The Werewolves of Nyxryn

Chapter 3- the human realm

It was after my father had died — after the bullet, after the debts he’d left behind swallowed everything else. The bank had already come. They took the house, the account, the sense of safety we’d thought was permanent. What they didn’t tell us was that he hadn’t just owed money to banks.

I remembered the night strange men came to our door. Mom had gone pale, her whole body going stiff like an animal that knew the predators had already seen it. She turned to me, whispering fast and sharp: “Take them. Hide. Don’t make a sound.” Her hands shook when she pushed my brother and sister into my arms.

The closet in the back smelled of old wood and dust. It was dark, cramped, our knees knocking together. I held my siblings against me, one on each side, their small hands clinging to my shirt. They didn’t understand what was happening. My brother started to whimper, and I pressed my palm against his mouth, whispering that he had to be quiet, that we were hiding, and if we stayed hidden, we’d win the game.

Mom’s voice rose, breaking, turning into something I’d never heard before. Then her scream — not the kind you hear when someone stubs a toe or burns a hand on the stove, but the kind that rips the world open. My sister buried her face against me. I bit my lip so hard it bled just to keep myself from making a sound.

I didn’t remember how long it lasted. Long enough to understand. Long enough to know that when the door slammed and the silence came back, nothing would ever be the same.

When we finally crept out of the closet, mom was on the floor, shaking, her face pale and her eyes empty. I wanted to go to her, to help, but she shoved me back with a look I would never forget — not anger, but a warning. A plea for me to keep the little ones safe.

The next morning, I found her in the kitchen, a bottle in her hand. It was the first time I’d ever seen her drink in the daylight. She didn’t stop. She never had. Not one sober day since.

The woman who used to hum while she cooked eggs, who used to laugh with my father at silly things, was gone. What those men took from her that night was something no one could give back. And I knew, with a certainty that chilled me, that the bottle was the only thing keeping her upright — even if it was also the thing that was killing her.

My alarm hit me like a sledgehammer. Not that I’d actually slept much — maybe an hour, maybe two, tangled between shallow nightmares of my past. When I finally dragged myself up, the house was quiet in the worst kind of way.

Mom hadn’t come home.

Again.

You’d think I’d be used to it by now. No matter how many times she went MIA, a piece of me always worried I’d find her face in the obituaries one day. That she’d drink herself into a ditch, or someone uglier than she was found her and decided to leave a mark.

I shook the thought off and got dressed for work, every muscle in my body groaning in protest. My car sat outside, a crumpled mess of metal I couldn’t look at without feeling my throat tighten. The bus didn’t come this far out, and waiting around for Malrik to be done with school so he could maybe borrow a friend’s bike wasn’t an option.

So I walked.

It took me forty minutes on foot to get to the grocery store. Forty minutes of sidewalks, overgrown lawns, and pretending like my shoes didn’t rub blisters into my heels. By the time I clocked in, I was already exhausted, and my shift hadn’t even started yet.

The whole day, I ran numbers in my head, my brain a constant calculator. How many weeks would it take if I cut out lunches altogether? Could I skip rent for one month and just… pray the landlord didn’t show up? Would Malrik understand if I told him we couldn’t afford new notebooks for school? Could Elira survive with holes in her shoes just a little longer? Every answer ended in a wall. Every plan crumbled before it even had the chance to form.

By the time my shift ended, my brain was as frayed as the hem of my jeans. I leaned against the side of the building, staring at the cracked asphalt and trying not to cry in front of strangers. It was pointless. There was no way I could afford to get the car fixed — not this week, not next week, maybe not ever.

When I finally started the trek back home, I made the decision. One that tasted bitter on my tongue but felt like the only option: I wasn’t going in to work tonight.

Calling in sick was the closest thing to rebellion I’d allowed myself in years. It wasn’t even a lie, not really — my stomach was twisted in knots, my head pounded, my legs ached. But I hated it. I hated the weakness of it, hated the thought of my boss’s voice dripping with fake sympathy while underneath it, he seethed.

“Take care of yourself,” he’d said on the phone. His tone made it clear what he actually meant was, Don’t make this a habit. I knew the rules. If I called in sick again tomorrow, I might as well kiss that job goodbye. And as much as I despised slinging overpriced lattes for people who thought they were too good to look me in the eye, it was money. Money that fed my siblings. Money that kept us afloat.

Now, sitting at the kitchen table with Malrik’s books spread out and Elira humming while she drew little flowers in her notebook, I felt… defeated. Empty in a way sleep couldn’t fix. Mom was still gone. The car was still wrecked. My boss was still furious. And I wouldn't be earning any money tonight... And I was here, trying to figure out which hole in our sinking ship to plug first, knowing damn well the water was rising faster than I could bail.

