I woke up on my bed the next morning.
The duvet was pulled neatly up to my chin, and the fireplace across the room was still crackling with a gentle warmth.
I blinked my eyes open, staring up at the intricate crown molding of the ceiling confusion.
I didn’t know how I had gotten there, because the last thing I remembered was falling asleep in the Rose garden.
I remembered the freezing night wind, the midnight-colored petals, and curling my legs up onto the hard cement bench because my body was too heavy to move.
There was a completely blank space in my memory between closing my eyes under the silver moonlight and opening them just now inside my room.
Did someone find me?
Did someone carry me up the three flights of stairs in the dead of night?
I looked over at the clock in the nightstand, and it was 12:00 in the afternoon.
Panic struck my chest, and I scrambled to sit upright, my ribs giving a tight, burning twinge that made me gasp.
Twelve o’clock!
How could I have slept through the entire morning?
I was supposed to meet Hazel’s dad at the clinic hours ago.
I didn’t waste another second.
I rushed into the bathroom, took a lightning-fast shower, and got dressed into a clean dark blue sweater and thick trousers.
I didn’t even take the time to look in the mirror before I snatched my small bag from the table and rushed out of my room.
I was late for my appointment with the doctor.
My boots clicked rapidly against the floors as I hurried down the corridor, my breath coming in short, anxious hitches.
I knew where the pack Clinic was, Hazel had showed me during our tour yesterday afternoon, but knowing where a room was in theory didn’t stop me from getting completely lost in the big house.
I took a wrong left turn past the library, ended up in an unfamiliar wing, and within five minutes, I had no idea which way was north.
I was officially lost in the big house.
Panic began to set into my system making the walls feel like they were closing in around my shoulders.
Assuming I had a wolf, I would have mind-linked Hazel telling her I was lost.
I would have simply projected my thoughts across the territory, sending a distress signal through the pack bond to let her know I was running in circles.
But my mind was a dead zone of silence.
I didn’t even have a cell phone to call her or text her for help.
Realizing that running around in a panic would only make me more late, I stopped in the middle of the hallway and forced myself to take a deep breath.
I had to do the next best thing I could think of.
Ask someone for direction.
I walked past a wide archway and saw a group of young boys talking and laughing in the common area where I had ended up.
There were about four of them, looking to be around fourteen or fifteen years old.
They were tossing a leather ball back and forth between them.
They looked happy, energetic, and completely at ease in their home.
My stomach twisted into a nervous knot.
I hesitated by the doorframe, my fingers tightly gripping the hem of my cloth.
Back at Silver Ridge, anyone was a death wish.
The teenagers there would have used the opportunity to trip me, spit on me, or call me a useless, wolf-less freak just to hear themselves laugh.
I was terrified that these boys would react the exact same way, that they would laugh at me or be annoyed because I was disturbing them.
But what else could I do?
I was completely stranded.
This was my only chance to find the clinic, and it didn’t hurt to try.
I took a deep breath, stepped closer to them, and swallowed the rising lump of fear in my throat.
“Hi,” I said, my voice coming out a little lower and raspier than I intended.
The leather ball clutched into one of the boy’s hands, and all four of them stopped laughing, turning their heads to look directly at me.
“I…
I am sorry to disturb you,” I whispered, forcing myself to hold my ground.
“But could you please ask…
I mean, could I ask you for directions to the pack clinic?
I am supposed to be there for an appointment, and I got completely lost.”
I held my breath, my heart hammering against my ribs during the long, agonizing second of silence that followed.
The boy holding the ball offered me a bright smile that instantly shattered the tense anxiety in my chest.
“Oh, the clinic?
Yeah, sure, it’s actually on the other side of the pack house,” he said, his voice light and completely friendly.
He tossed the ball to his friend and took a step toward me.
“It’s pretty easy to get turned around in this place if you’re new.
We can actually volunteer to take you there right now if you want.
We were just hanging out anyway.”
“Yeah, come on,” another boy chimed in, nodding his head toward the exit corridor.
“It’s much faster if we just show you the shortcut through the sunroom.”
I stared at them in shock.
They were willing to take me there.
Who raised this boy?
I could literally kiss them right now.
A profound wave of gratitude washed through my soul, a warmth that made my eyelids prick with unexpected heat.
“Thank you so much,” I said, my voice trembling slightly.
“I am very grateful for your help.
I really appreciate it.”
“No problem at all!” the first boy said as we all started heading down the hallway together.
As we walked through the corridors, the awkward silence quickly broke as they started introducing themselves to me one after the other.
The boy who had been holding the ball was named Leo, the tall one with dark hair was Toby, and the two brothers were named Marcus and Sam.
“So, you’re the guest staying in the Alpha’s wing, right?” Toby asked curiously.
