New Experiences

WILLOW

The silence pressed harder after he left.

I sank into the too-soft mattress, my numb fingers curling around the thin blanket that anchored me to something solid, real. My skin still hummed where he’d touched me, each nerve refusing to let go of the memory.

~A werewolf,~ I thought. ~Me. Them. All of them.~

A laugh tried to claw its way up my throat but came out sideways—too dry, too hollow.

They’d lied to me—but of course they had. With their white coats, clipboards, and the smell of bleach and dead hope. They’d wrapped me up in glass like I was some nuclear experiment too twitchy to breathe on.

They’d told me I was an accident. A mistake. One of a kind. A freak.

But if that man was telling the truth, that would mean I wasn’t alone. I’d never been, just like Nurse Amy had said.

That idea settled in my chest, large and unfamiliar. I didn’t know what to do with it.

The door creaked, and I bolted upright to face whoever was entering.

Doctor Ross stepped in with a clipboard in hand, wearing his same unfazed, polite, and professional expression. “Your vitals are strong,” he said, running a scanner over my wrist. “You’ve healed…incredibly fast. I think we can get you—”

“Is it true?” I asked.

He met my gaze.

“What that guy said?” I sat straighter. “Are you…are you a werewolf too?”

After a beat, he smiled. “I am.”

“And everyone here?”

“Most.” He gave me a casual shrug. “Some humans live in town too. Mates. Kids. But the pack, yes. We’re all wolves.”

I gaped at him. “And you just…walk around like that? Werewolves among humans?”

“We don’t sprout fur and fangs unless there’s a good reason,” he said before winking. “We eat normal food. Go to work. Pay taxes. Very mundane, really. Only…better stamina.”

The door opened again, and a woman breezed in.

She was tall, graceful, and grinning like she was made of sunlight. “You must be Willow!” she sang, holding up a stack of folded clothes. “I’m Lisa. I brought you something that isn’t a hospital gown.”

Doctor Ross gave her a pointed look, then turned back to me. “You’re free to go when you’re ready.”

After he left, Lisa approached me and set the clothes on the bed. Without thinking, glad to be out of this place, I slid the blanket off, stood, untied the gown, and let it fall to the floor.

Lisa sucked in a breath.

I turned my head. “What?”

Her eyes had gone wide, her jaw slack. “Your back…” She glanced to my left, and I followed her gaze to the mirror on the wall.

Spinning in front of it, I got a clear view: white ridges, burn scars, thin lines resembling whipcords across my shoulders, hips, and thighs. A really ugly scar ran right down my spine. I remembered that one. The others were mostly new.

With her hand half lifted, Lisa stepped closer but stopped herself. “The scars… What did they do to you?” Her voice was soft—and full of pity.

Releasing a sigh, I looked over my shoulder. “A lot of these,” I said evenly before meeting her gaze, “are from you. Well, your ~pack~.”

She flinched, all muscle and guilt. “I’m so sorry.”

I blinked and tilted my head. “Why?”

“Why am I sorry?”

“No. Why did they do it? Kidnap me? Lock me up? Interrogate me? Torture me?”

She caught her bottom lip between her perfect white teeth—human teeth. Her eyes held guilt but also steel. “Because we thought you were the threat. You see, we got a warning. About a girl who looked like you who was going to tear us apart from the inside.”

Talking half a step closer, she lifted her hands, palms up. “Then you came. An unknown wolf entering our territory who matched exactly the threat we’d just received?” She shook her head. “We couldn’t take any chances.”

“It wasn’t personal, you mean.” I repeated the words I’d heard so many times before, then snorted. “It never is,” I mumbled as I bent to grab the clothes.

“Willow, really, I’m sorry. I hope you can understand. My brother…he’s the alpha. He had to act. He had to protect his pack.”

That word again.

“Alpha?” I said. “That’s the guy that was here earlier? He’s your brother?”

She nodded. “Werewolf packs have ranks, a hierarchy.”

While I dressed, she explained about betas, gammas, sentinels, enforcers, omegas. How the pack was like a village. How everyone worked to make it work. And how no one went on random killing sprees, how they could all control their shifts.

Lisa led me out of the clinic, and we stepped outside, where the air slapped me. Apparently, it hadn’t gotten the memo that I was still recovering from a lifetime in sterile, windless hell.

The breeze was crisp, cold, and ~alive~.

The grass, the trees, the mountain beyond the clinic—they weren’t a projection or a dream. It was all ~real~.

I stopped and tilted my face to the sky. I shut my eyes and breathed deeply.

It was all just so much.

“You okay?” Lisa asked from beside me.

“Honestly, I don’t know,” I whispered. “It’s all new to me. Even this.” I stretched my arms wide. “Being outside. Breathing. Seeing green. It’s… a lot.”

When I glanced at her, her grin returned, quick and knowing. “You know what you need?”

“What?”

“A bath.”

I stared at her. “What’s a bath?”

