WILLA
Elyse.
Who the hell was that? And why were they calling me that?
I looked down at the mass of dark brown hair falling around the girl's face before staring at her properly.
She was beautiful. Even with mascara running down her cheeks and her face flushed red from crying. She carried that unmistakable queen-bee energy. The kind of girl who would stand beside someone like Rachel at school.
The kind of girl who would never look at me twice.
The kind who would make sure my life was miserable.
Yet…she was hugging me. Crying. Acting like I was the most important person in the world to her.
None of this made any sense.
For the first time in a long while, I wished the voice in my head would speak. Just once. Tell me that I had finally lost my mind and that none of this was real.
But it stayed silent.
I was alone.
And somehow, that was even more frightening than when the voice had first appeared ten years ago.
"Is she going to be alright, Kol?" the girl asked, directing her question to the boy.
He grunted but didn't answer. His eyes stayed on me, as if he wasn't certain himself.
"She will be," the doctor replied instead. "I believe she's still in shock. With enough rest, she'll be as good as new."
Right.
That had to be it.
I was still at school. If I went to sleep now, maybe I would wake up back in the Bakers' house.
"That being said," the doctor continued, his voice sharpening, "this place is getting suffocating. Only three students should remain here. The rest of you can go find something else to do around the academy."
The students didn't move. They stared at the doctor as if his words hadn't been directed at them, despite the authority in his voice.
Then the boy, Kol, spoke.
"You heard him," he said quietly.
That was enough. They turned and filed out of the room one by one.
"Fucking Alpha commands," the doctor muttered under his breath.
He did give off an Alpha male energy.
I was certain Kol heard him. His eyes narrowed slightly, but he said nothing in response.
The girl beside me gently guided me back to the bed. As I sat down, my gaze drifted to the metallic badge pinned to her plaid blazer.
Verah.
I looked back up at her face. She gave me a small smile and sat beside me, her hand closing around mine in a gentle squeeze.
"It's okay, Elyse. You're going to be fine," she said softly. "The sentinels are already out looking for the perpetrators, and your parents have been informed."
"Sentinels?" I whispered.
What the hell was that?
And my parents…
A knot twisted painfully in my stomach at the thought of them. I couldn't tell if I was ready to see them. But if they were the people who could make me believe I hadn't lost my senses, then I'd rather have them here.
"Yes," Verah nodded, her smile widening.
To be honest, I wasn't sure if she expected me to understand what she was saying. From the look on her face, it seemed like she did.
The hair on the back of my neck prickled.
I turned to my left and saw Kol still standing in the corner. His gaze was fixed on me, intense and unreadable.
Heat crept into my cheeks under that scrutiny, and my eyes dropped to my own body.
I was wearing a dress.
Not the faded floral hand-me-down Rachel used to give me, the kind that looked like the life had already been drained from it.
This one was different.
A soft charcoal sweater dress that fell just above my knees, paired with black ankle boots.
Very designer-looking. The kind of dress Rachel would wear after emptying every coin from her piggy bank. The kind of dress I should never be caught wearing unless I wanted to be accused of stealing.
I didn't even have the money to afford something like this.
Still, I wasn't naked, so I couldn't understand why he was staring at me like that.
I wrapped my arms around myself, shivering involuntarily. Yet the way Kol looked at me made it seem like he knew something I didn't.
And from his expression, it was impossible to tell what that something was.
"I should leave," Kol murmured, shoving his hands into his pockets. "I have training with the first years."
"Me too!" Verah shot to her feet. "Cheerleading practice."
She smiled brightly at Kol, who raised a questioning brow at her.
Verah shrugged, then leaned down and kissed both my cheeks quickly.
"I'll come back as soon as practice is over. Get well soon, okay? We miss you on the team."
Team?
I scoffed inwardly.
I was the last person who should ever be on a cheerleading team. I had two left feet.
You could probably guess the rest. Terrible at sports. Terrible at dancing. The least coordinated person anyone could ever meet.
No sane person would ever put someone like me on a cheer team unless they wanted to humiliate me.
Like the time Rachel told me there was an opening and convinced me to try out. She had been overly nice that day too. I thought maybe she was finally warming up to me.
Instead, I showed up only to embarrass myself. And her. She never made me forget it.
And yes, that had been my last attempt at any kind of sport.
But she looked serious. There was no hint that she was mocking me.
I watched as she skipped over to Kol and wrapped her arms around him, pulling him toward the door.
A frown tugged at my face as I watched them. Something tightened in my chest, an uncomfortable feeling I couldn't quite explain.
After they left, silence settled in the room.
For a while, I simply looked around the so-called infirmary. It was the first time I had ever spent this long inside a school clinic.
Normally, the nurse would send me away, insisting I was faking an injury even when it was obvious I wasn't.
Eventually, I had learned to endure the pain quietly. There was no point complaining when no one cared. Your life never really mattered if you were at the bottom of the social hierarchy at school.
Still, even with the few times I had stepped inside a clinic before, I could tell this place was nothing like those.
Neat white curtains separated the beds, shielding each patient from the others. Sunlight poured through tall windows, bright enough to make the polished floors gleam.
My old school, Ridgewood Academy, barely had room for two squeaky cots and a dusty cabinet of bandages.
I turned slightly, looking toward the far wall.
That was when I noticed the academy's crest. A sleek wolf stood inside a silver crescent moon, stars scattered around it.
The same symbol embroidered on Verah's uniform.
"What the hell is going on with me?" I whispered to myself, my thoughts racing. "And where the hell am I?"