Chapter 24 Isla's New Purpose
POV: Isla Reid
Location: Meg's Flophouse, Whitechapel
Time: Two Months Post-Bite
I'm stitching up a knife wound on a packless wolf when I hear the screaming. It's coming from the street outside the flophouse. High-pitched, terrified. Young.
The wolf I'm working on, a male named Derek, nods toward the window. "Another one. That's the third this week."
"Third what?"
"Newly turned wolf. Probably just survived first transformation. They always end up here eventually." Derek winces as I pull the thread through. "You should stay out of it. Not your problem."
I finish the stitches and head downstairs. Meg's already at the door. Outside, a crowd's gathered around someone on the ground. A girl, maybe seventeen, curled in a ball and screaming.
"Turned wolf," Meg says quietly. "First transformation was probably last night. Body's still adjusting."
The girl's covered in blood. Her own blood from where her skin split during transformation. Her clothes are shredded. She's barefoot. And she's screaming like the world's ending.
No one's helping her. People just watch. Some with pity. Some with boredom. This is normal in the Rookeries. Just another broken wolf.
I push through the crowd and kneel beside the girl. "Hey. Look at me. You're okay."
The girl's eyes are wild. Amber, like all werewolves. But confused. Terrified. "I'm dying. I'm dying. Please help me."
"You're not dying. You survived the transformation. Your body's just healing." I check her over. The wounds are superficial. Painful but not dangerous. "What's your name?"
"Sophie. Sophie Chen." The girl's shaking. "I don't understand what's happening. I was attacked. Bitten. Then I got sick and now I'm. I'm."
"A werewolf. You were turned." I help Sophie sit up. "Where are your parents? Family?"
"Gone. They thought I was on drugs. Threw me out when I couldn't explain what was wrong." Sophie starts crying. "I don't have anywhere to go. I don't know what to do."
I know exactly how she feels. Two months ago, that was me. Attacked, bitten, turned into a monster. Losing everything.
"Come with me," I say. "I'll help you."
I get Sophie inside the flophouse. Meg watches but doesn't object. I take Sophie upstairs to my room. It's small, barely big enough for one person. But it's shelter.
Sophie collapses on my mattress. "What's happening to me? Why does everything hurt?"
"Your body's adjusting to being werewolf. The transformation damages you internally. It takes a few days to fully heal." I get a damp cloth and start cleaning the blood off her skin. "You're going to be okay. The pain will pass."
"Will I transform again?"
"Every full moon. You can't control it at first. Takes years of practice to transform voluntarily." I've learned all this in the past two months. Meg taught me. Other packless wolves taught me. "But you'll survive. I survived. You will too."
Sophie looks at me with desperate hope. "You're like me? You were turned?"
"Two months ago. Attacked in a council estate. Survived first transformation by luck. Ended up here." I finish cleaning her wounds. "It gets easier. Not easy. But easier."
"What do I do now?"
"You survive. That's all. One day at a time." I show Sophie how to wrap her wounds. How to manage the pain. How to eat when everything tastes wrong. All the things I learned the hard way.
Sophie stays in my room that night. I sleep on the floor. It's uncomfortable but manageable. And having someone to help makes me feel less useless.
In the morning, Meg pulls me aside. "You can't take in every newly turned wolf who shows up here."
"Why not?"
"Because there's too many. The system creates them constantly. Attacks, forced turnings, experiments. They all end up in the Rookeries. You'll be overwhelmed." Meg's voice is kind but firm. "I appreciate the compassion. But you need to be realistic."
"I'm a nurse. Helping people is what I do."
"You were a nurse. Now you're packless wolf barely surviving yourself. Don't take on more than you can handle."
But I can't stop. Over the next week, three more newly turned wolves show up. Two males, one female. All teenagers. All terrified. All abandoned by families who couldn't handle having a werewolf child.
I take them all in. My room becomes a shelter. Four wolves plus me, cramped into a space meant for one. We're sleeping on top of each other. Sharing the single mattress in shifts.
Meg doesn't throw us out but she's not happy. "Isla, this isn't sustainable. You have no money. No resources. You're stealing food from the communal kitchen. Other residents are complaining."
"What else am I supposed to do? Let them die on the street?"
