Chapter 7 -

Dorian is absent.

Completely absent. For days. Since the night in the woods. And while Troy tries her best to concentrate on her lectures, her anxiety spirals deeper and deeper with every passing hour.

Sitting in class now, staring blankly at the professor as he rambles on about economics, she realizes she hasn’t heard a single word in the last twenty minutes. Her leg bounces underneath the table. Her fingers twitch around the pencil in her hand.

Where is he?

The thought keeps drilling through her skull.

The pencil snaps between her fingers.

A few students glance at her, startled, but Troy ignores them. She drops the broken pieces onto the desk and reaches into her bag for a pen instead. Opening her notebook, she starts writing furiously.

But it isn’t class notes.

Dear Diary,

Actually, dear Dorian…

Where are you? You're supposed to be here. Have you left me again? Abandoned me all over again? You have, haven’t you?

Or are you dead? Did those wild dogs finally get you? If they did, I should really go and thank them. Or maybe I can pick up some pieces from your bones and hang them around my neck. Joking!

I don't want you dead. Just…

Troy looks up and taps with her pen. How did she want him? So destroyed that he couldn't love anyone else?

Just… broken…I want you broken… like me.

PS: I hate you, you know.

Love, your orphan sister. x

She stares at the words for a long moment, her chest tightening painfully. But the letter doesn’t help. 

The professor claps his hands together loudly.

“Class dismissed.”

Troy grabs her stuff and bolts out of the room before anyone else can stand.

The hallways are crowded and noisy, students brushing against her shoulders as they move between classes, laughing and talking as if the world isn’t collapsing around her. She paces across campus aimlessly, attending one lecture, skipping the next, wandering between buildings like a ghost.

Eventually, she hides in one of the bathroom stalls.

The second the lock clicks shut, tears burst out of her. Her hands shake violently as she presses them against her face, trying to muffle the sound. Hot tears stream through her fingers.

And she doesn’t even know why she’s crying.

Maybe because finding Dorian after fourteen years had cracked something open inside her. Maybe because seeing him again made all those old feelings crawl back out of the grave. 

She was only six and he eight, when he locked her in that closet, and then disappeared with his new family.

Maybe he vanished again.

Just like then.

The thought hurts so much it makes her stomach twist. Worst of all, the university is closing tomorrow for a week-long showcase event. Which means if Dorian doesn’t come back today, she won’t see him for another entire week.

Crap. How can hatred do this to a person?

Voices enter the bathroom suddenly, and Troy clamps a hand over her mouth. Two girls walk in chatting about assignments, completely unaware of the breakdown happening three feet away from them.

Troy wipes her tears furiously. Then, in those few silent moments, she makes up her mind.

She’s going back to the woods. Back to the old farm.

Honestly. Maybe those things really got him. The thought had started as a joke in her diary, but now it digs under her skin like a parasite. Maybe he was lying there, waiting for someone to come look for him. 

The thought sends anxiety bursting through her chest in painful waves.

She pushes open the stall door with the girls still inside the bathroom. They glance at her awkwardly, but Troy only glares at them before turning toward the sink and fixing her face.

Looking at her mascara now smeared on her cheeks, she whispers, “Fucking asshole. Why do you keep doing this to me?”

The girls look to her, wide-eyed, but she ignores them.

She looks outside the window. It has been a long day already, and the light is beginning to fade. If she wants enough daylight to search for him, she needs to go.

Now.

So she leaves without saying a word.

Standing outside the university grounds, she waits for her Uber, and soon enough, the car pulls in beside her. After fifteen minutes, the driver stops at the entrance of the old farm where the bonfire had been held.

“Should I wait for you?” he asks.

Troy thinks about it for a second. “I’ll just order another ride later. I’m not sure how long I’ll be.”

He nods and leaves her behind.

Troy walks with a deliberate pace toward the patch of woods, but as she looks over the darkening horizon, she starts questioning whether this is actually a good idea. Entering the woods now, it’s still light enough to see in front of her, but instinctively she knows it won’t stay that way for long. So she marks the trees she passes with her knife and starts searching.

“Dorian?!” she yells over and over again, walking through the woods without finding anything.

“Dorian, where are you?”

Nothing answers her desperate plea. There is nothing here. Not a trace.

That’s good though… right? She would have found something if he were dead. A bone. Blood. Anything.

The darkness settles in fast. Too fast. And after a while, she reluctantly decides to turn around. Looking at the carved markings on the trees, she slowly starts finding her way back, step by step.

But just as she sees the opening in the trees that resembles safety, the growls return.

Low, but distant. The same growls from before.

Troy freezes instantly. At first, they stay far away, hidden somewhere deep between the trees. Troy keeps quiet, barely even breathing, until eventually the sounds fade again.

Then she moves. This was a really bad idea.

She grips the knife tightly in her hand and walks faster. Ahead, the edge of the woods, where the last traces of evening light still shine through, is within reach.

Then something snaps its jaws right behind her.

Troy whirls around and almost screams before remembering what Dorian told her. Don’t scream.

Standing between the trees is a huge… fucking… doglike thing.

A wolf? Maybe. But something about it looks horribly wrong. Its body is massive, towering unnaturally high, and except for the obvious wolf-like shape and rows of sharp, sharp teeth, the eyes look different. Completely black. No iris. Just endless black staring back at her.

That can’t be right.

Troy steps backward slowly, but another growl sounds behind her. She turns her head. More of the creatures begin emerging from between the trees. One. Two. Three.

Their black eyes lock onto her hungrily. As if they haven't eaten in days. The sheer, deafening angst rushing through her veins pushes her into a dark hole.

Then one of them suddenly lunges for her.

Troy stumbles backward with a scream, slamming hard against a tree trunk. Pain explodes through the back of her skull as the knife flies from her hand.

Before everything goes black, she hears the creature yelp viciously.

Then chaos erupts around her.

After that, she only awakens in fragments. Silver hair beside her face. Strong arms carrying her. The steady rhythm of footsteps and a heavenly warmth surrounding her freezing body.