Chapter 7 – The First Test
1589 Words
By the third day, I start to believe the quiet might actually hold.
I fall into a rhythm: wake to birdsong instead of alarms, check in with the guards along the ridge, brew tea, run short patrol loops in wolf form. I read the same three paperbacks someone left in the cabin a dozen times. I write down, in a battered notebook, every sign my wolf gives before she surges—tightness in my chest, a ringing in my ears, a prickle at the base of my skull.
Patterns. If I can find patterns, maybe I can find control.
It’s almost peaceful.
Which is, of course, when everything cracks.
It starts with the smell of smoke.
Not the gentle, comforting smoke of my own fire. This is harsher, tinged with pitch and panic, carried on a gust that shoves under the cabin door and punches straight into my lungs.
My wolf is on her feet before I am.
I drop the mug I’m holding. It shatters on the floor, tea splashing over my bare toes, but I don’t feel the heat. Every nerve in my body grabs for the same memory: orange light, burning trash, the reek of fur singed too close to skin.
The alley roars up, teeth bared.
“No,” I snap out loud, breath already going ragged. “Cabin. Now. Here.”
My heart doesn’t care. It’s already sprinting.
A knock slams against the wood a second later.
“Luna?” A guard’s voice, urgent. “We’ve got a situation on the north slope. Small brush fire jumped the line. Wind’s turning. You smelling this?”
Wrong question. My brain latches onto the word fire and my vision tunnels.
I force myself to move, each step through molasses. I open the door.
The guard stands there, hair tousled, soot streaked on his cheek. Behind him, beyond the clearing, a smear of gray-brown smoke curls up through the treetops.
My wolf surges, convinced we’re back there again, hemmed in by walls instead of trees, blaze at our back, strange wolves in front.
“Lys?” the guard says, eyes flicking to the tremor starting in my hands.
I drag air into my lungs. In. Out. Count. It doesn’t stick.
“Report,” I manage. “How close. Anyone out there?”
“Patrol team’s on it,” he says quickly. “No houses. No civs. We’re asking if you want to come up or stay put. Alpha said your call.”
The fact that Roenan told them it’s my choice cuts through a fraction of the panic. In the old days, I wouldn’t have had one. I would have been ordered in or locked away.
Now I have to decide if I’m any use at all in this state.
The alley is snarling in my bones. The memory of heat on my back, the taste of my own blood, the way my wolf clawed free because if she didn’t, we’d die.
The cabin is here. The forest is here. Not there. Not then.
I dig my nails into the doorframe hard enough to feel the bite. “How bad is it?” I ask.
“Containable,” he says. “If the wind doesn’t shift more. We could use another nose and another pair of hands on the line. But if it’s going to set you off—”
There it is. The question under the question: Are you going to help, or are you going to make it worse?
My wolf presses forward, not with blind panic this time, but with bristling, stubborn anger. Fire hurt us once. It burned our skin and hair and name. She wants to face it.
“I go,” I say, before I can second-guess myself. “But we do it my way.”
The guard nods sharply. “Your word, Luna.”
“Don’t call me that when I’m about to have a panic attack,” I mutter, but the title lands differently this time. Less like a blade, more like armor I can choose to wear.
I grab my boots, my cloak, the pouch Selvi gave me. My hands move on autopилот, but my brain keeps up enough to snag the notebook too. If I survive this without losing myself, I want every detail.
The smell of smoke intensifies as we climb. My throat tightens against it, eyes stinging.
“Talk,” I order the guard as we move. “Tell me everything you see. Keep me in now.”
He gets it. “North slope,” he says. “About half a klick out. Fire’s low but fast. Dry underbrush. We’ve cleared a break on the west side, working on the east. No structures. No rogues. Just us and the trees.”
No rogues. That helps. My brain keeps trying to plug in shapes with eyes and teeth that aren’t ours, and every time he says just us it slaps a label over them: pack, not threat.
The smoke thickens, threading into my hair, my clothes, my mouth. My wolf coughs and snarls but doesn’t bolt. My pulse is a drumline in my ears.
We crest a ridge, and the fire comes into view.
It’s not the wall of flame from my nightmares. It’s a crawling line of orange teeth, gnawing at dry brush, snapping little gusts of sparks into the air. A few pack wolves are already there, beating at the edges with wet blankets, stamping on stray tongues of flame.
Roenan is at the line, of course. Of course.
He looks up as we approach. The bond hums tight, vibrating with his focus.
“Lys,” he says. Sweat and smoke streak his face, soot darkens his hair. “You didn’t have to—”
“I did,” I cut in. My voice shakes, but I don’t back down. “Point me where you need me before I overthink this and pass out.”
His eyes search mine. He can smell the fear on me, I know he can. But he also smells something else—my wolf, bristling, ready to face the thing that burned us.
“East flank,” he says finally. “With Garrik. Watch the wind. If it shifts, you pull back first. Understood?”
“Understood,” I echo.
Garrik tosses me a dampened cloth. His gaze is sharp, assessing, but not cruel. “You sure?” he asks quietly.
“No,” I admit. “But I’m here.”
He grunts, a rough acknowledgment, and jerks his chin toward the creeping line. “Then let’s keep our forest from turning into your favorite nightmare.”
It should make me flinch. Instead, some sick part of me is grateful he said it out loud. No pretending.
We move.
Heat licks at my shins, sweat beads at my temples. The fire hisses and pops, reaching for new fuel. I focus on small, tangible things: the weight of the wet blanket in my hands, the rough bark of the tree at my back, Garrik’s curses as he stomps out a stubborn patch.
When the alley tries to shove in—burning trash, human screams, metallic taste of city smoke—I drag myself back with brutal specificity.
“This is pine,” I rasp under my breath. “This is our ridge. That is Garrik’s ugly profile. Not a rogue.”
“Hey,” he protests, half-laughing.
“Shut up and be a grounding object,” I snap.
He snorts, but his shoulder bumps mine, solid, real.
Wind gusts, sending a burst of sparks up and over us. For a heartbeat, my vision whites out. I hear the alley. I hear myself howl as claws rake down my side.
My knees buckle.
Not again not again not—
“Lys!” Roenan’s voice is there, not in my head this time but cutting through the smoke from a few meters away. “Eyes on me.”
I drag my gaze to him. He stands braced, one hand outstretched, expression fierce and steady.
“Here,” he says. “Not there. Say it.”
“Here,” I croak.
“Again.”
“Here. North ridge. Our land. Our fire.”
“Good.” His eyes don’t leave mine. “Now move. Stamp. Left.”
I follow the command like I would in any drill. Left, heel down, smother. Right, blanket down, press. Each motion pulls me another inch out of the alley and back into the present.
We work.
By the time the fire is a blackened scar and a hiss of steam, my arms shake with exhaustion and my throat feels flayed. Wolves cough and spit soot, slap each other’s backs, swear half-heartedly.
My wolf is trembling inside me, but she’s still there. Present. Not gone feral.
Roenan comes to stand beside me, chest rising and falling. He smells like smoke and sweat and pride so sharp it stings.
“You stayed,” he says softly. “With us. With yourself.”
I swallow, tasting ash and something sweeter under it.
“I didn’t fix anything,” I say. “The ridge is still burned.”
Garrik snorts nearby. “That’s what regrowth is for.”
Roenan’s fingers brush mine, a brief, grounding touch. “You proved something,” he murmurs. “To them. To me. To you.”
My lungs ache, but for the first time since the attack, the ache isn’t only fear.
It’s the space where maybe, just maybe, a different kind of story can grow.
- Writer
