The Lunar Crest Academy: Marked by The Lycans
Chapter 101: Are You Worthy?

Chapter 101: Chapter 101: Are You Worthy?

Lorraine’s POV

I stood in the middle of the common room, still as stone, the heavy silence pressing down on me like a weighted chain.

Reconnect with your wolf.

Will it to heal you.

How the hell was I supposed to do that?

The bleeding hadn’t stopped. The jagged, brutal stump where my finger used to be throbbed with a pulsing, angry ache. Each heartbeat sent another trickle of blood down my palm and onto the floor. I stared at it, dazed.

I was going to bleed out in this dusty, empty place. Just like that. Alone.

No. No, I wouldn’t let that happen.

Grimacing, I yanked off my jacket with one arm and wrapped the bloodied sleeve tightly around my injured hand. It wasn’t perfect, but it slowed the bleeding just enough that I could think without blacking out.

My legs wobbled slightly, but I forced them to move, staggering to a relatively clean patch of floor. Dust clung to my boots. The air was dry, stale, filled with memories of the dead and missing.

I dropped down cross-legged, ignoring the pain that rippled through my joints.

I closed my eyes.

I tried to... what? Meditate? Center myself?

This was ridiculous.

Still, I tried.

Deep breath in. Slow breath out.

The darkness behind my lids was deep. Thick. Empty.

Hello? I thought.

My voice echoed inside the hollow of my mind.

Wolf? Can you hear me?

Silence.

I waited.

Nothing.

If you can hear me... can you do me a favor and just... I gritted my teeth..., heal me?

Still nothing. Not even a whisper. Not a breeze in the void. No warmth. No presence. Just the same cold emptiness I’d felt my whole life.

I opened one eye.

My hand still looked mangled. Still throbbed like hell.

"This is pointless," I muttered.

And then I stood up and screamed.

The sound tore out of me, wild and ragged, scraping at my throat like broken glass. My voice bounced off the walls, a jagged echo of fury and pain and helplessness.

"DAMN IT!" I shouted. "I’m trying! I’m trying, okay?! Where the hell are you?!"

My voice cracked. My knees gave out, and I collapsed back onto the floor, clutching my bandaged hand to my chest. My breath came out in harsh, uneven pants. My eyes burned, not from tears, not yet, but from something deeper.

I wasn’t even angry at the wolf anymore. I was angry at myself.

What kind of girl can survive a place like this without even a wolf inside her?

I stoof there for a long while, my breath still ragged, my body trembling with rage and something dangerously close to grief.

But then I sat back down.

Because I didn’t come this far to give up after one try.

I couldn’t.

Elise was still missing. Felix was lying somewhere with a gaping wound in his chest because he tried to defend me.

And what was I doing?

Bleeding. Sitting. Screaming at the wind.

The least I could do now, the absolute least, was keep trying.

So I crossed my legs again on the cold, dusty floor. I centered myself the floor, the way I imagined it should be done. I didn’t know the rules. No one ever taught me how to call a wolf that had never once answered. I didn’t know what I was doing, but I did it anyway.

Again.

"Wolf," I whispered in my head, closing my eyes. If you can hear me... please. I need you.

Again.

My breathing slowed, and I reached inward, deeper than before. Into the hollow places. Into the scars I never let myself feel.

Help me. Help me save them. Help me survive this place.

Again.

Darkness. Silence.

I reached again.

Please, my voice cracked in my mind, even there. I can’t do this alone. I’m bleeding out here. Literally.

Still nothing.

But I didn’t stop.

Again.

I focused, clenched my jaw, pushed through the searing pain that radiated from my hand, up my arm, into my chest like a vice crushing my ribs.

I kept trying.

Again.

And again.

And again.

I didn’t stop until my breathing hitched.

Until my vision swam and the edges of my mind began to fray.

Until my lips trembled from how many times I whispered her name.

Until my thoughts became broken fragments, hope and pain and rage and sorrow all blurring into one trembling plea.

Until the jacket wrapped around my hand was soaked in blood, so heavy and wet it clung to my skin like a second layer of flesh.

I could feel it dripping now.

The blood. Slow, steady. Each drop hitting the floor like the beat of a death clock.

I was out of breath.

Out of strength.

And finally... my body gave out.

I felt it before it happened, the lightness in my head, the way the room tilted, the way everything dimmed.

My knees slid sideways. My shoulder hit the ground.

The world spun.

And then everything...

everything....

went black.....

Darkness.

It wasn’t the kind that came from closing your eyes, or the kind that lulled you into rest.

No.

This was different.

Thick. Pressing. Absolute.

It clung to me like smoke and shadow, wrapped around my limbs like iron chains, choking the breath from my lungs even though I knew, somewhere, that I wasn’t really breathing.

My feet touched nothing.

