The wolf is already there when I close my eyes.
He waits at the edge of the treeline, fur soaked in moonlight, scar cutting a brutal line from his left brow into the hollow where his cheek should be. His eyes are white—no iris, no pupil, just twin, glowing wounds locked on me like he’s trying to hold me together by looking hard enough.
“Harper,” he says without moving his muzzle.
It’s not a sound. It’s a pressure in my chest, a remembered voice stitched together from all the pieces my brain refuses to show me.
I wake with my hand pressed over my sternum like I’m holding in a knife.
The motel room hums around me—buzzing neon from the sign outside, the distant shush of the highway, the fridge ticking in the kitchenette. Damp air clings to my skin. The clock on the nightstand insists it’s 3:12 a.m.
“Perfect,” I mutter. “Three hours. New record.”
My throat burns like I’ve been screaming. I sit up slowly, the cheap sheets rasping against my bare legs, and stare at the dark window. My reflection stares back—pale, damp hair stuck to my temples, the faint silver line of the scar along my own jaw. Different shape, different story. That’s what the neurologist said about the white wolf my brain invented.
Trauma dreams. Misfiring neurons. The mind trying to make sense of what it lost.
The white eyes that feel like home.
The thought rises uninvited and I shove it down so hard my head throbs. I swing my legs off the bed and stand, ignoring the way the room tilts for a heartbeat before settling. I know the drill: grounding exercises, water, distraction until sleep gives up on me for the night.
The carpet is thin and rough under my feet as I cross to the window. Outside, the motel parking lot stretches in a warped reflection of the highway—mostly empty, save for my dented Civic and a long, black truck I don’t recognize. Ocean mist rolls in low from the coast, turning the streetlights into hazy halos.
Briny air seeps through the cracked seal of the window, salt and wet asphalt and pine. Home, my brain supplies, even though this is just a stopgap room on the edge of town because my mother couldn’t stand the sound of me not sleeping anymore.
“You need space,” she’d said last week, fingers white-knuckled around her coffee mug. “And I need to not jump at every noise. Just for a little while, Harp. Until the nightmares calm down.”
I told her they were getting better.
I lied.
The wolf had walked into my dreams the night they pulled me from the car, glass in my hair and someone yelling my name from far away. He hasn’t left since.
I press my fingertips to the cold glass, half-expecting to see those white eyes staring back from the parking lot. Of course there’s nothing there. Just the truck, hulking and dark, chrome catching the neon in mean little flashes.
Except—no. Someone is there.
A man leans against the side of the truck, hood up, head tipped back as he smokes. At first it’s just the ember of the cigarette that gives him away, a small, angry star in the mist. Then he straightens, flicks the butt away, and looks straight up at my window like he knew I was watching.
My breath stutters.
I can’t see his face clearly from here. Just a slash of shadow where his jaw is, the set of his shoulders under a dark jacket, the impression of height. A stranger. Has to be. Yet something twists low in my gut—a sharp, swooping recognition that makes the room tilt again.
Turn away, I tell myself.
Instead, I freeze as he pushes off the truck and starts walking toward the motel walkway, each step slow and deliberate, like he’s giving me time to bolt.
He knows what room I’m in.
The clock ticks too loudly. My heart thuds so hard it blurs into the sound. Dumb, irrational fear surges up—knife, phone, lock the door—but my body doesn’t move. I just stand there, pinned by the inevitability of his approach like there’s a string between his chest and mine and he’s been reeling it in for years.
By the time knuckles rap once, quiet and low, on my door, my fingers ache from how hard I’m gripping the windowsill.
“Harper.”
The voice on the other side is rough velvet, low and controlled, like he’s swallowed gravel and secrets both. My name feels different in his mouth—older, scraped raw.
Every hair on my arms lifts.
I shouldn’t answer. I’m alone, it’s the middle of the night, and there’s a stranger at my door who knows my name.
But there’s that string again, pulling.
“Who is it?” I manage, surprised my voice doesn’t crack.
A beat of silence. Then, “Open the door.”
The command is quiet, not loud enough to be rude, but something in it vibrates along my bones. My hand moves before I decide to let it, palm landing on the deadbolt.
I stop myself there, fingers pressing into cold metal.
“This is a terrible sales pitch,” I say, because sarcasm is the last working defense mechanism I have. “Try again.”
A soft sound, almost a huff. “I’m not selling anything.” The faintest hint of something else in his tone—frustration or… amusement? “You’re going to open it anyway, Harper. Might as well do it while you’re still the one choosing.”
