~Chapter 34~
I don’t know exactly when I fell asleep, but I wake up with that strange feeling… like someone entered the room and left without leaving a trace. The air is colder. Thicker.
I breathe and it’s not air, it’s something. something else.
Brex doesn’t say anything, but I feel like he’s awake in front of me.
Sometimes he’s just a presence.
Sometimes he’s a shadow behind my thoughts.
Today it’s… quiet. Too quiet.
I sit up and blink a few times. Sergio is asleep in the chair next to the bed, his headphones hanging around his neck, as if he wanted to stay awake to watch me.
I smile slightly.
"...you're an idiot," I mutter, lifting my legs off him.
But something hits me.
It's not my reaction, it's not my thought.
It's something else.
A brief impulse.
Like a foreign heartbeat inside my head.
“You’re being watched.”
Brex’s voice, almost a growl.
Not threatening.
Not scared.
Warning.
“Watched… by whom?” I whisper, but Sergio obviously doesn’t hear anything.
“By… yours. Your Parent ”
I feel my skin tingle, but not from fear.
From a strange kind of curiosity that I don’t know how to explain.
I stand up and feel the floor feel… lighter?
It’s like I’m not walking the same way anymore.
It’s like I’m on tiptoe without meaning to.
I run my hand through my hair.
Everything is normal, I tell myself.
Normal-normal.
Or… how normal can it be when you have a wolf living in your mind.
I sit back down on the bed, confused, and lie down like I was before.
"It's too much stress," I say, moaning softly and sighing.
"You're making it too complicated," Brex says and I roll my eyes.
"If you told me who the hell you are and why you're here, maybe it would be a lot easier," I say in a higher tone.
I look at Sergio to see if I woke him up, but no, he's still sleeping, just in a different position now.
"You won't let me. I've tried so many times Vex"
"You won't let me?
!" I say loudly and stand up.
I hear Sergio mumbling something so I go into the bathroom.
I close the bathroom door with a too-hard bang, but I don't care.
The cold water slides down the back of my head, my temples, and makes me flinch, but it doesn't calm me down.
"You don't want to see." Brex says, and his voice swirls in my mind like hot smoke.
He's not nervous. He's not angry.
He's... resigned.
“Really? Am I the stubborn one now?” I ask, bracing myself with both hands on the edge of the sink. “You’re talking into my head without me introducing you, without explaining anything to me, and I’m the problem?”
“I’m part of you.”
“You’re not.”
“Yes, I am.”
I lift my head and look in the mirror.
And for a moment, a moment so brief I feel like I could scream, my pupils are dilated.
Like an animal trying to pretend to be human
I blink.
Disappear.
My breath hitches and I put a hand over my mouth to keep from making a sound.
“That… what was that?!” I whisper through my teeth.
Brex takes a deep breath in my mind, as if trying to keep me calm.
“First steps…”
“First STEPS to what?!”
“To what you are.”
“I am not...”
“You are.”
His tone is so steady that it makes me even angrier.
I splash water on my face again and let it run down my face.
But it doesn’t cool me, it doesn’t calm me.
I can hear my own shaky breathing, far too loud in the bathroom.
“Is this all my fault?” I repeat, but it doesn’t sound angry anymore.
It sounds… empty.
Tired.
Like I don’t have the energy to argue anymore.
Brex is silent for a few seconds. That silence that weighs on your chest.
“It’s not your fault,” he says, but his tone is flat.
Controlled. Neither warm nor cold. “You just don’t see everything.
”
I bite my lip.
“Of course I don’t see everything.
Of course I don’t understand. Of course…
I’m the one. The one who doesn’t get it, who doesn’t understand anything.
”
A lump forms in my throat. I swallow it down and crouch down by the tub.
“It always… always seems like I’m the problem,” I whisper.
“When I don’t know something, I’m the problem.
When something happens, it’s me. When you show up and tell me half-truths, of course I’m the one who’s stupid, right?
”
Brex only answers after a long moment:
“You’re not the stupid.
”
But his tone isn’t sweet.
It’s not protective.
It’s… the simple truth, spoken without emotion.
“Then what am I?” I blurt out. “What do you want from me? What do I have to do? Guess things I didn’t even know I HAD to know?
!” My breath escapes uncontrollably, a kind of nervous, bitter chuckle.
“I swear… I’m starting to think you’re just here to prove to me that I’m flawed.
