~Chapter 35~
Ash pov:
I don't know why I feel so tense today.
It's like since I woke up everything has been going wrong, hard or in other directions
I get up from my desk for a break
I feel like my head is pounding and my bones are going to explode at any second, so a break IS a blessing and a welcome one right now.
I leave the office and go to the kitchen for a coffee but Niko is there so a smile appears on my face.
I don't have time to touch Niko, because something is squeezing my chest. Like a cold, invisible ball of wire.
It's not coming from outside, it's coming from me.
Or from… something else.
I pull him into my arms anyway, burying my nose in his hair.
He smells of coffee and something sweet.
Of "home."
But my body refuses to relax.
"Hey love.." he says, looking up at me with a calm expression.
"You have the face of a man who slept for two hours and argued with the gods the rest of the time.
"
I laugh softly, but the corner of my mouth trembles.
"What are you doing here so early, angel? I thought you were sleeping."
“I woke up with a… pressure in my chest,” he says, running his hand down my arm. “I don’t know. Like someone… calling out to me, or… suffering.”
The word suffering goes straight into my spine, like a cold needle.
I can feel it in my teeth.
I swallow hard.
“Coincidence,” I mutter, but I don’t believe what I’m saying for a second.
Niko looks at me more closely.
“Do you feel… the same?”
I close my eyes for a moment, take a deep breath.
If I tell him, I’ll worry him even more.
If I don’t tell him… I feel like I’m going to snap.
“It’s weird,” I admit. “Since this morning… it’s like there’s a wall in my head.
Or a shadow that keeps moving at the edge of my thoughts.
”
Niko freezes a little. Not out of fear.
Out of recognition.
I feel his mouth tighten into a thin line.
“Did you… dream something?” he asks quietly.
“No…” I say, then hesitate. “But I woke up suddenly. Like… someone tore something inside me.”
Niko runs his hands over my face, trying to bring me back to the present.
But the tension doesn’t ease.
On the contrary, it increases.
There’s something in the air.
A kind of painful vibration, imperceptible…
but real.
“Maybe it’s just stress,” he says, but his voice is too low, too careful. “Or…”
It stops..
“Or what?” I ask.
“I don’t know. It’s like…
like I hear something behind me, like an echo.
Like a call.”
That’s all it takes to get the blood pumping to my feet.
I pull away from his arms a little and look toward the kitchen door, as if that’s where the answer lies.
It’s just an empty, dimly lit hallway.
But something inside me… trembles.
“Have you felt this before?” I ask.
Niko stops moving.
His eyes move left and right, as if searching for a word.
“Only when… someone in the pack is in danger,” he murmurs.
The air is completely gone from my chest.
“Who?” I ask, my voice coming out sharper than I intended.
Niko shrugs nervously.
“I don’t know.
If I knew, I’d tell you.”
I rub my eyes.
My head throbs harder.
“I feel like… something is breaking,” I say quietly, as if I’m afraid that if I raise my voice, reality will shatter.
“Not here. In someone else.”
Niko puts down his coffee and moves closer to me again.
His hands touch my cheeks.
This time he’s shaking too.
?Ash…”
It's a warning.
It's a plea.
It's his fear transformed into sound.
I sink into my chair, holding my forehead in my hand.
“I can’t stand this feeling anymore. It’s like… someone’s pulling me from inside. It’s like they’re calling me silently.
”
Niko nods, slowly.
“I feel it too.”
Silence falls over us, heavy as concrete.
Then, without meaning to, a thought escapes me out loud:
“Is it Cassian?”
Niko flinches.
He breathes faster for a second.
“I don’t know…
” he says. “But… now that you said his name… it feels like everything is tightening.”
Just then…
a dull pain hits the back of my neck.
Like an echo of someone else’s pain.
Like a delayed response.
I lean forward, placing a hand on my neck.
Niko suddenly sits up, panicked:
“Ash?!”
“It’s… it’s like… everything’s spinning,” I manage to say. “But not from me. From… someone else.”
Tension rises in the air like atmospheric pressure before a storm.
Niko puts his hand on my shoulder.
“We have to go to him,” he says.
But the moment he says it, something… something else… moves in the air.
A void.
A shiver.
A cold vibration.
A signal neither of us understands… but we both feel it.
We look at each other.
The silence says it all.
“Is that him?” I ask, almost in a whisper.
Niko runs his tongue over his bottom lip, trying to control his trembling.
“Yes,” he says. “I think we can feel Cassian.”
And suddenly, the tension is no longer just a sensation.
It’s a certainty.
---
I can't stand the air in the kitchen anymore.
Too thick. Too heavy. Too oppressive.
As if the walls are pressing down on my temples.
Niko is next to me, but I feel the distance, paradoxically, filling with panic.
We're both breathing fast. Too fast.
"We have to go to Elara's.
" I say suddenly, in a tone that doesn't even belong to me.
Niko shakes his head, as if he doesn't have the strength to speak.
His face is white. He's shaking.
We get dressed without looking at each other, but we touch hands at the same time.
Without speaking.
Without thinking.