"Some wolves die. That's reality in the Rookeries. You can't save everyone."
"I can try."
I'm treating a wound on one of the males, a kid named James, when Sophie asks the question I've been avoiding.
"Who turned you? Who bit you and made you like this?"
"A packless wolf named Marcus. He was ordered to do it. I was a test subject."
"Test subject for what?"
"I don't know. But it was deliberate. Someone wanted to see if I'd survive the turning." I've been investigating this for two months. Following leads. Asking questions. "Marcus won't tell me who gave the orders. He's too scared."
"Scared of who?"
"Someone powerful. Someone connected." I finish wrapping James's wound. "I'll find out eventually. But it doesn't matter right now. What matters is surviving."
The newly turned wolves are struggling. The transformations are getting harder. Full moon's in three days and none of them are ready. I'm trying to prepare them but I barely know what I'm doing myself.
Money's running out. I spent my last forty pounds on food two days ago. I'm stealing from the communal kitchen but that's not enough for five wolves. We're all hungry constantly.
I consider going back to nursing. Finding work at a clinic somewhere. But I can't. My certification's revoked. And I can't risk transforming while treating patients.
I'm trapped. Just like the wolves I'm trying to help.
On the tenth day, a fifth wolf arrives. Male, early twenties, covered in wounds that aren't healing right. Someone attacks him while he was mid-transformation. The damage is severe.
I get him into my room. The other four wolves make space. We lay him on the mattress and I start examining the wounds.
"These are silver burns. Deep ones." I look at the wolf. "What happened?"
"Hunters. They knew I was werewolf. Waited for me during full moon. Attacked with silver weapons." The wolf coughs blood. "I barely got away."
The wounds are bad. Silver poisoning is setting in. I don't have the supplies to treat this properly. Don't have the medicine. Don't have the tools.
I do what I can. Clean the wounds. Bandage them. Try to prevent infection. But it's not enough.
The wolf dies six hours later. In my arms, coughing blood, whispering about family he'll never see again. He's twenty-three years old and he dies in a Rookeries flophouse with five other wolves watching.
We don't even know his name.
Sophie helps me wrap the body. We carry it downstairs. Meg calls Silas, the body trader. He'll take the corpse and sell it to necromancers. That's what happens to dead wolves in the Rookeries. They become commodities.
I wash the blood off my hands and sit on the flophouse steps. Four newly turned wolves are depending on me. I've got no money, no resources, no plan beyond surviving day to day.
And wolves keep dying. Keep arriving broken and desperate. Keep needing help I can't provide.
Sophie sits beside me. "We can't keep doing this. Living five people in one room. Stealing food. Watching wolves die."
"I know."
"So what do we do?"
I think about Meg. About how she runs this flophouse. Provides shelter for twenty wolves in exchange for whatever they can offer. It's not perfect but it works.
"We need real shelter. Real resources. We need to organize." I look at the four wolves who are now my responsibility. "I can't save every newly turned wolf in London. But I can save some of them. Give them a place to survive that first month when everything's impossible."
"How?"
"I don't know yet. But I'll figure it out." I stand up. "The system creates victims and abandons them. Someone has to catch them when they fall. Might as well be us."
Sophie nods. "What do you need from me?"
"Help. All four of you. We find a building. Squat it if we have to. Create a shelter specifically for newly turned wolves. Teach them how to survive that first transformation. How to manage the wolf. How to find food and safety in the Rookeries."
"That's a lot of work for no money."
"Everything in the Rookeries is a lot of work for no money. At least this work matters." I look at my hands. Still stained with blood from the wolf who just died. "I was a nurse. I saved lives. Then I became a monster and lost everything. But I still know how to help people. That has to count for something."
The four newly turned wolves are watching from the window upstairs. Young, scared, dependent on me. I didn't ask for this responsibility. Didn't want it.
But I've got it anyway. And I can either give up or find a way to make it work.
I choose work.
Because wolves keep dying. Keep arriving broken. Keep needing someone to care when everyone else has given up.
The system that created me, that turned me into a monster, that destroyed my life, it's still creating more victims. Every week, more attacks. More forced turnings. More experiments.
Someone has to help them. Someone has to build something better than watching wolves die on the street.
Might as well be me.