Chapter 5 Symptoms (Rowan POV)

The cell is supposed to be silent.

It's not.

I can hear everything. The guard stationed outside my door—Jackson, based on the nameplate I glimpsed earlier—shifts his weight every forty-three seconds. His knee clicks each time, a soft popping sound that shouldn't be audible through reinforced steel, but I hear it clear as a bell. Down the hallway, someone's watching television. A cooking show. The host is explaining how to properly sear a steak, and I can smell the phantom scent of meat through the ventilation system, making my mouth water in a way that feels wrong.

Three rooms away, two people are arguing in whispers.

"…can't keep her here much longer, the other students are terrified…"

"…orders from the Headmaster, we hold until trial…"

"…but what if she breaks out? You saw what she did to those bars…"

I press my palms against my ears, trying to block it out, but that only makes it worse. Now I can hear my own heartbeat, thunderous and arrhythmic, and beneath it something else, a second pulse, slower and deeper, like drums in the distance.

The wolf. It has its own heartbeat.

My hands are shaking when I lower them. The silver marks have spread since this morning, crawling up past my elbows now, intricate patterns that look almost beautiful in the dim light. They pulse faintly with each breath, warm to the touch. When I press my fingers against them, I feel something shift beneath my skin—muscle and bone that want to be something other than human.

"Stop it," I whisper to myself. To the thing inside me. "Just stop."

It doesn't listen.

The lights in the hallway flicker, standard fluorescents that have probably been humming at the same frequency for years. Except now I can hear each individual bulb, their electric whisper combining into a symphony of white noise that scrapes against my nerves like sandpaper.

I stumble to the small sink in the corner and splash water on my face. The cold helps, momentarily. But when I look up at the polished metal that serves as a mirror, I barely recognize myself.

My eyes reflect the light wrong. There's a golden rim around the iris that wasn't there yesterday, and my pupils dilate and contract too quickly, struggling to adjust. When I bare my teeth experimentally, they look sharper. Or maybe that's my imagination, paranoia feeding on exhaustion.

The clock on the wall reads 11:17 PM. I've been in this cell for approximately sixteen hours. Fifty-six hours left until the full moon.

Fifty-six hours to either complete the Turning or die from it.

I sit on the narrow cot and pull my knees to my chest, trying to make myself small. Invisible. It's a technique I've perfected over three years at Thornhaven—the art of taking up as little space as possible, of being so unremarkable that people's eyes slide past you like water off glass.

Except I can't be invisible anymore. Not with silver marks covering my arms. Not with a murder charge hanging over my head. Not with whatever is growing inside me, clawing its way toward the surface.

Sleep, when it comes, is anything but restful.

I'm running.

The forest blurs past me in streaks of green and brown, my feet—no, paws—barely touching the ground. The moon hangs fat and full overhead, painting everything in silver light. I can smell everything: rich earth, decaying leaves, the sharp musk of prey somewhere ahead.

My prey.

The deer crashes through underbrush, panicked and clumsy. I can hear its heart hammering, smell the acrid tang of its fear. My own heart syncs with the rhythm of the chase, predator and prey locked in an ancient dance.

I'm faster. Stronger. The wolf in me knows exactly how to angle my body, when to leap, where to bite. My jaws close around—

I wake with a gasp, sitting bolt upright on the cot. My hands clutch at my throat, expecting to feel fur and find only sweat-slicked skin. The taste of copper floods my mouth.

Blood.

I stumble to the sink again and spit. Red swirls down the drain. I've bitten my tongue hard enough to make it bleed, and when I prod it with my finger, I feel the indentations where my teeth—sharper than they should be—broke skin.

"No, no, no," I mutter, gripping the edge of the sink so hard my knuckles go white. "That was just a dream. Just a dream."

But my fingers ache. I hold them up to the light and freeze.

Blood crusts beneath my fingernails. Not tongue blood—this is dried, darker, flaking off when I scratch at it. I look down at my arms and see fresh scratches running from shoulder to wrist, four parallel lines on each side. Deep enough to have bled, though they're already scabbing over with unnatural speed.

I did this to myself. While sleeping. While dreaming of the hunt.

The implications make my stomach lurch. I barely make it to the small toilet before I'm retching, bringing up nothing but bile and the remnants of the dinner I couldn't force myself to eat earlier. My whole body shakes with the force of it, muscles spasming in ways that feel almost like shifting, like my bones want to rearrange themselves but can't quite manage it.

When the convulsions finally stop, I slump against the wall, gasping.

"Help," I whisper to the empty cell. "Somebody help me."

Morning comes with the fluorescent lights flickering on at precisely 6:00 AM. I haven't slept since the nightmare, too afraid of what I might do if I lose consciousness again. My eyes burn with exhaustion, but every time I close them, I see that deer. Feel its heartbeat stuttering beneath my jaws.

Jackson opens the cell door at 6:30, accompanied by another guard I don't recognize. They're both wearing nervous expressions and keeping their distance, as if I might lunge at them.

Maybe I will. I don't trust myself anymore.

"Breakfast," Jackson says, sliding a tray across the floor rather than handing it to me directly. Scrambled eggs, toast, orange juice. The smell makes my stomach turn.

"Not hungry."

"You should eat." This comes from the doorway, where Professor Winters has appeared. He looks haggard, dark circles under his eyes suggesting he slept about as well as I did. "Maintaining your strength is important."

"Why?" I don't bother hiding the bitterness in my voice. "So I'm healthy when they execute me?"

Winters flinches. He dismisses the guards with a curt nod, and they leave with palpable relief. Once we're alone, he steps into the cell properly, though he leaves the door open behind him. Escape route, I think. In case the monster attacks.

He's carrying a small medical case.

"I need to examine you," he says quietly. "Check the progression."

"Of me becoming a monster?"

"Of the Turning." His tone is gentle, infuriatingly patient. "Rowan, I know you're frightened…"

"Frightened?" I laugh, and it comes out harsh and brittle. "I'm terrorized, Professor. I'm losing my mind. I had a dream last night where I killed a deer with my bare hands and it felt good. It felt right. And when I woke up, I'd clawed myself bloody because apparently even unconscious, I'm dangerous."

I hold up my scratched arms as evidence.

Winters' expression does something complicated, guilt and sorrow and something else I can't identify. He opens the medical case and pulls out what looks like a handheld scanner.

"May I?"

I nod, too exhausted to resist.

He runs the device over my arms, and it emits a soft blue light that makes the silver marks glow brighter. Numbers flash across a small screen, data that means nothing to me but causes Winters' frown to deepen.

"The sigils are active and progressing rapidly," he murmurs, more to himself than to me. "You're at stage two now, possibly early stage three. The integration is... remarkable, actually. Most forced Turnings result in rejection by this point."

"Lucky me."

He sets down the scanner and pulls out a small bottle filled with white pills. "Your suppressants. They should help manage the symptoms—"

"They don't work anymore." The words come out flat. "I've been taking those pills every day for three years, Professor. You know what I realized last night? I don't even remember why I started taking them. The health center just told me I needed them for 'vitamin deficiency,' and I never questioned it."

Winters won't meet my eyes.

"What are they really for?" I press. "And don't lie to me. I'm done with lies."

For a long moment, he just stands there, the pill bottle clutched in his weathered hands. When he finally speaks, his voice is barely above a whisper.

"They're suppressants. For your wolf."

The confirmation, even though I'd already suspected it, hits like a physical blow.