”
Brex sighs. This is the first time I’ve heard him sigh.
A long, heavy sound. But not angry. More…
resigned.
“You’re not flawed. Just…
scared.”
I look up at the light, so they can’t see my eyes in the mirror.
“Yeah, and this is all my fault, right? I’m scared, I’m confused, I’m a walking mess.
And everyone around me knows better. Sergio knows better.
Mom knows better. The pack knows better.
Only I..”
“Cassian.”
My name, spoken by him, is…
different.
Not warm, but not cold either.
It’s… an outstretched hand, but far away.
“I’m not against you,” he says.
“If I wanted to destroy you, I would have taken your mind by now.”
I freeze.
But he continues immediately, more smoothly:
“But I don’t do that.
I… hold your form. I hold your thoughts.
I stabilize you when you’re lost.”
Pause.
“Even though you seem convinced that you’re the problem… you’re not.”
I run my hands over my eyes, feeling the tremor subside a little..
“Then help me,” I whisper. “Tell me what you want. Tell me what I am.”
“I can’t,” Brex replies, honestly but painfully.
“Not yet.”
A wave of frustration washes over me and I feel myself bang my head lightly against the wall, a small, almost childish gesture.
“Then what’s the point?!”
“It is,” he says.
“Because if you didn’t have me… you would have given up long ago,” he says in a commanding tone but continues, “you have no idea how important you are and you will be in a few moments.”
I swallow hard.
It’s the most sincere and cruel consolation I’ve ever received.
“You always feel like you’re alone, Cassian.
” His voice is a warm-cold shadow. “But you’re not.
”
I collapse onto the floor, my back to the tub, breathing heavily.
“…And yet everyone hears,” I murmur.
“Everyone. And I’m not ready. I don’t know what to tell them.
”
Brex answers simply, but with a gravity that chills me:
“Then let them come. And let me hold you.”
…and for the first time, it doesn’t sound like a threat.
It sounds like a promise.
---
I touch the cold tile with my back and try to keep my breath still, but I can’t.
My whole body is shaking in a way that’s…
silly. I feel small. Ridiculous. Tired.
I don’t even know if seconds, minutes, or hours have passed.
And just as I try to pull my knees to my chest, someone knocks lightly on the bathroom door.
“Cass…?” Sergio’s voice, sleepy but concerned.
I freeze instantly.
“Hey… you screamed a little earlier. Are you… okay?”
I open my mouth, but nothing comes out.
And then the door opens a little, just a sliver of light, just enough for him to enter.
He sticks his head in carefully, as if he doesn’t want to invade the space, but at the same time he has no idea whether he’ll find me standing or collapsed.
He sees me on the floor.
“Oh… Cass.”
His tone breaks slightly.
He approaches slowly, as if I’m a wounded animal that might get spooked at any movement.
“What’s… what’s wrong with you?”
I look away.
I don’t want to look at him.
I don’t want them to see how bad I am.
“Nothing happened to me,” I mutter, but my voice cracks.
“I just… I can’t.”
“What?” he asks, as he sits down next to me, knee to knee.
“You don’t have to explain, I’m just… I’m here.
”
This hits me harder than it should.
I clench my fists on the tile.
“You don’t understand,” I say, with a bitter smile.
“Nobody understands. And I… I feel like an idiot, Sergio. I always do.”
Sergio reaches out his hand to me, but hesitates halfway.
Finally he lets it drop to the floor, close to mine.
“You’re not an idiot, Cass.”
I bite the inside of my cheek, feeling myself tense.
“I am.” I murmur. “If you only knew… if you only saw… how much of a mess I am in my head. I argue with… I don’t even know who, sometimes.
I’m angry. I’m confused. I feel like I’m breaking into pieces and.
.”
“Cass.” Sergio says my name with a gentleness that tears me in two.
“You don’t have to be strong in front of me.
”
I feel my stomach tighten.
Brex, cold and warm at the same time, speaks in my mind, calmly:
“Leave him.”
I look up at Sergio, my eyes reddening and tears flowing without my consent, without my wanting to.
“I… I always mess everything up.” I breathe heavily.
“And… and maybe it’s my fault. Maybe I really am…
the problem.”
Sergio immediately shakes his head firmly.
“No. You’re not. Cass, you don’t see what I see.
”
I stare at him unblinkingly, like a child who doesn’t know if he can believe it.
