Chapter 4, Sixteen
Sixteen years
Wren
A year of training with Jace had changed me.
I wasn’t a wolf, that is what the village ledger said, but I was no longer the soft foundling who tripped over roots in the dark either.
Every morning for the last twelve months, Jace had treated the forest like a cage and me like the prey he was trying to sharpen.
“Speed, Wren! You’re overthinking it again,” Jace called out.
He was jogging backward ahead of me, looking completely bored while I was sprinting at full tilt. At sixteen, Jace was a force of nature, broad, loud, and radiating that constant wolf-heat. He was barefoot, his calloused soles gripping the damp earth as if he were part of the forest itself.
“I don’t have four legs, Jace!” I yelled back, my lungs burning.
“You’re the Beta’s daughter,” he corrected, stopping so suddenly I almost slammed into his chest. He caught me by the shoulders, his grip firm. “The Alpha is watching our house closer than ever. If you can’t shift, you have to be the one thing they can’t catch.”
“I’m trying,” I whispered.
“Try harder,” he said, nudging my shoulder. “Go on. Head back. I’m going to run the north perimeter. Stay off the main trail, stick to the shadows.”
I split away, heading toward the Black Ridge. I liked the terrain there; the rocks were sharp and the trees were dense. I was flying, my bare feet barely touching the needles. I felt fast. I felt safe.
Until the air suddenly turned thick. It wasn’t the smell of my brother. It was something darker, like woodsmoke and heavy earth. Killian.
I didn’t stop. I put on a burst of speed, leaning into a sharp turn toward a narrow fissure in the granite.
If I could wedge myself through, I’d be on the higher plateau before he could circle around.
I dived for the gap, but as I cleared it, I skidded to a halt.
A rockslide had blocked the path with a jagged wall of shale.
I spun around to retreat, but the light from the gap was suddenly blotted out.
Killian was already there. He stood in the mouth of the fissure, tall and imposing, his chest bare and radiating a feverish heat that turned the morning mist into steam. He didn’t look like a boy playing a game; he looked like an Alpha-heir wondering why a piece of his territory wasn’t behaving.
“You’re getting faster, Wren,” he said, his voice a low, gravelly vibration. “But you didn’t check the trail after the thaw.”
He moved with a flash of speed, his hand slamming into the rock right next to my head. The heat rolling off him was suffocating, forcing me back against the cold, wet stone.
“Why are you doing this, Killian?” I asked, my voice tight. “Why are you following me?”
He leaned down, his face inches from mine, his amber eyes searching mine with a look that was more clinical than kind. “The village thinks you’re just a girl playing at being a wolf. My father thinks you’re a debt that’s never going to be paid.”
“And you?” I challenged, trying to find a spark of the old bullying to cling to. “Are you just here to confirm their suspicions? To find a reason to finally have me discarded?”
Killian didn’t answer immediately. He reached out, his fingers brushing the line of my throat, not a caress, but a measurement. He stayed there, his thumb resting right over my jumping pulse.
“I think you’re an anomaly,” he whispered, his eyes narrowing as if he were trying to solve a puzzle. “A human shouldn’t be able to run a three-mile sprint through the Ridge without a heartbeat that sounds like a drum. Yours is too steady. Too quiet.”
He leaned closer, his voice dropping to a dangerous, low hum. “I don’t like things I can’t scent, Wren. It makes my senses restless. Tell me... if I gave you a ten-second head start right now, would you actually try to get away? Or are you curious to see what happens when I finally catch you?”
The question felt like a trap. I looked into those burning eyes and saw the arrogance of a predator who expects everyone to bow.
“You’d have to catch me first,” I said.
He let out a short, dark laugh, his eyes flashing a vivid, predatory grey.
“Ten seconds, Wren,” he whispered. “Starting... now.”
I dived under his arm, scrambling back through the gap and vanishing into the trees. My heart was finally beginning to race, not because of the run, but because of the way he’d looked at me.