She choked on her laugh. “You’re kidding.” When I shook my head, her smile widened. “You’ll see.”

We continued our walk.

“So,” she began, her voice laced with curiosity, “you really never knew what you were?”

“Mm, not exactly. I just… I always knew I was different. There were two other kids with me when I was little. But after the accident, I wasn’t allowed near them anymore.” I shrugged. “I wasn’t allowed near anyone.”

“Your first shift,” she said gently.

I nodded. “There was a boy. I couldn’t stop it. I didn’t mean to.” I sighed. “But afterward, after he… bled out, they moved me. I didn’t see anyone else for years. Just the same handful of doctors and nurses and lab staff.”

Lisa’s hands clenched at her sides. “Gods, that doesn’t surprise me. Humans see something powerful, they try to break it. Test it. Control it.” She looked at me. Fiercely. “You should be pissed—about all of it.”

“Maybe I will be.” I tilted my head. “Tomorrow.”

She gave me a small smile. “And today?”

“Today”—I looked at the sky again—“today I just need to think.”

***

Lisa led me through a building she called the pack house. It was all gleaming floors and open space that somehow still smelled like earth and rain. She brought me to a guest room with wide windows, soft light, and a bed resembling clouds.

Then she moved to the attached bathroom and turned a silver knob in the wall. Water rushed into a giant basin in the floor. She pressed a button, and a humming began beneath the surface, sending bubbles spiraling upward.

“Cold to the left, hot to the right. This controls the jets at the bottom of the tub. Be careful getting in and out. Don’t want you to slip.” She motioned toward a line of bottles. “And here are your bath salts, body soap, oil, shampoo, and hair conditioner.”

I stared, transfixed.

“You’ve seriously never had a bath?” she asked, half laughing, half horrified.

“No. Just showers.” I sniffed myself and winced. “I smell like blood and hospital.”

Lisa leaned against the doorway, smiling, her arms crossed. “Connor doesn’t seem to mind.”

“Who’s Connor?”

Her laughter filled the room. “Gods, the big idiot never even introduced himself! The one who visited you in the infirmary. My brother. Our alpha.” She watched my expression and smirked. “You know, the one who makes your skin tingle when he touches you.”

My cheeks flared hot. “How do you know that?”

Lisa simply winked. “Enjoy your bath, Willow. You’ll smell Connor soon enough.”

I opened my mouth to ask what that even meant, but she was already gone.

The bedroom door clicked shut, and I turned toward the tub. Steam curled upward, calling to something inside me.

After tossing my clothes out of the bathroom, I sank in slowly. The heat became my second skin. I let my head fall back, my eyes closing as water kissed the curve of my neck.

For the first time in years, I didn’t feel caged. Though not exactly free, either.

I was just suspended, as if someone had hit pause on the existential horror show that was my life and left me floating in hot, bubbly limbo—while the ghosts of my past whispered beneath the surface.

And just then, one whisper brought ~him~ to mind. Connor. And the way he’d looked at me. The way his touch had ignited something right beneath my skin, something sharp and aching. The way he smelled amazing.

Cedar and night air and something wild I didn’t have a word for.

Suddenly, there it was! That presence. Not a voice, exactly, but something stirring inside me, alive and very real. The thing I’d feared since it’d first awakened.

~My monster~. A spiral of that familiar horror started curling in my tummy, but this time, I fought the sick, hollow feeling. ~No. Not my monster. It’s my wolf. And I won’t be afraid of it any longer.~

My eyes popped open with determination. I swallowed the fear back down and mentally reached out toward that presence.

Emotions that weren’t mine rushed into me. ~She likes him~, I realized with stark clarity. ~My wolf likes Connor.~

~But do I? Do I even trust him?~ a different voice sounded in my mind.

Contemplating these questions, I touched the water’s surface. Ripples danced outward, and I watched them.

~No, of course I don’t trust him. I don’t trust anyone.~ But another thought occurred: ~But maybe it isn’t distrust. Maybe it’s just a lack of knowledge, of truth.~

And the truth was, I didn’t know Connor or Lisa or any of these people. Heck, I didn’t even know myself.

There was so much I didn’t know.

And before I could judge, I had to learn.

Right then and there, I decided that I would learn—about myself, this wolf in me, and what I could do. After that, I’d learn about them. Who it was exactly that had kept me in a cage for so long. What they did to me. And why.

And after the learning was done, if I was still alive, I’d burn their whole system down.

A shiver passed through me, making me aware that the water’s heat was fading. I quickly finished up my bath and stood. Water dripped from me in rivulets as I carefully stepped out. The towel I wrapped myself in was thick and soft. Heavenly.

I glanced around, taking in how real this place was—surreal, actually—before stepping back into the bedroom. Drying my arms, I looked up and immediately froze.

There, standing by the bed and holding the T-shirt I had tossed, was Connor. With closed eyes, he lifted it to his face and inhaled like it was the only air he wanted to breathe.

~What the hell is he doing?~