“I can see that you’re struggling alone,” he continues.
“And that never ask for help. And… I’m sorry I only have to find out when you’re in the bathroom, on the floor.
”
He punches me squarely in the chest.
“If you only knew what I’m struggling with…
” he murmurs.
And then Brex intervenes, quietly but firmly:
“Don’t tell him.
It’s too early for him. Let him deal with this on his own, Cass… for his own good.”
I close my eyes reflexively.
Sergio touches my forearm lightly. Just a brief, shy touch, so as not to scare me.
“Please,” he says softly. “Let me help you.”
And for the first time tonight… I have the strange feeling that I’m not completely alone.
Brex retreats quietly, but he doesn’t disappear.
And his voice, though cold, has a hint of… I don’t know.?
His words warm me in a sensitive, subtle way.
But they also scare me.
I look up at Sergio and try to speak.
“I…”
But I don’t have time to finish, because a new sensation begins to move inside me, very faintly, like a shiver…
like a beginning.
The next moment everything snaps inside me, not sound, not light, but something…
like a rupture.
As if a piece of me has broken loose and is trying to come out.
The room tilts suddenly.
I try to put my palm on the floor, but I feel only the harsh cold that comes and goes like a wave, as if I no longer know what is stable and what is not.
My breath catches and I hear a ringing in my ears, long, suffocating.
“Cass? Cass, hey…”
Sergio’s voice comes from somewhere far away, as if he’s speaking from another room.
I open my mouth to answer him, but the words come out brokenly.
“I… I can’t… I don’t..”
I see him approaching, but his image doubles, then triples, until there’s only a blur of color.
He puts a hand on the back of my neck to steady me, but his touch shakes the blood in my veins too quickly.
“Breathe,” I hear him whisper. “Cass, please, breathe.”
I try.
I swear I’m trying.
But the air won’t come in.
Or it’s not getting enough.
“B-brex…” I stammer, not sure if in my head or out loud.
His voice comes in instantly, but it’s not calm now.
It’s not cold. It’s thick, tense.
“You’re changing too soon…
I’m sorry, Cassian…”
Transform?
I don’t have the strength to ask this as another thrust is pushed to my limits.
I bend forward, one hand on my chest, the other dropped limply on Sergio’s knee.
My heart beats like a caged animal.
“What… what’s happening?
” Sergio asks, trying to steady my head.
“Does it hurt? Tell me what you feel.”
“All of it.” I whisper.
“All of it… at once. It’s like… something’s breaking.
”
My eyes fill again, not with tears, with pressure.
Like a hot current is pushing from inside me toward my temples.
Sergio grabs my shoulders
“Cass, look at me. Just me.”
I look up, but the moment I see him, just for a second, my pupils dilate again.
They get longer.
They get darker.
Sergio holds his breath.
I can clearly hear him do it.
Then everything starts to spin more violently.
It’s like someone has grabbed the bathroom and is spinning it around me.
I lean back, pressing my shoulder blades against the cold tub, and try to hold on to something, real, stable, anything.
“Don’t leave me,” I breathe, barely audibly.
“I’m not leaving you,” Sergio says immediately, almost desperately.
“I’m not leaving you, I’m here. I’m here.
”
But his voice fades, as if someone’s drawn a thick curtain between us.
Brex comes closer in my mind, more intensely than ever.
“I’m so sorry. It didn’t have to be now. Too soon…”
I try to reach out to Sergio, but my fingers tremble violently, as if they’re no longer mine.
I feel a stab in my chest. A short, sharp one, then one in the back of my head.
A muffled groan escapes me.
“Cass!” Sergio grabs my wrist, squeezing it.
“Look at me, please, please, don’t close your eyes…
”
But I close them anyway.
I can’t help it.
Everything is too heavy.
Too hot.
Too tight.
“Don’t lose him,” Brex says, his voice vibrating inside me, almost a controlled howl.
“If you lose him now… things get complicated.”
“I… don’t want to…
” he murmurs, breathing hard. “I don’t want to…
”
But my words are cut off.
The air disappears.
And for a brief, horrible moment, I feel as if my mind is detaching from my body.
Sergio squeezes me tighter.
“Cassian! Please open your eyes! Cass!”
And somewhere between the panic, the pain, and the darkness…
I think I hear another sound.
A deep, animalistic growl…
But I don’t know if it’s coming from me or Brex.