Eve woke to silence.
Not the hum of hospital machines, not the murmur of voices or the sting of antiseptic on the air—just silence. The kind that pressed against her ears like heavy velvet. Her eyelids fluttered open, and the dim glow of morning spilled into the room through half-closed blinds. For a moment she lay still, staring at the ceiling, trying to stitch together the threads of memory.
A road slick with rain. Headlights cutting through fog. Silver eyes gleaming like coins in the dark. The screech of tires. Pain blooming sharp and immediate. Then nothing.
Her chest tightened. She should be dead. Or at the very least broken, bandaged, confined to a hospital bed with tubes and beeping monitors. But the familiar cracks in her plaster ceiling stared back at her, exactly as they had the night before. She blinked several times, hoping it might vanish, reveal itself as a fever dream. It didn't. She was in her own bedroom.
Slowly, she turned her head. Everything was where it should be: the chipped nightstand with a crooked lamp, the stack of books she'd meant to return to the library weeks ago, the faded quilt her grandmother had sewn years before. The faint smell of lavender from the sachet in her dresser. Nothing unusual—except for the fact that she was alive to see it.
Her hand drifted to her side. She expected agony, bruises, broken ribs protesting even the smallest movement. Instead, she found nothing more than a dull ache, a soreness that felt like it belonged to a hard workout rather than a car accident. She pushed the blanket down and stared. Her skin bore faint scratches, thin lines where glass had torn her, but they were already scabbed, shallow, almost healed. A cut along her forearm, the one she remembered bleeding heavily in the car, had sealed into a thin pink scar overnight.
Eve sat up too quickly, and the room swayed around her. She gripped the edge of the mattress until the dizziness passed. Her heart thudded wildly, more from confusion than exertion. This wasn't right. She had studied enough biology to know that wounds didn't simply disappear overnight, not without stitches or antiseptics or some miracle she couldn't name.
She swung her legs over the side of the bed. Her feet found the familiar coolness of the wooden floorboards, grounding her for only a moment before the strangeness of it all rushed back.
"I should be in a hospital," she whispered. Her own voice sounded foreign, too loud in the still room. "Not here."
Panic curled at the edges of her thoughts. Had someone brought her home? That would mean someone had found her at the crash site. But who? And why hadn't they taken her to the emergency room?
She pressed a hand to her temple, trying to remember. Fog rolled through her mind, fragments flashing like shards of broken glass. A blur of black fur. The metallic tang of blood. Warmth enveloping her, carrying her. Not the cold grip of death, but heat—living, breathing heat. And those eyes again, luminous silver burning through the darkness.
Her pulse spiked. She shoved the memory away. It couldn't have been real. She must have hallucinated before passing out. Trauma did strange things to the mind. People saw angels, visions, lights—anything to explain what they couldn't comprehend.
But the image of those eyes lingered, sharper than any dream should be. They weren't the golden reflection of a deer caught in headlights. They had been too bright, too knowing. When she closed her eyes now, she could still see them staring at her, unblinking, endless.
And beneath that vision, a word echoed faintly, not heard but felt, like the reverberation of a bell deep inside her chest. Mine.
Eve pressed her hands to her face. "No," she muttered, her voice muffled against her palms. "You're losing it, Eve. You hit your head. That's all."
Her fingers drifted to the sore spot above her brow. There should have been swelling, a bruise at the very least, but she found only smooth skin. The injury that had knocked her unconscious was gone without a trace.
She rose carefully, half expecting her legs to collapse under her. Instead, they held steady, though her muscles hummed with strange energy, almost restless. She crossed to the window, parted the blinds, and peered out. Morning sunlight filtered through the trees, scattering across the damp earth. Birds called in the distance, ordinary and unconcerned. The world had continued as if nothing had happened.
But something had happened. She could feel it, thrumming beneath her skin like a second pulse.
Her phone lay on the nightstand. She snatched it up, heart leaping with relief at the thought of calling someone—anyone—to anchor her to reality. But the screen was blank, black. Dead battery. She dropped it back with a frustrated sigh.
Her stomach growled, startling her. Hunger gnawed at her insides, fierce and sudden, as though she hadn't eaten in days. She stumbled into the kitchen, every nerve alert. The refrigerator door squealed as she opened it. She grabbed leftovers—cold chicken, half a loaf of bread—and ate standing at the counter, devouring it all without pausing. The food dulled the sharp edge of her hunger, but the restless energy remained, coiled tight in her limbs.
When she glanced at the clock above the stove, her breath caught. It was noon. She had been asleep for nearly twelve hours.
"How?" she whispered. Her life had unraveled in a single night, and now the hours had vanished too.
She sank into a chair, staring at her hands. They trembled faintly, but not with weakness—with too much strength, as if her body no longer knew how to contain itself.
Images surged unbidden: silver eyes cutting through fog, the shadow of a massive wolf on the road, the warmth of strong arms lifting her from the wreckage. And that word again, pulsing in her bones. Mine.
Her chest tightened. Wolves weren't that big. Wolves didn't have eyes like molten silver. Wolves didn't speak without sound.
"It wasn't real," she told the empty room. "It can't be real."
But even as she said it, doubt gnawed at her.
The crash. The impossible survival. The wounds already healing. The strength vibrating through her muscles. None of it added up.
She pushed away from the table, pacing. Every step seemed to draw her closer to the window, to the line of trees beyond the backyard. The forest loomed there, shadowed even in daylight, its edges dark with mystery.
Something tugged at her chest when she looked at it, a pull she couldn't explain. It wasn't fear. It wasn't even curiosity. It was deeper, a magnetic draw that made her fingers twitch, her breath quicken. As though part of her belonged out there among the pines and shadows.
She tore her gaze away, pressing her palms flat against the counter. "No. Absolutely not."
But her body didn't listen. The pull lingered, subtle yet insistent, as though invisible threads had wound themselves around her ribs, tugging her gently, constantly, toward the forest.
She spent the rest of the day in restless motion—picking up books only to set them down unread, starting chores and abandoning them halfway through. Every time she passed a window, her eyes slid toward the trees. Every time, her chest ached with the strange need to step outside, to follow that unseen thread.
By evening, the ache had sharpened into something undeniable. She stood at the back door, hand hovering over the knob. The air beyond smelled of damp earth and pine resin, sharp and beckoning. Her pulse thundered with the effort of resisting.
"This is insane," she whispered. "You're in shock. That's all."
Yet her feet itched to move, her lungs burned for the forest air. The voice of reason grew fainter with every heartbeat. She couldn't fight it forever.
And deep inside, beneath the fear, beneath the confusion, a sliver of something else took root—something she was afraid to name.
Anticipation.