Chapter 7: The Wolf That Wasn’t Sleeping

The classroom emptied slowly, students throwing curious glances over their shoulders as they filed out. Roxanne stayed seated, the instructor’s words looping through her head.

According to your file, you shouldn’t have been able to do that.

Her entire life, she’d been told the same thing. Dormant wolf. No shift. No voice. Nothing.

She’d never questioned it. Why would she?

The instructor pulled a chair across from her and sat down, studying her carefully.

"When did you first learn your wolf was dormant?"

"I was tested as a child," Roxanne said. "It never manifested. I never shifted, never heard anything. The healers just said it was dormant and that was that."

"Did any healer ever suggest otherwise? Any inconsistency in your results over the years?"

"No. Never."

He studied her a moment longer. "Has anything unusual happened recently? Any strange reactions, sensations, anything out of the ordinary?"

Roxanne thought of the training ground. The sudden clarity, the heartbeat that wasn’t hers, the way her senses had sharpened for half a second before vanishing completely.

She hesitated.

"Nothing important," she said.

His expression made it clear he didn’t believe her, but he didn’t push.

Instead, he stood and gestured for her to follow him down a narrow hallway into a smaller, private training room. A circle was etched into the floor, faintly glowing with runes she didn’t recognize.

"This detects wolf presence," he explained. "It’s a basic response test. Completely safe. Stand in the center."

Roxanne stepped inside the circle, feeling ridiculous.

"Call for your wolf," he said.

She closed her eyes and tried, reaching inward toward whatever was supposed to be there.

Nothing.

She tried again, focusing harder.

Still nothing.

Embarrassment crawled up her neck as the instructor waited, watching the readings on a small device in his hand.

Maybe yesterday really had been adrenaline. Maybe she’d wanted so badly to be something other than defective that she’d imagined the whole thing.

The instructor began jotting something down, his expression settling into quiet resignation.

Then Roxanne felt it.

A pressure, faint at first, building behind her ribs. Her heartbeat shifted, slowing and deepening at once. The room around her seemed to fall away, sound dimming until all she could hear was her own pulse.

And then, something that wasn’t a thought at all.

A presence. Aware. Watching.

Roxanne froze, unsure if she was imagining it.

Are you there? she asked silently, barely believing she was even trying.

Yes.

The word arrived clear and certain, not spoken aloud but somehow more real than sound. Roxanne’s breath caught in her throat.

Her wolf had been there her whole life. Not sleeping. Not gone.

Watching.

The instructor’s device suddenly flared, and he straightened sharply, staring at the reading.

"What?" Roxanne asked, opening her eyes.

He didn’t answer immediately, checking the numbers again like he didn’t trust them the first time.

"Your wolf isn’t dormant," he said finally.

The floor seemed to tilt beneath her.

"That’s not possible," Roxanne said. "I’ve never shifted. Not once. Not ever."

"A truly dormant wolf shouldn’t register on this system at all," he said. "Yours just spiked higher than anything I’ve seen from a first-year." He frowned, resetting the device. "Try again."

Roxanne reached inward again, calling for the presence she’d just felt.

Nothing responded.

She tried harder, straining until her head ached.

Still silence.

The instructor’s frown deepened. A wolf that had truly awakened should respond consistently. Hers came and went like it was choosing when to answer.

Roxanne closed her eyes one more time, quieter this time, gentler.

Why have you been hiding?

Silence stretched long enough that she assumed the connection was gone.

Then, faintly:

Don’t let them see me.

Her eyes snapped open. She looked around the empty room, half expecting someone to be standing behind her.

"What happened?" the instructor asked, watching her face closely.

"Nothing," Roxanne said, too fast.

"You heard something."

She didn’t answer.

His eyes narrowed slightly, but instead of pressing further, he set the device down and rubbed a hand across his jaw.

"Whatever you think you heard," he said quietly, "don’t discuss it with other students."

"Why?"

"I don’t know," he admitted, and somehow that honesty was worse than if he’d lied. "But I’d rather you be careful than sorry."

He crossed to the desk in the corner and pulled out her file again, flipping through pages he’d clearly already read twice.

"You were never truly wolfless," he said. "The dormant classification was wrong, or at least incomplete. I don’t have an explanation for why, but your records will likely need to be reviewed."

Roxanne’s stomach dropped. "I don’t want the whole academy looking into this."

"I understand."

"Please. Just... keep this between us. For now."

He studied her for a long moment, then nodded. "For now."

It wasn’t much of a promise, but it was something.

Roxanne left the training room in a daze, her mind spinning too fast to process anything clearly. Behind her, unseen, the instructor returned to the detection system, staring at a warning still blinking steadily on the screen.

The spike hadn’t just been strong. It had been unnatural, far beyond anything a normal awakening should produce.

Somewhere within the academy’s deeper monitoring network, that reading had already been logged, flagged, and noticed.

By whom, the instructor couldn’t say.

Roxanne walked back to the dorm in a fog, the hallway noise blurring around her. Everything she’d believed about herself for her entire life had just cracked open in the space of an hour.

She wasn’t defective. Her wolf hadn’t abandoned her.

It had been there all along, silent and watching, hiding from something she didn’t understand.

Isla looked up the second she walked in. "How’d it go? You’ve been gone forever."

Roxanne opened her mouth, the words right there, ready to spill out.

Don’t let them see me.

She swallowed them back down instead.

"It was nothing," she said. "Just a records mix-up."

Isla studied her for a second, clearly unconvinced, but let it go, turning back to whatever she’d been doing.

Roxanne lay awake that night long after the room went dark, staring at the ceiling, replaying the voice in her head over and over.

Finally, she closed her eyes and reached inward again, quiet and careful.

Who are you?

No response.

She tried again. What are you hiding from?

Silence stretched so long she nearly gave up, certain the connection had closed for the night.

Then, just as her eyes started to drift shut, one word arrived.

Them.

Roxanne’s eyes flew open, heart pounding in the dark room.

Them. Who was them?

She had no answer, no way to ask further, nothing but the word hanging in the silence of her own mind.

Somewhere beyond her dorm walls, deep within the academy’s ancient monitoring systems, another brief pulse of abnormal energy flickered across a screen no student would ever see.

And somewhere, someone was already starting to pay attention.