The second Chloe's scream hit the ceiling, the door banged open.
"What is going—" Mom's voice stopped dead. Her gaze landed on me, the wolf in the middle of my carpet, breathing like I'd run a marathon in a furnace, chips crushed under my paws, blanket shredded behind me.
Chloe shoved herself flatter against the dresser. "Mrs. Hayes, don't come closer! It— it ate her—"
Ethan clutched Chloe's wrist. "That's not— I don't— Evie?"
Mom didn't scream. She didn't faint. Her face went shock-pale for a heartbeat, then smoothed into something hard and focused.
"Both of you, out," she said, calm and sharp. "Now."
Chloe gaped. "Are you—are you kidding? There is a wolf in your house!"
"Chloe. Out." Mom's tone carried weight. Not loud. Final.
Ethan tugged. "Come on. Come on." He half-dragged, half-steered Chloe toward the door.
"I'm not leaving her—" Chloe's voice broke. She looked at the wolf. At me. "Evelyn, if you can hear me, don't eat anyone!"
If I'd had a human throat, I might've laughed and cried at the same time. What came out was a strangled whine.
Mom stepped aside, gave them a path, and shut the door fast behind them, throwing the lock. The click sounded like the house holding its breath.
Then it was just us.
My ears rang. My heartbeat pounded in my skull. I paced in two jagged lines, back and forth, claws catching on the rug, tail lashing without my permission. Every sound felt too loud. Every smell too sharp, sugar, sweat, fear, the dusty corner behind my bookshelf. I wanted to be small. I wanted to be human. I wanted to wake up.
Mom moved slowly. No sudden gestures, no reaching. She lowered herself into a crouch near the end of my bed, hands visible, palms open.
"Evelyn," she said in a voice she used when I was little and woke from bad dreams. Steady and warm. "Sweetheart, look at me."
My head snapped toward her like a string had been pulled. My body stayed coiled.
"Good," she murmured. "Breathe for me."
I tried. The breath came out as a shaky huff. The next one didn't hurt as much going in.
"You're not trapped," she said. "You're not dying. I know it feels like that. But you're not." Her eyes didn't leave mine. "You're shifting."
The word landed in the mess of panic and stuck there. Shifting.
My muscles trembled. I took one step closer on paws that didn't feel like mine. My reflection in the dark window looked back, white fur with a faint blue shimmer like light sliding under ice. Eyes too bright. Ears pinned. Not a monster's face. Still not mine.
Mom's mouth tilted. Not a smile. Something like recognition. "Of course," she whispered, almost to herself. "Of course you'd look like that."
I whined again, smaller this time.
"Come here," she said softly. She didn't reach. She let me come to her or not.
I inched closer, tail low. The air around her felt familiar, dish soap, lavender, the faint sweetness of the lotion she always buys on sale. Home. My nose dipped. I pressed it to her palm.
Her fingers slid over my muzzle gently. Not afraid.
"There you are," she said. Her voice wobbled for the first time. She swallowed it away. "Okay. We're okay."
We were not okay. But the way she said it made the floor stop tilting under me.
The burning under my skin flared, hard and sudden, like a fuse catching. I jerked back with a yelp. Pain tore through my spine in a white-hot line. My legs folded. Bones ground. The room blurred, then snapped, then blurred again. My body went to pieces and clawed itself back together.
Mom's voice threaded through it. "Breathe, Evelyn. Don't fight it, let it pass. In. Out."
I could've sworn the air moved because she told it to. I clung to the sound. The pain rolled and rolled, then broke.
I collapsed onto the carpet, human again, skin slick with sweat, chest heaving. I curled in on myself without thinking. Everything felt wrong-sized. Too big in some places, too small in others. I grabbed for anything and found fabric. Mom's hands were already there, tugging the blanket off my bed and wrapping it around my shoulders, tucking it under my chin like I was six.
My throat burned. "What—" The word scraped out of me like a rusted hinge. "What was that? What am I?"
She drew me into her, damp hair and all, like she'd been waiting years to be able to hold me through something she couldn't explain.
"You're my daughter," she said first, fierce and simple. Then, quieter: "And you're your father's daughter. A wolf. This was always going to happen when you turned eighteen."
I stared at her. The words hit my ears and bounced, refusing to sink. "A wolf."
"Yes."
"I turned into an animal, Mom."
"Not an animal," she said. "A wolf. There's a difference."
I pulled the blanket tighter around me. My hands, actual hands now, shook. "I can't—my body—how is that a thing? How did you, how did you know?"