There was no ground beneath me, no sky above, no horizon to anchor myself to.

Just black. Endless black.

I blinked, or I thought I did.

Nothing changed.

"What the hell..." I whispered, but my voice didn’t echo. It didn’t carry. It just vanished into the void like it never existed.

Panic prickled up my spine.

I turned in place, looking for anything, a shape, a flicker of light, a way out.

There was none.

My heart pounded. Fast. Too fast.

"What is this?" I called again, louder. "Where the hell am I?!"

No answer.

My voice wasn’t swallowed this time.

It was ignored.

I wrapped my arms around myself and tried to think, tried to focus. But I couldn’t feel my body, not really. Just the weight of my fear. The ache where my hand should’ve been. The sense of falling inward, like I was being drawn deeper into this.... abyss.

This wasn’t a dream.

No, this was something else.

A trap?

A hallucination?

Was I dying?

"Hello?!" I shouted, voice cracking now. "Is there someone here? Anyone?"

Nothing.

Silence so loud it screamed.

My knees buckled and I dropped into the darkness, but there was no impact.

I didn’t fall.

I just kept floating in place, swallowed by shadow, as a whisper of dread slithered into my mind.

You’re alone.

You’ve always been alone.

"No," I said, shaking my head. "No.. I’m not. I had..."

Had?

Had who?

Elise, missing.

Felix, bleeding.

Adrian, Not here.

Kieran.... left you.

And my wolf... silent.

At first, I thought it was just a trick of my mind.

But I saw a flicker. A shimmer in the dark.

And then she appeared.

Still and silent, standing amidst the endless abyss like she’d always been there.

A woman.

No, something more than a woman. Ethereal. Divine.

She wore flowing robes so white they glowed like moonlight distilled into silk. Her long, silver-white hair cascaded past her waist, rippling gently as if caught in a breeze that didn’t exist. And her eyes, deep, unearthly blue, sparkled like twin galaxies, infinite and terrifying.

I couldn’t breathe.

I couldn’t think.

I just moved, drawn toward her like the tide to the moon.

Step by step, I crossed the nothingness.

And she watched me.

She didn’t speak. Didn’t blink. Just stood there with a presence so powerful, it made the air tremble around her.

When I got close, I reached out, slowly. Hesitantly. I didn’t know what I waas expecting. A sign? A touch? A spark?

But the moment my fingers brushed the fabric of her robe....

It changed.

The white began to darken. First pink. Then crimson

Blood.

Soaking her robes, seeping through them in thick waves.

I jerked my hand back.

Too late.

She screamed.

A sound so piercing and raw it tore through the darkness like lightning. It wasn’t just loud, it was wrong, too deep and too sharp to come from a human throat. It shook my bones. Rattled my skull.

And then....

Her skin began to melt.

Right in front of me, the perfect porcelain of her face warped, cracked, and peeled away like wax in a furnace. Her eyes rolled back as her features contorted with agony, her mouth still stretched in that unending scream.

And then came the fire.

Red flames burst from beneath her skin, devouring her from the inside out. Her hair caught next, turning from silk to cinder, disintegrating into ash before my eyes.

"No!" I cried, stumbling back, falling to my knees. "Please... stop! I didn’t mean...."

But she was already gone.

Burned away to nothing.

And then I heard it.

A voice.

It came from the dark. From the walls of the abyss. From inside my own head.

Echoing. Ethereal. Cruel.

"You are not worthy of me."

I collapsed forward, gasping. The blood in my veins turned to ice.

"No," I whispered. "Please. Don’t say that."

Silence.

Then the voice again, closer, colder.

"You are weak. Broken. A shadow."

"I’m trying," I choked out, hands trembling as they clawed at the empty floor. "I’ve been trying."

The silence returned.

I didn’t know where I was anymore. If I was awake or asleep or already dead. But I knew I couldn’t let this be the end. Not now.

Not like this.

I lifted my face, eyes stinging, and screamed into the void.

"Please just give me a chance!" My voice cracked. "I’ll make myself worthy of you, I swear it! Just one chance!"

For a heartbeat, the world held still.

Then came the laughter.

Low and mocking, like the cracking of ice over a deep lake. The darkness trembled with it.

"One chance, that’s all you have" the voice said at last. "To prove yourself. That you are worthy. That you are strong enough.... for me."

My breath hitched.

Then

Nothing.

The darkness shattered like glass.

I gasped, lurching upright so fast I nearly fell back again.

Sweat poured from my body. My lungs heaved. My skin burned like fire and frost all at once. I couldn’t tell if I was alive or dreaming or still trapped in that damn abyss

Then I looked down.

My hand....

The jacket had slipped off in my.. sleep.

And beneath it...

I froze.

The skin was smooth. Clean. No blood, no gaping stump.

And my finger...

My finger....

It was back.

Whole.