My pulse spikes.
Still the one choosing.
I flip the deadbolt before my brain can talk my body out of it and crack the door, the chain catching after three inches. The hallway light cuts a harsh strip across the carpet outside, illuminating worn paint and the man’s boots.
He wears black. Black jeans, black jacket, black T-shirt. The kind of outfit that swallows motel fluorescents and spits them back out as something meaner. He lifts his head, and I see him properly for the first time.
Dark hair, too long and pushed back carelessly. Shadow along his jaw like he forgot to shave for a few days. A nose that’s been broken at least once. He’s not clean-cut handsome; he’s the kind of beautiful you walk around, like a cliff edge.
And the scar.
It slices down from his left brow, crossing the edge of his eye and angling toward his cheekbone, puckered and pale against tan skin. I’ve seen that line a thousand times in my sleep. I’ve traced it with phantom fingers in the dark.
My throat closes.
His eyes are not white. They’re a grey so light they almost are, rimmed in darker storm, and they burn with something I can’t name. Relief, maybe. Fury. A hunger that has nothing to do with my body and everything to do with my existence.
“Hi,” I say, because my brain has apparently checked out. “If you’re here about my car’s extended warranty, this is really committed of you.”
The corner of his mouth twitches like he doesn’t want to smile but can’t stop the attempt. It doesn’t reach his eyes.
“I’m not a salesman,” he says. “I’m Cullen.”
Cullen.
The name doesn’t ring any bells and still, somehow, it cracks something in my chest. Like there’s an echo on the other side of my damaged skull that’s trying to answer but can’t find the words.
“You shouldn’t know my name,” I say carefully.
“I know a lot of things about you.” His gaze tracks every inch of my face like he’s memorizing differences. “Some of them you’ve forgotten.”
Cold licks up my spine.
“You should leave.” My fingers tighten on the door. “Whatever game this is—no.”
He flinches, almost imperceptibly, like I’ve thrown something at him. “This isn’t a game.” He shifts his weight, for the first time looking unsure. “You… do you remember anything?”
I slam the door.
The chain rattles, catching hard.
Breathing feels like dragging air through wet wool. Why him? Why now? I rest my forehead briefly against the cool wood, swallow down the panic clawing up my throat, and reach for the deadbolt.
His palm hits the door on the other side.
Not hard—he doesn’t try to force it—but the shock of impact jolts my whole body.
“Harper, wait.” The roughness in his voice sharpens. “I’m not here to hurt you.”
“You’re a stranger at my motel in the middle of the night,” I snap. “That’s literally the definition of a threat.”
“If I were a threat,” he says quietly, “this door wouldn’t be between us.”
My stomach knots. He says it like it’s just a fact, not a boast, and somehow that makes it worse.
“Try another line,” I say, fighting for steady. “Maybe tell me how we ‘knew each other in a past life’ and I owe you money.”
He’s silent for a moment. When he speaks again, the words land like stones. “We knew each other in this life. And you don’t owe me anything.” A muscle jumps in his jaw, visible even through the crack. “You’ve already given me too much.”
Something pulses behind my eyes. An almost-memory: cold stone under my palms, the copper taste of blood, a voice screaming a name—
“Stop.” I press my fingers to my temple, willing the image away. “You need to go.”
“Look at me,” he says. It’s a plea this time, not a command.
Against every instinct for self-preservation, I lift my head and meet his eyes through the door’s narrow gap.
It hits like a punch.
The world warps, motel hallway blinking out for a second as something else slams into me: forest dark as ink, the reek of fur and iron, white eyes locked with mine across a circle of standing stones. Fear, not of him but for him. A voice in my chest whispering his name like a vow—
“Cullen.”
I hear myself say it again, here, now. His name tastes worn, familiar, like I’ve been rolling it across my tongue in the dark for years.
Pain skates through his gaze. “Yeah,” he says softly. “That’s me.”
The motel snaps back into place around us. My knees feel watery.
“What are you?” I whisper, before my brain can reframe the question into something less insane.
His mouth curves without humor. “Complicated.” He shifts, running a hand through his hair, agitation bleeding through the control. “Can I come in? Five minutes. You can throw something at my head if I lie to you.”
“I don’t know you.”
“You dream about me,” he says.
The hallway light suddenly feels way too bright. “Get away from my door.”
“You call me even now.” His voice has gone low, hoarse. “In your sleep. You think it’s just a nightmare, but you call my name like it’s the first word you ever learned and the last one you ever want to say.”
I can’t breathe.
