Percular Pup

Why do good things happen to good people? That was the kind of question Montserrat would ask out loud, usually while hanging upside down from a tree branch or halfway into a pond she probably wasn’t supposed to be in. But lately, the question didn’t come out with her usual wide-eyed wonder. It just sort of… lingered in the back of her throat, like a song she didn’t want to sing anymore. Maybe—just maybe—they weren’t as good as they thought. Or maybe the universe was playing a long, cruel joke, and Montserrat had been the punchline. She never understood why it happened to her. Not really. Her mind was a tangled yarn ball of half-formed thoughts and unspoken feelings. But she felt it—deeply. Too deeply. Feelings snuck up on her like wolves in the brush: fast, silent, impossible to shake. And sometimes, she wished she could feel nothing at all. Just for a little while. Just until she caught her breath. But feelings were her curse. That and curiosity. Her mother used to say she came into the world with too many questions and not enough ears to hear the answers. Montserrat would get scolded for wandering off, for poking her nose into things that howled back—but she never stopped. She was all elbows and wonder and muddy boots. People loved her for it. People also wanted to duct-tape her mouth shut. Both were valid reactions. And then there was him—the boy who sat behind her in class, the one who always smelled like pine needles and trouble. He noticed her before she noticed him. He liked the way her wavy, Havana-brown hair caught the light, the way her light-brown eyes saw too much. And somehow, he just knew. Knew who she was. What she was. He told her she was his, and—being thirteen and half-mystery herself—she believed him. Everyone said wolves found their mates at twenty-one, not thirteen. But Montserrat didn’t question it. Questioning things was her whole thing, but this? She tucked it away like a secret note in a pocket: strange, fragile, and hers. Two years later, she was still just a kid when everything shattered. One moment she was laughing with David, their fingers barely brushing, and the next he was on the ground, blood pooling too fast, too red. She never figured out how to explain what she felt that day. How do you explain a black hole growing behind your ribs? Or the sound of your heart trying to rewind time? She didn’t talk. Not to her mother. Not to anyone. She just asked if she could go live with her father’s pack—the Europa Pack. Her eyes didn’t sparkle the same way anymore. It was like something inside her had quietly shut the blinds. Six months passed. Then came her sixteenth birthday. There was a party. Cake. Candles. A lot of awkward smiling. Everyone waited for her to shift. She didn’t. There were whispers, of course. Hushed, sharp little things. Alpha Jairo’s youngest daughter— didn't she shift? She’s more human than a wolf, they say. Maybe she’s cursed. Maybe she’s broken. Montserrat heard it all. She didn’t care. Or maybe she did, but she’d gotten good at pretending. She sometimes thought about trying to explain it all to her parents. What it felt like to carry a silence so loud, it drowned out her thoughts. But the words always came out wrong in her head. So she said nothing. And the nothingness? It grew teeth.