Guilt flashed across her face so fast I almost thought I imagined it. She smoothed a strand of hair off my forehead that was already stuck there with sweat. "Because I've been waiting," she said quietly. "Watching. Hoping we had more time."
"For what?" My voice cracked. "To tell me I'm, this?"
Her jaw tightened. "To tell you you're not just one thing."
The room shifted again, not my bones this time. My understanding. "Not just—?"
"You're a wolf," she said, and then she held my gaze and didn't look away. "And you are also mine."
"I know I'm yours," I said, confused and angry and scared all at once. "That doesn't—"
"Evelyn." She folded her hands over mine under the blanket. Her fingers were cool. "I'm not human."
The first laugh that came out of me sounded a little wild. "Well, neither am I, apparently."
She exhaled through her nose. Not annoyed. Bracing. "I'm fae," she said. "I tried to keep our world out of yours. I thought I could. I was wrong."
The room went quiet in a different way. No screaming. No growling. Just the sound of the night through the window screen and my heartbeat in my ears.
"Fae," I repeated, tasting the word like it might be a trick. "Like... fairy tales?"
"Like not-quite-human," she said. "Like old rules and old magic and families who never mind their own business. Like bargains you don't make." Her mouth pulled tight at the corner. "Like me."
I looked down at the blanket, at my knees under it, at the smudge of frosting on the carpet near Ethan's sleeping bag. "So I'm, you and Dad—"
Her eyes softened at Dad. There were a hundred stories she'd never told, sitting there behind them. She picked one thread and kept it small. "He was a wolf," she said. "I loved him. We didn't get a long story."
The hurt in that was a shape I knew, even if the details weren't mine to hold. I swallowed around the lump in my throat. "So I'm half and half."
"Yes."
"Is that why—" I gestured to my arms, to the air, to the memory of that shimmer on fur that had been my skin. "Why I looked like that?"
"That's part of it," she said. The honesty in her voice sat between us like something breakable. "Your wolf isn't ordinary."
Nothing about this was ordinary. Ordinary had left the building an hour ago and wasn't coming back.
Tears burned; I blinked them hard to keep them from falling. "Chloe saw me. Ethan. They're going to think I'm a freak."
"They saw you," she corrected gently. "They were scared. That doesn't mean they'll stop being yours."
"You didn't see their faces."
"No," she said. "I saw my daughter and made a decision." She glanced at the door, then back at me. "We'll talk to them. We'll give them enough truth to keep you safe. We won't give anyone else anything."
"What if they tell someone anyway?" I whispered.
"Then I handle it." There was steel under that. Not a threat. A promise.
My chest stuttered, trying to settle. It didn't. My skin prickled like a storm gathering. My pulse went uneven. My breath hitched, and a voice slid into the space between inhale and exhale like it had always been there, waiting.
Breathe, it said. Not out loud. Inside me. Calm and definitely female. Steady as the ground.
I froze. My fingers dug into the blanket. "Mom."
Her head tipped. "What?"
"I—" Saying it felt like standing on the edge of a roof and leaning forward. "There's a voice."
She didn't flinch. "What does she say?"
She. My stomach flipped. "She told me to breathe."
"Then breathe," Mom said, like it was the simplest thing in the world. "Say hello."
My first instinct was to say no, to push it down, to pretend if I ignored it long enough it would shut up. I closed my eyes instead, because the only thing worse than being terrified was not being honest about it.
Who are you? I asked the inside of my skull, and felt insane.
You, the voice said, with the patience of someone explaining the obvious. I am the part of you that was sleeping. I am your wolf.
Simple words. Yet huge door to open.
I swallowed. Why now?
Because now you are old enough, she said. Because now you are awake.
There was a weight to the words that didn't belong to age and birthdays. It belonged to doors opening and not closing again.
I opened my eyes. "She says she's me."
Mom's mouth softened. "She is."
"I don't feel like me," I muttered.
"You will," the voice said in my head, a little wry, like she'd been waiting to make that exact point. You will feel like you-plus.
"Great," I said out loud, shaky laugh escaping. "Now I get plus-sized identity."
"Humor is a good sign," Mom said dryly. Concern gentled the edge. "How is the pain?"
"Less," I admitted. Tired settled in place of panic like wet sand. Heavy. Familiar in its own way. "I'm not sure if I want to sleep for a week or jump out a window."
"No jumping," Mom said. "Sleeping I can work with."
