The Scent of Panic

I ran. I had no clue where I was running, I simply allowed my feet to carry me away from the dorm, away from the suffocating reality that now filled Room 2B. The air was chilled, a searing contrast to the fevered heat of the room I'd left behind. Each raw breath of air I breathed tasted like swallowing ice shards. My path was random, a wild dance across groomed lawns and beneath the dim, orange glow of the campus lamps. I was a specter haunting my own existence, an existence that had seemed so simple, so ordered, mere hours before. Now, every shadow seemed to stretch, to writhe into monstrous shapes. Every snap of leaves in the nearby woods sounded like the padding of phantom paws. The world I knew had been a gossamer veil, and it had just been ripped away, revealing the snarling, predatory reality beneath.

Finally, I fell on to a frigid stone bench on the edge of campus, the last bastion of civilization before the great, dark wilderness of the forest stretched out. The woods where he ran. The woods where he fought. The woods where he howled. My body still shook, but the frantic energy was being replaced by a deep, hollow pain. I buried my head in my hands, the vision of Adrian's shattered face seared into my mind. His words, "Please don't run from me," ringing in my head. I had done the one thing he pleaded with me not to. A part of me shrieked that I was right to run. I was human. He was. a Lycan. A monster of myth, who could mend from catastrophic injuries and unleash merciless destruction. He had deceived me our whole lives.

But another part of me, a treacherous, loyal part, was stabbed with a deep sense of guilt. He had seemed so broken, so completely alone. He had been ambushed, injured, and threatened, all because of me. He had called me his anchor. And the second he needed me, the second his world came crashing down around him, I had abandoned him. Was this who I was? The coward who left his best friend the moment things got dangerous? The lies were a huge, unforgivable sea between us, but the memory of his friendship, of every instant of kindness and protection, was a lighthouse I couldn't shake. I was split in two, torn apart by a paralyzing fear and a love so profound I couldn't even call it by name.

"He didn't know any other way to protect you."

The voice was soft, female, and so unanticipated that I leapt to my feet, my heart thudding against my neck. I turned around, half-hoping to see Marcus Hale or one of his thugs, my body bracing for a fight that I had no hope of winning. But they weren't. A few feet away, her face sad and peaceful, stood a young woman with the same turbulent grey eyes as Adrian. She was his little sister, Sofia. I'd seen her a few times when she visited.

"Sofia?" I stammered, my confusion momentarily winning over my fear. "What are you doing here? How did you find me?"

She wrapped her coat tightly around her and approached hesitantly. "Adrian's frantic. When you walked out. I could feel his panic from halfway through town. So I came.".

My blood ran cold. "You could… feel it?"

She smiled at me with a small, sad smile. "It's a pack thing. Emotions are. loud. Especially from an Alpha." She hesitated, her gaze unflinching. "Yours are pretty loud, too." This was the shock, the realization that my own emotional state was now exposed to them. I wasn't an outside observer; my emotions were a beacon in their world. Sofia seemed to see the look of fear on my face and her face softened further.

"Ethan, please. You have to listen. He didn't lie to you to hurt you," she begged, her voice strained. "He lied because our laws are harsh. To reveal our nature to a human is illegal because it's a death penalty. Not for us… for the human."

I stood there, stunned. "What are you talking about?"

"A human who knows we exist is a danger to any pack," she said to me, her voice cold. "They become a target. Enemy packs will hunt them down to silence them or to make them a bargaining chip. Adrian was trying to keep you out of their way. He was happy to carry the secret his entire life to protect you and keep you human. By exposing the truth of what he is, Marcus didn't just expose Adrian's secret… he made you a target in their war in earnest."

The world changed once more. The deception was not a treachery. It was a shield. A shield that had only been shattered. My running was not an escape; it was the blind flight of prey in a forest of wolves. Sofia's unhappy eyes met mine. "Now that you know, running is the most dangerous thing you can do. You're in this now. The only decision you have left is whose side you're on.".

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