The neurologist’s office, the bland art, the smell of coffee and antiseptic. His kind eyes as he told me my brain would fill the gaps with symbols, with nonsense.
It’s just your mind trying to understand the trauma, Harper. The wolf isn’t real.
“You’re sick,” I manage. “Leave, or I call the manager and then the cops.”
“Call them.” There’s steel in his tone now, something that brushes against the same place as the command earlier. “They can’t help you. They won’t even see me clearly enough to understand what I am to you.”
“Stop talking like we’re in some weird cult romance,” I snap, because it’s that or start screaming. “We’re not—there’s nothing—”
“You broke destiny for me.”
The words land like a thunderclap.
Everything in me goes still. Even the motel fridge seems to hold its breath.
I laugh, because I don’t know what else to do. It sounds wrong in my own ears. “Okay. Right. We’re done here.”
“You don’t remember,” he says, more to himself than to me. “They took that from you too.”
The faint echo of tires screeching, glass exploding, Mara’s voice shouting my name, the world flipping—
I dig my nails into my palm until sharp pain cuts through the fog. “You need to leave.”
On the other side of the door, wood creaks as he leans his forehead against it. The small motion sends a strange heat through the barrier, like there’s a furnace banked just beyond my reach.
“I will,” he says, and for the first time he sounds tired. Old. “But you’re not safe here. They thought you were out of the way, tucked back into your little human life. Me showing up will… change that.”
“Who is ‘they’?”
He hesitates, like the word tastes bad. “The ones who still believe the prophecy can be fixed. The ones who think you ruined their future. The ones who want me dead and you… undone.”
A cold, horrible clarity slots into place. “You’re talking about the crash.”
His silence answers for him.
Every therapist says the same thing: Don’t chase the missing pieces, Harper. Let them come back on their own, if they ever do.
The missing pieces just knocked on my door.
“Why now?” I ask. “If you know so much, if this is so important, why wait eight months to stroll up here in the middle of the night like some—some stalker ghost?”
“Because I promised myself I wouldn’t drag you back into this unless I had to.” His voice scrapes. “Because I thought you’d be safer without me. But bodies are starting to disappear. Wolves are getting restless. And a priestess sent a message three days ago that used your old name like a curse.” He breathes out, slow. “You’re in the crosshairs again whether I’m here or not. I’d rather be between you and the bullet.”
The hallway suddenly feels too narrow, the room behind me too small. Bodies. Disappearances. Priestess. Old name.
“You’re insane,” I whisper, but the word doesn’t have any weight. It floats there, useless.
“Maybe.” A flicker of dry humor under the exhaustion. “Open the door, Harper. Let me be crazy where I can see you.”
The chain digs into the wood, a bright line of tension between us. My hand hovers over it, every instinct at war.
He’s dangerous. Everything about him screams it, from the set of his shoulders to the scar that mirrors the one on my wolf. He talks about destiny like it’s something you can snap in half, about prophecies and priestesses and me as if I’m not just a girl who can’t sleep through the night without drowning in white eyes.
And yet.
Standing this close, separated only by thin plywood and a cheap chain, I feel… less alone. The constant hum of wrongness under my skin—like I’m walking around in a life a size too small—quiets by a fraction.
“You shouldn’t feel like home,” I whisper, more to myself than to him.
On the other side of the door, his breath catches. “You always did,” he says. “Even when you hated me for it.”
My fingers close around the chain.
For a heartbeat, I picture it: sliding it free, opening the door, letting in every monster he’s warning me about just because he happens to be one of them and he knows my name like a prayer.
I let go.
“Come back in the morning,” I say, forcing each word. “When there are people around, and I’ve had coffee, and you can show me some kind of proof you’re not just my trauma with a face.”
He’s silent so long I think he’s gone.
Then, quietly, “All right.” He steps back from the door. The air seems to rush in where his presence was. “But morning won’t make me safer, Harper. It’ll just make you more awake when you realize I’m real.”
My hand finds the deadbolt again without thinking, twisting it, locking him out.
His footsteps move away, measured, down the walkway. I stand there until I hear the soft slam of the outside door and the distant cough of his truck’s engine turning over.
Only then do I sag against the wall, sliding down to sit on the carpet with my knees drawn up.
I stare at the door until my eyes burn.
Out in the lot, an engine rumbles to life, then cuts off again.
I don’t know if he’s leaving or just waiting.
Either way, the wolf in my dreams has a name now.
And I have no idea if I just made the safest or the most catastrophic choice of my life by leaving that chain in place.