I was sitting at the table, my forehead resting in my hand, when Malrik slid into the chair across from me. His algebra book was still open, but he wasn’t looking at it. He was looking at me — that same steady, unreadable look that always made me feel like he saw more than he should.

“I saw the car,” he said softly, his voice low enough that Elira, still humming over her doodles at the other end of the table, couldn’t catch the weight of it. I froze. For a second, I thought about brushing it off — pretending like the dented hood and dangling bumper weren’t screaming our reality to anyone with eyes. But lying to Malrik was like trying to put a bandage over a flood. Pointless.

“It’s bad,” I admitted, the words tasting bitter in my mouth.

“Worse than bad.”

He leaned back, crossing his arms, and for a moment, he looked older than seventeen.

“I know.” He hesitated, then added,

“But… I’ve been thinking.”

That was never a good start. My stomach tightened.

“I turn eighteen in a month,” he continued, glancing toward Elira as if to make sure she was still lost in her own little world. Then his eyes came back to me.

“I’ve already been looking for jobs. Not much around here, but I think the gas station down on Main might take me. It’s not much, but—”

“Malrik—” I started, but my throat caught on his name.

He held up a hand, determined.

“Just hear me out. If I start working too, it’ll give us some breathing room. You won’t have to carry everything on your own anymore. We can split things — groceries, bills, whatever. It’ll help. And you know it.”

I stared at him, torn between wanting to pull him into the tightest hug and wanting to scream at the universe for forcing this on him. He should’ve been worrying about final exams, about girls, about what college he might want to go to — not about how to keep food on the table.

Pride and heartbreak tangled inside me, squeezing my chest until I couldn’t tell if I wanted to laugh or cry. My little brother, already carrying the kind of weight grown men stumbled under.

“Malrik,” I whispered, and my voice cracked.

“You shouldn’t have to—”

The sharp, heavy pounding on the front door cut me off mid-sentence.

The sound echoed through the house like thunder, each bang rattling the thin walls. Elira jumped, her pencil clattering to the floor, wide eyes flying to me. Malrik stiffened in his chair, his jaw tightening. The three of us froze, listening as the knocking came again, louder this time.

Not polite.

Not patient.

Demanding.

Every muscle in my body went cold, my mind flashing back to that same door, another night, when I’d been just a kid hiding in a closet with my siblings while men shouted at our mother.

“Stay here,” I whispered, standing slowly. Malrik was already pushing back his chair.

“Like hell,” he muttered, his voice low but steady.

The pounding came again, harder, shaking the frame. Whoever was on the other side wasn’t going away. The pounding didn’t stop — if anything, it grew angrier, each slam against the door vibrating through the floorboards, rattling the glasses in the kitchen cabinets.

Malrik moved first, shoulders tight, jaw hard.

“Elira,” he said, his voice low but commanding in a way that startled even me.

“Go. Now. Closet. Don’t come out until we say so.”

Elira blinked at him, frozen, her big brown eyes shimmering with confusion and fear.

“Mal—”

“Now!” His voice cracked sharp enough to break her hesitation. She bolted, bare feet slapping against the floor as she disappeared down the hall, her braid flying behind her.

I turned on Malrik, heart pounding so hard I thought it might split open.

“You too—get in there with her!”

“No.” His tone was steady, like stone. He planted himself beside me, squaring his shoulders toward the door.

“I’m not leaving you out here alone.”

“Malrik—”

The next slam cut me off, louder than thunder.

And then the door shattered.

The frame cracked apart as if hit by a sledgehammer, the wood splintering inward. The lock gave way with a sickening snap, the pieces of it scattering across the floor. I stumbled back, pulling Malrik with me, my breath catching in my throat—

And then I saw it.

Not a man.

Not some drunk neighbor or angry landlord or even the worst nightmare of debt collectors and criminals, I had been bracing myself for.

It filled the doorway, massive shoulders covered in fur scraping the sides, the shredded remains of what might’ve once been a shirt hanging from its body. Its eyes glowed a molten darkness, locked on me with a hunger that chilled my blood. Its jaw stretched wider than any human mouth should, sharp fangs gleaming in the dull light as drool dripped out of its mouth and onto the floor.

A werewolf.

Every story, every legend I’d ever laughed off as nonsense during Halloween, as fairytales to keep children awake at night, was suddenly standing in our apartment, breathing hard enough to make the walls seem smaller.

And it looked ready to kill.