Chapter 219: Teeth 1
HAZEL
The darkness had teeth.
I was running through Silvercreek’s halls, barefoot, my nightgown catching on invisible thorns. The stone floors were cold. So cold they burned. Behind , footsteps echoed.
They were heavy and they kept multiplying with each turn I took. I didn’t look back. I knew what was chasing .
The whispers started soft, then grew louder.
Oga. Oga. Oga.
The word wrapped around my throat like fingers. I tried to scream, but my voice ca out wrong. Thin. Weak. The sound a prey animal makes when it knows the hunt is over.
I rounded a corner and stopped.
The grand hall stretched before , filled with wolves from every pack. They stood in rows, silent and still, their eyes tracking my movent. At the front, my mother and father waited on a raised platform. Behind them, a banner hung—the Silvercreek crest, except the silver wolf had been crossed out in blood.
"Please," I whispered. My voice cracked. "Please, I didn’t an—"
My mother’s face was stone. "You thought you could challenge her and walk away unchanged?"
"I was protecting myself. She was a weak Onega bitch. What could she have really done ? I was nearly mad at what she said to father... I thought I was protecting the family—"
"You were protecting your pride, and stroking your ego" Father said. His voice cut through the hall like a blade. "And now look at you."
I glanced down.
My hands were wrong. The fingers too long, the nails cracked and dirty. When I touched my face, I felt hollows where there shouldn’t be. My cheekbones jutted out sharp enough to cut. My hair fell in clumps when I ran my fingers through it.
"What’s happening to ?"
No one answered.
The crowd began to move. They circled
slowly, closing in. Their faces blurred together, but I caught fragnts. Expressions of disgust... I saw pity. Even satisfaction.
Soone laughed and plenty others joined them.
I spun, searching for an exit, but the walls had moved closer. The ceiling pressed down. The air thickened until breathing felt like swallowing mud.
"Stop," I gasped. "Stop, please—"
A hand grabbed my shoulder. I jerked away and found myself face to face with Fia.
Except it wasn’t Fia. Not exactly. Her eyes were too bright, almost glowing. Her smile was wrong. It was too wide and far too sharp. Blood dripped from her hands and her throats and the crimson pooled at her feet.
"Did you really think you’d win?" she asked.
"I—I didn’t—"
"You tried to humiliate
in front of everyone. You called
a liar. A fraud." She stepped closer. The blood spread across the floor, reaching for my bare feet. "So I took everything from you instead."
"No. No, that’s not—"
"Your rank. Your wolf. Your future." Her smile widened. "All of it. Gone."
The crowd began to chant. Low at first, then building.
Oga. Oga. Oga.
I pressed my hands over my ears, but the sound burrowed deeper. It vibrated in my bones, rattled in my skull. I opened my mouth to scream, to tell them they were wrong, that this was temporary, that I was still Luna-born, still important—
But nothing ca out.
Even when I reached for my wolf. That warm, powerful presence that had always been there, coiled in my chest like a second heartbeat. The strength I’d felt since birth. The proof of my worth.
It was empty too.
The space where she should have been was hollow and scraped clean till nothing at all was left.
My wolf was gone.
"No!" The word finally tore free. "No, no, no—"
Fia leaned in close, her breath cold against my ear. "You did this to yourself."
The floor gave way beneath . I fell through darkness, through nothing, through a void that swallowed sound and light and hope. I clawed at the air, at the walls that weren’t there, at anything that might stop the descent.
But it was a waste of a struggle. I kept falling.
And falling.
Then I woke up screaming.
My throat was raw. The sound kept coming, kept ripping out of
in ragged bursts until hands pressed against my shoulders and a familiar voice cut through the panic.
"Hazel! Hazel, you’re alright. You’re safe. You’re here with ."
Mother’s face swam into focus above . Her eyes were red-rimd, her hair pulled back in a ssy bun. Behind her, the infirmary walls were stark white. Clinically empty but real.
I sucked in air, but it didn’t feel like enough. My chest heaved. Sweat plastered my nightgown to my skin.
"It’s alright," Mother said again, softer now. She smoothed my hair back from my forehead. "You’re alright now."
I wanted to believe her. I wanted to close my eyes and sink back into the pillows and pretend the nightmare was the only thing wrong.
But it wasn’t.
"Nothing is alright." My voice ca out hoarse, broken. I stared at the ceiling, at the cracks in the plaster that looked like spider webs. "My wolf is gone."
Mother’s hand stilled.
"It was taken from ." The words felt heavy and final. Like saying them out loud made it real in a way the trial hadn’t. "She’s just—she’s not there anymore."
Silence filled the room. Not the comfortable kind. The terrible kind that confird everything I didn’t want to know.
"Oh, shut up."
I flinched and turned my head.
Grandmother Pauline stood by the window, arms crossed, her expression carved from ice. She didn’t look at
when she spoke. She just stared out at the grounds beyond the glass.
"The most important thing right now is that you are alive," she continued. Her voice was clipped, matter-of-fact. "Wolf or not, it wouldn’t have mattered if you were beheaded."
The pragmatism of it hit like a slap. I opened my mouth, then closed it. What could I possibly say? That I’d rather be dead than be Oga? That losing my wolf felt like losing a limb, except worse, because at least phantom limbs could be mourned?
My stomach churned. Bile rose in my throat.
I said nothing.
Mother squeezed my hand. I barely felt it.
Movent in my peripheral vision made
look up. My breath caught.
A boy stood in the doorway. Green eyes and with sharp sun kissed features. I looked back at his deeply unsettling green eyes and then at his mouth.
"You." The word ca out strangled.
He stepped inside and closed the door behind him with a soft click.
"You helped her," I said. The accusation hung between us.
———
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