The Lunar Crest Academy: Marked by The Lycans
Chapter 32: Silent Screams

Chapter 32: Chapter 32: Silent Screams

My knees hit the cold tile floor with a dull thud.

The world spun.

I couldn’t breathe.

It felt like the walls were tilting, like gravity itself was trying to pull me into the earth and bury me beneath it.

"No," I whispered. "No... not him."

But the doctor didn’t stop.

He didn’t pause, didn’t soften. His words kept coming, like knives to the chest.

"Eleven are confirmed dead," he said quietly. "Six of them were dead on arrival. The rest succumbed to their injuries within the hour. The boy... Callum... he held on the longest."

Eleven.

I had led twenty-seven ferals into that protest. And now... almost half of them were gone. Gone because they dared to speak. Because they dared to follow me.

I looked up at the doctor with hollow eyes. My voice was barely audible. "I want to see them."

He nodded and gestured for me to follow.

I stood on shaking legs. My limbs felt like ice, my body numb. I was vaguely aware of Kieran behind us, his footsteps soft and unhurried. Regal. Detached. He followed like a shadow, always there, always silent.

The walk to the room was short, but it felt like it took an eternity. Every hallway we passed was filled with noise, beeping monitors, frantic nurses, the clatter of carts, but around us, it was quiet. A bubble of stillness wrapped around my grief.

Then the doctor opened the door

The room was cold. Too cold.

The kind of cold that sinks into your bones and never leaves.

There were metal stretchers lined in two rows, bodies lying still beneath white sheets. So many sheets. So many faces, most I don’t even know by name. Ferals who had dared to believe we could matter.

And there, at the far end of the room, I saw him.

"Callum..." I whispered.

I ran to him, and everything in me shattered.

He looked too small. Too still.

His face was pale, lips tinged blue, blood still crusted in his hair. His arm, what remained of it, was wrapped tightly, but it didn’t matter. Nothing mattered. Because he was gone.

I dropped to my knees beside him and let out a sound I didn’t recognize. It came from somewhere deep, somewhere raw and wild and wounded. My hand reached out to touch his cheek, cold beneath my fingers.

"I’m sorry," I whispered. "I’m so sorry, Callum..."

My tears splattered against the white sheet covering his lower body. I clutched the edge of it like it could anchor me, like holding onto it would somehow pull me back from the void swallowing me whole.

Just then, the door burst open.

"Lorraine!"

I turned and saw Felix limping in, one arm slung across Elise’s shoulder. He looked like death, bruised, bloody, barely standing. Elise didn’t look much better, her hair matted with blood, her eyes wild with panic.

They were supposed to be resting. Healing.

But here they were.

Drawn by grief.

Felix’s eyes locked on Callum’s body, and he froze.

"No..." he whispered. "No, no, no—this isn’t real."

He took a staggering step forward, then another. "I’m dreaming," he muttered. "I’m dreaming, and when I wake up, he’ll be in our room. He’ll be across from me, snoring like always... He’ll—he’ll laugh when I tell him..."

But he didn’t finish.

His voice cracked.

And then he dropped to his knees beside me, his fists clenched and trembling.

Elise screamed.

It was the kind of scream that shook the air, that echoed through every corner of the room. A scream so sharp and raw it made my ears ring.

She ran to Callum’s side and collapsed beside him, sobbing into his chest like she could shake him awake. Her small hands clutched at his uniform, shaking, pulling.

"No! You don’t get to die! You don’t get to leave us!" she screamed. "You were supposed to be okay! We—we were going to survive this place together, remember?! You promised to keep your eyes open, you promised!!"

But there was no answer.

Only silence.

I didn’t scream.

I couldn’t.

There was nothing left in me to scream with.

I just stared, stared at the boy who protected me when he had no reason to. Who took a beating for me. Who made me laugh when I forgot how. My throat burned, but I didn’t make a sound. The tears flowed freely, soaking my face, dripping from my chin, but I didn’t move.

I couldn’t.

Behind us, Kieran stood like a statue, silent and unmoved. I didn’t look at him. I didn’t care if he stayed or walked away.

Because in that moment, nothing else existed.

Just us.

Just the dead.

And the unbearable weight of knowing I led them to it.

***Kieran’s Point of View***

I stood at the threshold of the cold chamber, arms folded, eyes unblinking.

Lorraine dropped to her knees beside the dead boy’s body, Callum, I think that was his name. Her fingers trembled as she reached for his face, her entire frame shaking like a leaf clinging to a storm-beaten tree.

It was pitiful.

But then again, ferals always were.

Weak. Fragile. Broken things pretending to be wolves.

I’d seen it before. Countless times. The sobbing, the screaming, the shattering of spirits. The moment they realized that no one would come to save them. That no one cared. That this world, our world, would grind them into dust and keep moving.

But this...

This was different

I didn’t look away. Couldn’t.

Because while her voice cracked and her face crumpled, there was no collapse in her spine. No submission. Even in the depths of her grief, Lorraine didn’t break the way they usually did. She bent, but didn’t shatter. Her sorrow didn’t make her small, it made her still. Like the eye of a storm just waiting to rise again.

And I hated that I saw it.

Hated that I noticed.

Because with each tear that slid down her blood-smeared cheek, something inside me... shifted.

A flicker at first. A twitch in the chest I was quick to silence.

But then I felt it again—sharper, wilder.

My wolf stirred.

I clenched my jaw.

Not now.

But it didn’t listen. It never disobeyed. Not like this.

It growled, low and violent, pacing beneath my skin, enraged in a way I hadn’t felt in years. And I didn’t understand why.

It wasn’t the deaths. It wasn’t the blood.

It was her.

The sight of her on the ground, curled beside a corpse, her hands shaking as she brushed the dead boy’s hair from his face. The silence in her scream. The unbearable quiet in her pain.

My wolf didn’t just stir.

It roared.

Protect.

That word echoed through me like a thunderclap.

Protect?

Of all things—for her?

This broken feral girl?

No. No, it was just the heat of the moment. The stench of blood in the air. The raw emotion making everything louder than it was. That’s all.

But I wasn’t fooling myself.

Because the way my fists clenched involuntarily... the way I took an instinctive step forward when she screamed... the way I looked at Lorraine like her pain had torn a crack in something I had sealed long ago—

That wasn’t nothing.

And I hated it.

I stood there, still as stone, staring at her as she cradled the corpse of a boy who followed her to death. Her friends stumbled in, broken and bleeding, each one reacting like they’d lost a part of themselves. The girl screamed, the boy collapsed, and Lorraine just... sat there. Silent. Staring.

And still... she didn’t break.

She simply cried.

And something primal inside me... something I couldn’t name.... cried with her.

I took a breath, slow and deep, and forced my wolf back into its cage. But I knew it wouldn’t stay there for long.