“Hazel told my mom that a new ward was arriving this week.”
“Yes,” I nodded, keeping my hands tucked into my pockets.
“My name is Ella.”
“Nice to meet you, Ella!” Leo said, pushing open a set of glass double doors that led out toward a beautifully manicured side courtyard.
“Don’t worry about getting lost anymore.
Once you live here for a week, your brain just automatically maps out the hallways.
It took Toby a whole month to figure out where the dining hall was when his family first moved here from his old pack.”
“Hey!
It was two weeks, not a month!” Toby protested, shoving Leo’s shoulder playfully, making the whole group burst into loud laughter all over again.
I listened to them banter, a strange, unfamiliar feeling of longing settling deep into my chest.
I wanted to have this, I wanted to have what they had.
Friendship.
Friends I could laugh with, play with and even cry to.
Two minutes later, we were standing right in front of the clinic entrance.
The building was beautiful, constructed of white stone and glass panels.
The clinic was detached from the main pack house, but it was still sharing the same exterior walls, connected by a long, roofed walkway that kept the mountain wind from biting through the glass.
I turned back to the group, offering them a small smile.
“Thank you so much for bringing me here.
I would have been wandering around for hours without you.”
“Anytime, Ella!” Leo said, waving his hand as they turned around and started walking back.
“We’ll see you around the pack house later!
Good luck with your checkup!”
“See ya, Ella!” the others called out, their voices echoing cheerfully as they headed back inside.
I watched them disappear around the corner before I took a deep breath, turned the handle of the door, and went inside the clinic.
The interior was pristine, smelling strongly of clean eucalyptus, white alcohol, and sterile sheets.
The floors were a bright, polished tile that reflected the natural daylight streaming through the windows.
“What are you doing here?
I was just about to go upstairs to get you!” I turned to my side and saw It was Hazel.
Hazel was standing near a reception desk, a digital tablet clutched in her hands, her big blue eyes widening when she noticed me standing by the threshold.
“Hazel, I am so incredibly sorry for being late,” I said quickly, the old anxiety flushing back into my cheeks as I stepped forward.
“I checked the clock and it was already past noon, and then I took a wrong turn by the hallway and got completely lost in the corridors…”
“Ella, breathe!
Stop apologizing,” Hazel interrupted, letting out a familiar chuckle as she slid the tablet onto the desk and marched straight over to me.
She placed her warm hands on my shoulders, her catchy smile instantly lighting up the room.
“It is completely okay.
You don’t need to stress yourself out.
Plus, we have been incredibly busy here since the early hours of the morning anyway.
My dad had an emergency delivery with a pregnant she-wolf so your appointment wouldn’t have started on time even if you were here at dawn.”
She looked down at my face, her eyes scanning my clear skin and the neat bandages around my forehead.
“How are you feeling today?
Did you sleep well?”
“I did,” I murmured, looking down at my shoes as the memory of the Rose garden flashed in my mind.
“But…Hazel, I don’t know how I got back into my room last night?
The last thing I remember was falling asleep on the concrete bench out in the garden.”
Hazel’s smile turned into a knowing amused smirk, and she let out a soft gasp.
“Oh, so you don’t remember?
Alpha Alexander went out to do patrol around midnight and found you completely frozen on that bench.
He was absolutely furious that I let a recovering patient sleep out in the cold.
He carried you all the way back up to your room.”
My throat went completely dry.
He carried me.
The Alpha had personally lifted my body out of the cold and carried me into the warmth.
Before I could even process the shock of the revelation, Hazel’s nose suddenly twitched, and she let out a sharp, disapproving hum.
She reached out, patting my stomach gently.
“Wait a minute…
have you eaten anything today?” she asked, her tone turning strict.
“No,” I admitted quietly.
“I woke up so late that I just showered and ran straight here.”
“Aha!
I knew it,” Hazel said, shaking her head as she immediately grabbed my hand and dragged me toward the clinic exit, leading me straight back down the roofed walkway toward the entrance of the pack house.
“How many times do I have to tell you, Ella?
You cannot get treated or run diagnostic scans on an empty stomach!
Come on, we are going straight to the kitchen right now.”
“But what about the doctor?
What about the tests?” I protested gently, my boots clicking rapidly against the floorboards as I tried to keep up with her energetic pace.
“My dad can wait another thirty minutes,” Hazel said thoroughly, her catchy smile returning as she pushed open the door to the kitchen.
“You need all the strength you can get for the big, and that starts with a big plate of hot lunch.
No arguments allowed.”
So I realized that Webnovel’s time and my country times are not the same.
To you guys I missed a day but to me I am still in that same day.
Sorry for that and I have switched my time to match Webnovel’s own.