Sage's POV
I didn't sleep.
How could I? Every time I closed my eyes, I saw that massive black wolf standing in the rain, its golden eyes burning into mine with impossible intelligence. I felt the heat of power flowing through my palms, heard the stranger's rough voice promising he'd come for me willing or not.
The digital clock on my nightstand mocked me with its steady march toward midnight: 2:47 AM. 3:13 AM. 3:52 AM.
Twenty hours left. Then nineteen. Then eighteen.
My tiny studio apartment above Emma's bookstore had never felt smaller. One room serving as bedroom, living room, and kitchen combined. A bathroom barely big enough to turn around in. Windows facing Main Street, where streetlights cast orange pools on wet pavement. Everything I owned fit in this space: second hand furniture from thrift stores, a bookshelf overflowing with veterinary textbooks and fantasy novels, a mini-fridge that hummed too loudly.
Safe. Small. Invisible.
Exactly how I'd wanted it after my parents died.
But safety was an illusion, wasn't it? They'd found me anyway.
At 4:15 AM, I gave up on sleep. I threw off the tangled sheets and padded barefoot to the bathroom, flipping on the light without looking in the mirror. I turned the shower to scalding and stepped under the spray, letting the heat punish my rain-chilled skin.
My shoulder blade burned.
The pain was sharp and immediate, making me gasp and press my forehead against the cold tile wall. It felt like someone was dragging a hot poker across my back, like the fire that killed my parents was reaching through time to mark me all over again.
Stop, I whispered to the empty bathroom. Please stop.
The burning intensified.
With shaking hands, I shut off the water and grabbed my towel, wrapping it around myself as I stumbled back to the main room. The full-length mirror I'd propped against the wall salvaged from a estate sale three years ago waited like an accusation.
I'd avoided looking at my scars for years. The crescent moon pattern on my left shoulder blade, raised and silvery-white against my skin, had been there since I woke up in the hospital after the fire. The doctors said I was lucky that the burn pattern was clean, that it had healed without major infection, that it could have been so much worse.
They'd never asked why it looked deliberate. Why the curves and points formed a perfect lunar crescent, like someone had branded me with celestial fire.
I'd learned not to ask those questions either.
Now, I turned my back to the mirror and looked over my shoulder.
The scars were glowing.
Silver light pulsed beneath my skin, following the crescent moon pattern with rhythmic precision. Each pulse matched my heartbeat: bright, dim, bright, dim. The glow illuminated the small room, casting shadows that danced across the walls like living things.
Oh god, I breathed, reaching back to touch the Mark.
The moment my fingers made contact, the world exploded.
I was ten years old again, running through our wildlife sanctuary at sunset. The wolves my father rehabilitated followed me like I was pack, like I was one of them. My mother laughed as I pretended to howl at the rising moon. My father swung me onto his shoulders, and I felt safe, loved, complete
Fire. Everywhere fire.
My father's face, desperate and terrified, as he shoved me toward the storm cellar. Hide what you are, baby girl. Promise me. Hide what you are and run.
My mother pressing a kiss to my forehead, her hands leaving silver marks on my skin. We love you. We'll always love you. Remember
Howls. Not from our rehabilitation wolves, but from something larger, darker, filled with rage and hunger. Shadows moving through flames. Silver eyes catching firelight. My father's scream cutting off mid-sound
I crashed back to the present, falling to my knees on the hardwood floor, gasping for air like I'd been drowning.
The memories because that's what they were, actual memories I'd somehow blocked for ten years played on repeat in my mind. My father's last words: Hide what you are.
What was I hiding? What had I been hiding my entire life without even knowing it?
The Mark on my shoulder burned brighter, the silver light now casting the entire room in an ethereal glow. I could see every detail with unnatural clarity: the grain of the floorboards, the dust motes floating through air, the titles of books on my shelf.
And I could hear things I'd never heard before.
Heartbeats. Not just my own frantic pulse, but the steady thump-thump-thump from Mrs. Chen in the apartment below. The faster patter from Emma's cat, Gatsby, two floors down in the bookstore.
And farther out, in the forest beyond town: dozens of heartbeats. Hundreds. A symphony of life that I'd been deaf to my entire existence.
Some of those heartbeats were human-steady. Others galloped like animals. And some beat with a strange double rhythm, like two hearts occupying the same chest.
The wolves.
They were out there. Not just the three I'd healed, but an entire pack. Maybe more than one pack. All of them awake in the pre-dawn darkness, all of them aware.
All of them waiting.
What's happening to me? I whispered to the empty room.
The Mark pulsed brighter in response, and suddenly I understood: it had always been there, dormant, waiting. The healing power I'd discovered months ago wasn't new it was awakening. And something about healing that wolf tonight, that massive black creature with knowing gold eyes, had accelerated the process.
I was changing. Becoming something. Or maybe just becoming what I'd always been, what my parents had died to keep hidden.