A muffled argument floated up from the other side of my door. Chloe's voice in a whisper that wasn't a whisper: "We have to call someone. The police. Animal control. A priest."
Ethan, quieter but firm: "We are not calling a priest, Chloe."
Mom's eyes flicked toward the noise, then back to me. "Can you handle me letting them in for two minutes? If I send them home with nothing, they'll invent bad answers."
The idea of Chloe's eyes on me while I was this thin and raw made my stomach dip. I didn't want her to be afraid. I didn't want her pity, either.
Let them see, the voice said. Not a command. A calm fact. They are your pack.
"I hate that that makes sense," I muttered.
"What?" Mom asked.
"Nothing." I tightened the blanket around me. "Let them in. But if Chloe faints, you're catching her."
Mom rose, cracked the door, and hissed, "Inside. Quiet." She didn't have to say please. They came, wide-eyed and careful, like stepping into a hospital room.
Chloe's gaze found me first. She stopped halfway to the bed, hands hovering like she didn't know where to put them. Color flushed back into her cheeks in fits and starts. Her lip trembled. "You're— you're you."
"Surprise," I said weakly.
Ethan shot Chloe a warning look and crouched a little, like getting smaller would make him less of a threat to whatever I currently was. "Hey," he said softly. "On a scale of one to 'my best friend is a national geographic special,' how are you?"
I snorted. "I've been better."
Chloe flapped both hands, then clamped them to her sides like she'd physically forced herself not to touch me. "I threw a pillow at your face," she blurted, horrified at herself. "I threw a pillow at a wolf! I'm going to jail for assaulting wildlife."
"Pretty sure that's not a law," Ethan said.
"It should be," she said, then bit her lip hard. Her eyes went wet. "Evie, I was scared. I still kind of am. But I'm— I'm here. I'm not going anywhere."
My throat got tight. "You sure? Because I wouldn't blame you."
Chloe took a half-step closer, stopped herself, then took the rest of it like she'd passed a test. She perched on the edge of the bed and touched the blanket near my knee with two fingers, like she needed contact but didn't want to push it. "You cannot get rid of me. Not even if you grow fangs and join a biker gang."
"Wrong monster," Ethan murmured.
I laughed, rough but real. "Thanks."
Mom stood near the door, a quiet guard. "This stays here," she said. She didn't raise her voice. She didn't need to. "No one else hears anything. You say she got food poisoning and screamed the house down."
Chloe nodded so fast her ponytail slapped her neck. "Yes, ma'am."
Ethan met Mom's eyes and didn't look away. "We won't say anything."
"Good." Mom's shoulders eased a fraction. "I'm taking her to lie down properly. You two can take the couch or call your parents for rides. Your choice."
Chloe shot me a look that said over her dead body was she leaving. Ethan rolled his eyes fondly, because of course.
Mom helped me stand. My legs wobbled. The room tilted. She took most of my weight without making a thing of it and got me under my sheets with a speed that told me she'd done this kind of caretaking before, just not for... this.
She smoothed the blanket once more and brushed a kiss to my temple like she had when I was five and ran a fever. "I'm right down the hall," she said. "Yell if anything changes. We'll talk in the morning."
"Morning," I echoed, like that was a thing that came after nights like this.
When she crossed to the door, I grabbed for her hand. "Mom."
She turned.
"You knew," I said, not accusing. Just placing a truth.
"I did," she said. No excuses. "I should've told you earlier. I didn't know how. I'm sorry, Evie."
The apology hit harder than anything else tonight. "Okay," I said. I meant: I'm mad and I love you and I'm scared and I don't want to do this alone.
She understood. Of course she did. "Sleep," she said softly, and stepped out so Chloe could slide into the chair at my desk and Ethan could curl up on the rug again like nothing had changed.
Everything had.
I lay on my side, the blanket warm, the room smelling like frosting and fear and home. My body hummed with a low, strange energy, like a machine idling. My mind chased itself in circles until the voice cut through softly.
Rest, she said. I have you.
"What's your name?" I whispered, not sure if wolves had them, not sure if I'd made one up when I was little without knowing.
We'll choose one together, she said. When your head doesn't hurt.
I huffed a breath that was almost a laugh. "Bossy."
Just caring of my human.
My eyes slid shut because fighting them took more power than I had. The last thing I felt was Chloe's fingers resting on the corner of my blanket like an anchor, and the feeling of something inside me settling where it belonged.
Normal was gone.
But I wasn't alone.