Chapter 3, Fifteen
Fifteen years
Wren
My room was directly below my parents’, and the vents in this old stone house were a megaphone for secrets. If I sat perfectly still on the edge of my bed, the house told me exactly how much I was costing them.
Upstairs, the heavy thud of Dad’s boots stopped. I heard the creak of the mattress as he sat down.
“Silas asked about her again today,” Dad said, his voice a low rumble that vibrated through my floorboards. “He wanted to know why Wren isn’t on the adolescent roster for the summer hunts.”
“What did you tell him?” Mom’s voice was sharp with a familiar, frantic edge.
“He didn’t buy the ‘late bloomer’ excuse, Heather,” Dad said. I heard the thud of his leather belt hitting the dresser. “He looked right at her during the morning assembly. He told me she has no scent. Not a trace of a wolf. He’s tired of waiting for a spirit that isn’t coming.”
“She’s fifteen,” Mom whispered. “Some lines don’t shift until later…”
“He doesn’t care,” Dad countered. “Silas is getting old. He needs Killian to take over soon, and he wants every ‘dead weight’ off the ledger before he hands over the mantle. He sees Wren as a debt we can’t pay back.”
I leaned my head against the cool wall, closing my eyes. I was a liability. A ghost of a debt.
A rhythmic tap, two quick, one slow hit at my door. It was so faint I almost missed it. The door creaked open just an inch, and Jace slipped inside.
“Shh,” he mouthed, pointing toward the vent above us.
He closed the door with a click that didn’t even make a sound. Jace was fifteen, too, but while I was a “Null,” he was the High-Ridge’s rising star. He sat on the edge of my bed, his skin radiating that restless, wolfish heat. He leaned in close, his voice a barely-audible breath against my ear.
“I brought you a burger,” he whispered, sliding a foil-wrapped parcel onto my lap. “Don’t let the smell hit the vent, or Mom will know I went to the village.”
I looked at the burger, then at him. “How much of that did you hear?”
“I’m a wolf, Wren. I heard all of it,” Jace breathed. His eyes were serious, devoid of the usual playfulness he showed the rest of the pack. “Silas is just rattling Dad’s cage. He’s been grumpy since the day you got here.”
“Jace, he’s right,” I whispered back, my voice trembling. “I’m nothing. I can’t fight like a wolf. I can’t hunt like a wolf.”
Jace gripped my shoulder. His hand was heavy and warm. “Maybe you can’t fight like them. But I’ve seen you in the Gully. You’re faster than Killian. You’re quieter than the sentinels. You don’t have the weight of a wolf slowing you down.”
He looked at the door, then back at me, his gaze intensifying.
“I’m going to start training you. Early. Before the sun hits the ridge,” he whispered. “If the Alpha wants to see ‘useful,’ we’ll give him useful. If you can’t overpower them, you’re going to learn how to never let them touch you. You’re quick on your feet, Wren. We can use that.”
I looked at him, surprised. “You’d risk Dad catching us?”
“Dad knows the stakes,” Jace said. “He won’t stop us if it keeps you off that ‘dead weight’ list.” He stood up, moving toward the door with that same impossible silence. He paused, looking back.
“You don’t smell like a wolf, Wren. But you smell like the air right before a blizzard, cold and electric. That has to be something. See you at 4 AM.”