A knock on my door made me jump so violently I hit my head on the nightstand.
Sage? Emma's worried voice filtered through the wood. Honey, I saw your light on. You okay? It's not even five in the morning.
I scrambled to my feet, grabbing my bathrobe and tying it tight to cover the glowing Mark. My hands fumbled with the deadbolt when had I started locking my apartment door from the inside? And I opened it just a crack.
Emma stood in the hallway wearing her usual sleep ensemble: oversized band t-shirt, flannel pyjama pants, and fuzzy slippers shaped like monsters. Her dark hair stuck up in every direction, and concern creased her brown eyes. At forty-five, Emma Chen was the closest thing I had to family the woman who'd rented me this apartment when I aged out of foster care, who'd given me a key to the bookstore so I could hide among novels when the world felt too sharp, who never pushed for answers I couldn't give.
I'm fine, I lied, keeping my body angled so she couldn't see the light emanating from beneath my robe. Just couldn't sleep. Work stress.
Emma's eyes narrowed. She'd been a social worker before opening her bookstore, and she could spot a lie from three blocks away.
Work stress, she repeated flatly. At the vet clinic. Where the most stressful thing that's happened this month was Mrs. Patterson's cat eating a hair tie.
Despite everything, I almost smiled. You'd be surprised what constitutes an emergency in veterinary medicine.
Mm-hmm. Emma crossed her arms. And does this 'work stress' have anything to do with the black SUV that's been parked across the street for the past three hours?
The floor dropped out from under me.
What?
Black SUV. Tinted windows. Tennessee plates, which is weird because we're in Oregon. It showed up around two AM and hasn't moved since. Emma's expression shifted from concerned to protective. Sage, if you're in trouble
I'm not, I said quickly. Too quickly.
Then why do you look like you've seen a ghost?
Because they're already here, I thought. Because I have twenty hours until they said they'd come, but they're watching me right now. Because I don't know what I am or what they want or how to stop any of this.
I'm fine, I repeated, and this time I put every ounce of conviction I could muster into the words. Really, Emma. I just... had some bad news yesterday. About a patient. I've been processing it.
It wasn't entirely a lie. The wolf had been a patient, of sorts. And the news that I could heal fatal wounds with glowing hands was definitely bad.
Emma studied my face for a long moment. I kept my expression calm, even though the Mark on my shoulder felt like it was trying to burn through my robe.
Okay, she finally said, but her tone suggested she didn't believe me at all. But if you need anything and I mean anything you know where I am. Day or night.
I know. Thank you.
She pulled me into a quick hug, and I had to fight not to flinch when her arm brushed too close to the Mark. Then she headed back downstairs, fuzzy monster slippers making soft shuffling sounds on the stairs.
I closed the door and locked it again, then moved to the window.
Emma was right. A black SUV sat parked across the street, its engine off, windows too dark to see through. As I watched, the driver's side window rolled down an inch, and cigarette smoke drifted out into the pre-dawn air.
They were watching. Waiting.
Making sure I didn't run.
I backed away from the window, my heart racing. The apartment felt like a cage now, with invisible bars made of silver light and wolf eyes and promises of midnight collections.
The Mark on my shoulder pulsed again, and with it came a whisper of sound not in my ears, but in my mind. Like a voice carried on wind from very far away:
Come home.
I spun around, searching the empty apartment. Who's there?
No one. Nothing. Just me and my second hand furniture and the glow of the Mark casting long shadows.
Come home, little healer. We've been waiting so long.
The voice was female, ancient, gentle as moonlight and vast as oceans. It resonated in my bones, in my blood, in the very marrow of my being.
I don't have a home, I whispered to the empty air. My parents died. I have nothing.
You have us. You've always had us. The wolves you healed they were showing you the way. Calling you back.
Back to what?
To what you are. To what you were always meant to be.
The Mark flared so bright I had to close my eyes against it. When I opened them again, the voice was gone, but my reflection in the mirror had changed.
My eyes normally amber-brown, unremarkable now held flecks of gold. Just tiny points of light scattered through the irises, but unmistakable. Inhuman.
Like the wolf's eyes. Like I was becoming something other than what I'd thought I was.
I touched the mirror, my fingertips leaving prints on the glass. What am I?
The Mark pulsed once more, then slowly faded to its usual silvery-white. The glow dimmed until it was just scars again, just marks on skin, just the remnants of a fire that had stolen my parents and my innocence ten years ago.
But I knew, deep in my gut where truth lived, that nothing would ever be normal again.
Whatever I was, whatever this power meant, the people in that SUV knew. The stranger on the phone knew. And at midnight tomorrow, they would come to collect what they believed was theirs.
I had less than twenty hours to decide: go willingly and maybe get answers, or run and spend the rest of my life looking over my shoulder.
Either way, Sage Winters the quiet vet tech who lived small and invisible was already gone.
And I had no idea who would take her place.