The Last Page

Emma's POV

The book flew across my college room and hit the wall with a loud thud.

"No, no, NO!" I screamed, jumping up from my bed. My roommate Sarah wasn't here tonight, which was good because I was about to have a total meltdown.

I marched over and picked up "Bloodmoon's Betrayal" from where it had dropped. The cover was bent now, showing the silver wolf with sad golden eyes. Just like Kai's eyes in the story.

My hands shook as I opened to the last page again. Maybe I read it wrong. Maybe there was a different finish hiding somewhere.

But no. There it was in black and white. Kai Nightshade, the boy who had been bullied and kicked out of his pack, made a deal with dark spirits. He became a monster. He destroyed everything good in the world just because no one ever showed him love.

"This is so stupid!" I yelled at the book. "He didn't have to become bad! Someone should have helped him!"

I flopped back onto my bed, holding the book to my chest. Tears ran down my face like rivers. I'd been reading this story for three days straight, barely eating or sleeping. My psychology homework sat forgotten on my desk. I had a test tomorrow that I hadn't studied for.

But I couldn't stop thinking about Kai.

The author made him the enemy, but I saw right through that. Kai wasn't born bad. He was just a scared, lonely kid who got pushed too far. When his own pack accused him of stealing their sacred moonstones, when they banished him to die in the wild, when no one believed he was innocent - that's when his heart broke.

And broken hearts could turn into something dark.

"I would have believed you," I mumbled to the book. "I would have helped you."

I'd always been like this - caring too much about fictional people. Mom said it was because I understood what it felt like to be left out. Being adopted, never quite fitting in anywhere, always feeling different. Maybe that's why Kai's story hit me so hard.

My phone buzzed. A text from my best friend Jake: "Emma! Where are you? Study group starts in 20 minutes!"

I groaned. Right. The psychology test. The one I was sure going to fail because I spent all my time reading instead of studying.

I typed back: "Can't make it. Sick."

It wasn't really a lie. I felt sick - sick about Kai's ending, sick about how unfair his life was, sick about how the author just gave up on him.

Another text: "You better not be reading that werewolf book again!"

I turned my phone face down. Jake didn't understand. None of my friends did. They thought I was weird for getting so upset about "made-up stories." But these people felt real to me. Their pain felt real.

I opened the book to chapter fifteen, where everything went wrong for Kai. His pack found their precious moonstones missing from the shrine. Someone had stolen them in the night. And because Kai was different - because he had strange silver hair and odd eyes, because his wolf form was bigger and stronger than the others - they blamed him.

"It has to be the freak," Alpha Marcus had said. "He's always been jealous of what he can't have."

But that wasn't true! Kai never wanted to steal anything. He just wanted to join. He wanted his pack to accept him. The real thief was someone else - someone the author never revealed until way later in the story.

My eyes felt heavy. I'd been awake for almost twenty-four hours straight, reading and re-reading. But I couldn't sleep. Not yet.

I flipped to chapter twenty, where they banished Kai. Seventeen years old and left to die alone in the woods. The pack he'd grown up with just... threw him away.

"You are no longer one of us," Alpha Marcus had stated. "Leave our territory and never return."

And Kai had looked at all their faces - people who used to be his friends, adults who had watched him grow up, the girl he had a crush on. Not one person stood up for him. Not one person said, "Wait, maybe we should investigate more."

They just let him go.

"I hate them all," I cried into my pillow. "How could they be so mean?"

But I knew how. I'd seen it in real life too. At school, kids got picked on for being different. Teachers looked the other way when bullies targeted the weird kids. People were mean when they were scared or didn't understand something.

Still, someone should have helped Kai. Someone should have seen that he was good inside, just hurt and scared.

I turned to the final pages, even though they made my heart break into a million pieces. Kai, alone in the bush for months, slowly losing hope. Then the dark spirits finding him, whispering promises of power and wrath.

"Join us," they had said. "We'll give you strength to make them all pay."

And Kai, desperate and broken, had said yes.

The rest of the story was Kai killing pack after pack, becoming the very monster they had accused him of being. A self-fulfilling promise that could have been stopped if just one person had shown him kindness.

I wiped my eyes with my sleeve. "I would have been that person," I whispered to the book. "I would have saved you."

The words seemed to glow on the page for a second, but that was probably just my tired eyes playing tricks. I'd been looking at the book for so long that everything looked blurry.

My eyelids felt like they had weights on them. Maybe I should try to get some sleep. The test was in eight hours, and I needed to at least try to study.

But as I started to close the book, something strange happened. The cover felt warm under my hands. Really warm, like it had been sitting in sunshine.

"What the..." I opened it again, and the pages were definitely glowing now. Not bright, but like there was a soft light coming from inside the paper.

My heart started beating fast. This wasn't normal. Books didn't glow. Was I having some kind of dream from not sleeping?

The light got brighter. I could hear something too - like whispers, but I couldn't make out the words. The room felt different, like the air was buzzing with energy before a storm.

"Okay, this is officially freaking me out," I said out loud.

I tried to close the book, but it wouldn't move. My hands seemed stuck to the cover, like there was some kind of magnetic force holding them there.

The whispers got louder. Now they sounded like voices, lots of them, all talking at once. And underneath it all, I could swear I heard howling - like dogs singing to the moon.

The light from the book got so bright I had to squint. My whole dorm room was glowing golden now. The walls looked like they were moving, like water.

"What's happening?" I gasped.

Then I heard one voice, clearer than all the others. A young man's voice, sad and desperate: "Please... someone help me..."

My heart nearly stopped. I knew that voice. I'd been picturing it for three days while reading.

It was Kai.

The book was burning hot now, but I couldn't let go. The golden light spun around me like a tornado. The screaming got louder and louder until it filled my ears completely.

The last thing I saw before everything went white was my image in my dorm room mirror.

Except it wasn't my image anymore.

It was a girl with longer hair and different clothes, standing in a forest I'd never seen before.

And then the world disappeared.