We both know it’s not just a feeling anymore.
It’s something deeper.
Something that cuts us off from reality and pulls us somewhere else.
To where Cassian is.
((Elara’s house – pack territory))
Once we’re in front of the house, the air becomes…
dense.
As if it’s flowing in waves.
Elara is in the door before we knock.
She doesn’t look surprised.
Nor calm.
Her face is pale, serious, and her eyes are tense, as if she too is feeling something she can’t name.
“Come in,” she says shortly.
I feel a cold draft pass me as I cross the threshold, like a silent warning.
We sit in the living room, but I can’t sit still.
I rub my hands, shake my leg, breathe heavily.
Niko sits next to me, very close, because without saying it, we both know:
if we’re even an inch apart, something breaks.
“I want to talk about… this,” I say finally, touching my chest. “About this pressure. This squeezing. This pain that’s not ours.
”
Elara sits in silence for a moment.
She takes a deep breath.
“I feel it too,” she says.
I feel my breath hitch.
“Since when?” Niko asks, startled.
“Since last night,” Elara replies. “But I thought it was just… my anxiety.”
Hearing that, I feel a cold shiver run down my spine.
It’s not anxiety.
It’s not panic.
It’s not stress.
It’s… something bad
The door creaks open with a slight creak, but I can’t turn my head.
Valerius enters first, his brow furrowed, with the air of a pack leader trying not to show fear.
“I felt the call,” he says, directly, without politeness.
“What’s going on?”
“We don’t know,” I answer, my voice trembling.
“But it’s… strong. It feels like it’s coming from someone familiar.
And not from your pack.”
Valerius’s jaw moves here, pressed.
He looks at Elara.
“Did someone call Cassian?”
Freeze.
Elara answers, “No. And… I don’t think he’d answer. ”
I feel my heart skip a beat.
I want to get up and run to him. But what if it's not him? What if it's something else? He'll think we're crazy or worse... savages...
Kael also entered after some time, with a notebook in his hand, as if he were doing something banal, ordinary.
He looked straight at us. With his head in the clouds
But as he entered the living room…
he stopped.
His body stiffened, as if he had entered another world.
His eyes widened.
His breathing stopped.
"Kael?" Elara asked, rising from her chair.
But Kael didn't answer.
His eyes moved quickly under his eyelids, as if he saw something we couldn't.
Niko approaches me, gripping my arm with desperate force.
“He’s in a trance…” he whispers.
And then Kael speaks.
But not with his voice.
Not with his intonation.
Not with his fear.
His wolf speaks…Kane
Heavy.
Doubled.
As if two entities are speaking simultaneously.
“It broke…”
We all freeze.
“What broke?” I ask, forgetting to breathe.
Kane turns his head to me, but his gaze passes right through me.
As if he doesn’t see me.
As if he only sees what’s coming at us.
?Barrier..."
Elara stands up, panicked. “What barrier, Kane?”
But he continues, his voice deeper:
“Cassian… can’t feel the wall anymore. The wall… between him and the werewolf”
A roar in my ears.
A deadly shiver.
I feel my stomach clench violently.
“No…” I blurt out. “No, no, no...this can’t be…
”
Kane blinks, once, slowly. Then he says quietly, “The next stage has begun.”
Valerius looks at Kane and freezes.
“He’s not ready,” he says in a low voice.
Niko lets out a small, broken groan.
“What do you mean it started?!”
Kane puts his hand over his chest, as if something is burning him.
“I feel… Emy’s wolf,” he murmurs.
“He’s close. Hurrying. … running towards us. ”
Valerius leaps from his chair.
“Why would Emy’s wolf come here?!”
And then, a noise.
Not a knock on the door.
Not a footstep.
But something heavy, falling onto the porch.
A werewolf body
Valerius spins first toward the door.
Elara follows.
Niko and I instinctively stand up, but we stay behind, because our legs are
Emy's not there.
Only her wolf, Tala.
Bleeding.
Exhausted.
Breathing hard
He approaches Kael, who is still in a trance.
He bows his head.
And then, in a lupine but clear voice, he communicates through Kael:
“Cassian… he passed…”
Elara lets out a muffled sound.
Valerius puts a hand to his mouth.
“He passed… WHAT?” Niko says, unable to control my voice.
Kael answers through the wolf:
“The transformation… the first.”
I feel the ground slipping away from under my feet.
My body trembles violently.
Niko falls to his knees next to me, but presses his forehead to my chest to keep from collapsing completely.
"He wasn't ready..." he whispers, his voice breaking.
"He wasn't ready, Ash..."
I hug him instinctively, without thinking.
We breathe heavily.
In sync.
Both torn by the same fear.
"Where is he?!" I ask, desperately. "Where is Cassian now?
!"
Tala answers
"I don't know Alpha.
He didn't come to school yesterday, and not today, from what Emy said" Tala says but then she calms down and Emy appears "I think he's scared.
I feel a strange tension, and I think Sergio is there with him.
There's something that's preventing him from adjusting to this"
Emy's wolf lets out a short, broken growl.
"Or dead..."
My heart breaks in two.