingertips that made me want to scratch at something.
"This isn't real." I whispered the words to my trembling hands. "I'm having some kind of breakdown. Stress. Too much pressure about college applications and volleyball scholarships and..."
But my nails had definitely changed. I'd felt them grow, felt the sharp points pressing against the podium wood. And my eyes in that trophy case reflection...
"No." I shook my head violently. "Trick of the light. Adrenaline. People's eyes do weird things when they're upset."
The bathroom door creaked open, and I held my breath.
"Em? Are you in here?" Sage's voice bounced off the walls, soft but insistent.
"Go away."
"Not happening." I heard her footsteps moving between the stalls, checking each one. "Everyone's looking for you. Principal Keagan wants to see you in her office, and half the football team is acting like you just declared war on them."
"I said go away."
"And I said not happening." She stopped outside my stall door. "Open up. We need to talk."
"I can't."
"Why not?"
Because I'm losing my mind.
"Because I'm embarrassed," I said instead.
Sage was quiet for a long moment. Then: "Em, what happened in there wasn't just embarrassment. That was something else entirely."
My blood went cold. "What do you mean?"
"I mean I saw your hands change. I saw your eyes go silver. And I saw the way every football student in that room reacted like you'd just announced the apocalypse."
I fumbled with the lock, my still-shaking fingers barely managing to slide the bolt back. Sage pushed the door open and squeezed into the cramped space with me, her face pale but determined.
"Every football student?" I repeated. "What are you talking about?"
"Don't play dumb with me. You think I haven't noticed the patterns? The way those kids move differently, react differently, stick together like they're part of some exclusive club?" She gripped my shoulders, forcing me to meet her eyes. "Em, what are you?"
The question hit me like a slap. "I don't know what you're talking about."
"Your eyes turned silver. Your nails grew into claws. In front of three hundred witnesses." Her voice dropped to an urgent whisper. "So either you're having the world's most specific psychotic break, or you're something that's not entirely human."
I stared at her, this girl who'd been my roommate and best friend for three years, who painted her nails impossible colors and always knew when I was lying. Who was now looking at me like I might sprout fangs at any moment.
"This is insane," I whispered.
"Yeah, it is. But it's also happening." She pulled out her phone and started scrolling. "Look, I've been taking pictures all semester. Little things that seemed weird but not worth mentioning."
She showed me the screen. A photo of Knox mid-tackle during practice, his body positioned in a way that should have been physically impossible for a human. Another of Trey throwing a pass, the ball captured mid-flight but blurred like it was moving faster than the camera could track.
"And this one," she swiped to another image, "is from last week's lunch period."
The photo showed Trey's table, but taken with some kind of filter that made everything look strange. Most of the students appeared normal, but Trey and several of his teammates seemed to glow with a faint light, like they were lit from within.
"What filter did you use?"
"It's not a filter. It's an app that supposedly detects supernatural auras. I downloaded it as a joke, but..." She trailed off, staring at the image. "Em, you need to see this."
She held up her phone again, this time with the camera active and pointed at me. On the screen, I looked exactly like myself, except for a soft silver glow that seemed to pulse with my heartbeat.
"That's not possible."
"A lot of things aren't possible. But they're happening anyway." She lowered the phone, her expression serious. "The question is, what are we going to do about it?"
Before I could answer, the bathroom door burst open again. This time it was Mika, her face flushed like she'd been running.
"Ember! Thank God you're here. You need to know what people are saying."
"I really don't."
"Yes, you do." Mika glanced around the bathroom nervously, then lowered her voice. "I was walking past the athletic offices when I heard voices. Male voices, and they were pissed."
Sage and I exchanged glances. "What kind of voices?" Sage asked.
"Football team. Definitely Trey and Knox, plus maybe four or five others. They were having some kind of meeting." Mika leaned closer, her eyes wide with excitement. "And they kept talking about something called the 'Crimson Wolf situation.'"
My stomach dropped. "The what?"
"Crimson Wolf. Like that weird poetry you read. They kept saying it over and over, and someone, I think it was Knox, said something about protocols and damage control." Mika grabbed my arm. "Em, what did you do? They sounded scared."
Scared. Trey Jarred, who commanded every room he entered, was scared of me. The thought should have been satisfying after his public humiliation, but instead it made my skin crawl.
"I didn't do anything," I said, but as the words left my mouth, I knew they weren't true. Something had definitely happened in that assembly hall, something that went beyond normal human experience.
"They also kept mentioning something about a prophecy," Mika continued. "And someone said they needed to 'contact the Elders' immediately."
"Elders?" Sage frowned. "What kind of sports team has Elders?"
The kind that isn't really a sports team, I thought, but didn't say it out loud. Instead, I stood up on unsteady legs. "I need to get back to the room. I need to think."
"Em..." Sage started, but I was already pushing past them.
"Please. Just... give me some space. I'll figure this out."
I made it back to our dorm room without running into anyone else, though I could feel eyes on me as I walked through the corridors. Word had clearly spread about the assembly incident, and every whispered conversation felt like it was about me.
Our room felt like a sanctuary after the chaos of the afternoon. I collapsed onto my bed and stared at the ceiling, counting the familiar cracks in the plaster while my mind raced.
Crimson Wolf. The words from my sleep-written lyrics echoed in my memory, but now they felt different. Less like poetry and more like... a title. A name.
But that was impossible. I was Ember Thorne, volleyball player and honor student. I wasn't some mystical creature from ancient prophecies. I was just a girl who happened to be really good at sports and had a father who died when I was a baby.
Except my father hadn't really died. He'd disappeared. And I'd always been faster, stronger, more agile than I should have been. And now I was growing claws and my eyes were turning silver and football players were holding emergency meetings about prophecies.
Maybe impossible was relative.
Sage had returned hours earlier but hadn't pushed for conversation, just did her homework while shooting worried glances in my direction. When she finally went to bed, I pretended to sleep until her breathing evened out.
But sleep, when it came, wasn't the escape I'd hoped for.
I dreamed of running.
Not the normal kind of running.
This was different. Wild.
The moon hung overhead like a spotlight, but it wasn't the normal silver-white I was used to. This moon was red, deep crimson that painted everything in shades of blood and shadow. And when I looked down at my feet, they weren't feet at all.
They were paws.
I ran for what felt like hours, following paths that existed only in moonlight and instinct.
The forest around me was more alive than any place I'd ever been, full of sounds and scents that my human mind shouldn't have been able to process but somehow could.
Other shapes moved through the trees, wolves, but larger than any wolves should be, their eyes glowing in the crimson light. They ran with me, beside me, like I belonged with them. Like I was one of them.
And when we reached a clearing where ancient stones formed a circle, I threw back my head and howled. The sound that came from my throat was pure wildness, pure joy, pure power. It echoed off the mountains and came back transformed, carrying the voices of dozens of others.
I woke up gasping, my heart racing and my skin slick with sweat. Dawn was just starting to creep through our dorm room windows, painting everything in shades of gray and gold.
I sat up, running my hands through my hair to clear my head, and froze.
My fingers came away with pine needles tangled in the strands. Dark soil was caked under my fingernails, and when I looked down at my feet, there were grass stains on my socks that definitely hadn't been there when I went to bed.
I stared at the evidence in my trembling hands, my mind trying to process what it meant. I'd never left the dorm room. The door was still locked from the inside, and Sage was sleeping peacefully in her bed across from mine.
But somehow, I'd been in the forest. Somehow, I'd been running on four legs under a blood-red moon.
And that felt more real than anything that had happened in my human life.