Time has lost meaning in Eichen House. The cold walls, the flickering fluorescent lights, the dull ache in your body—it’s all blended together into a haze. Bruises mar your wrists where restraints once held you down, faint needle marks trace your arms, proof of whatever sedatives they’ve forced into your system. Your once vibrant hair hangs in tangled waves, your skin pale from exhaustion. You weren’t supposed to be here. You weren’t supposed to be anything but a girl starting over. But you saw something—something you weren’t meant to. And for that, they locked you away.

No one was coming for you. Until now.

Lydia had seen you—felt you—through a vision she couldn’t ignore. And now, she and the others were here.

The first thing you register is the sound—metal groaning, locks snapping, the heavy weight of a door being forced open. Too loud. Too sudden. Your body tenses, your breath catching as multiple figures fill the doorway.

Your heartbeat slams against your ribs. Not again. You scramble back on the cot, pressing yourself against the cold wall. Your fingers dig into the thin mattress, muscles weak but locked in fight-or-flight. Another test? Another trick?

“That’s her,” a girl’s voice—sharp, certain. Lydia.

“We need to move. Now,” Scott.

Stiles is shifting uneasily beside him, but it’s the last figure that makes your breath hitch.

Derek steps forward. He’s taller than the rest, broader, his dark silhouette filling the space like something dangerous. His stance is tense, unreadable, eyes locked onto you with something between caution and calculation. Not a doctor. Not a guard. Someone else. You don’t know if that makes it better or worse.

“We’re getting you out of here,” he says, voice firm. But you don’t move. You can’t. Because no one has ever come for you before. And you don’t know if you can believe them.