The Quiet Wolf

Maren's POV. Maren learned early that the floor doesn't care who you are. It didn't matter that she was Maren Voss, daughter of Beta Halden Voss, twin sister to the next Beta in line. The floor of Hollow Pine Middle School hit just as hard whether you were a nobody or pack royalty. She knew this because she'd gotten close enough to test it more times than she could count. The hallway smelled like floor wax and somebody's burnt toast, the same way it always did at quarter to eight, lockers banging open and shut in a rhythm she could have set a clock to. Maren kept to the wall the way she always did, three steps behind the thickest part of the crowd, books stacked against her chest like a shield nobody had ever once recognized as a shield. "Move, lard legs." Brielle's voice cut through the hallway noise before her shoulder did. Maren was already turning sideways to slide past her, books hugged to her chest, but Brielle's foot found the gap between her ankles anyway. The hallway tilted. Maren's shoulder caught the locker first, then her cheek, then her books scattered across the tile like startled birds. Somebody laughed. A few more joined in. That's how it always went. First one brave enough to laugh, then a chorus, like they were all just waiting for permission. Maren pushed herself up onto one elbow and looked down the hall before she looked anywhere else, because she already knew who she was hoping would turn around. Corwin did turn around. Her twin brother, her literal other half, born nine minutes after her and somehow a whole different species ever since they turned eight. He looked at her on the floor. He looked at Brielle standing over her. And he turned back to his friends and kept walking, like she was a spill someone else would clean up. That's the part that still got her, even after three years of this. Not the fall. The turning away. She gathered her books without rushing. Rushing made you look desperate, and desperate was what they were hunting for. By the time Maren made it home that afternoon, the mark on her cheekbone had already faded to a dull yellow green instead of the deep purple it should have been. Her wolf did that. She sped things along so nobody asked questions. Nobody knew why Maren had gotten her wolf so early, two full years before Corwin got his. Delta Pierce said it was rare. He said it like it was a good thing. Most days Maren thought the Moon Goddess had looked down at her life, felt sorry for her, and tossed her a healing factor as an apology gift. There used to be someone who checked her cheekbone before she even got the chance to hide it. Mary, who'd raised both twins since they were in diapers, who used to press a cold spoon to a bruise before Maren even finished explaining it away as nothing. Mary had been gone two years now, let go quietly the same month Maren turned twelve, no explanation given beyond the fact that she wasn't needed anymore. Maren still kept one of Mary's hair clips in the bottom of her sock drawer, for no reason she could explain to anyone, including herself. Her father was in his office when she got in, door open, which meant she was supposed to check in. She knocked twice on the frame. "I'm home." He didn't look up from the papers on his desk. "Grades?" "Still top of the year." "Good." A pause. His pen didn't stop moving. "Don't embarrass this house." That was it. That was the whole conversation, same as most days. She used to wait for more, for him to ask how her day was, or notice the way she favored her left side when she walked, or just look at her the way he looked at Corwin when Corwin walked in. She didn't wait anymore. Waiting was its own kind of bruise, the kind that didn't fade with a healing factor. She went up to her room, dropped her bag, and sat on the floor with her back against the door, because some habits don't leave even when the danger has. You're doing that thing again, her wolf said. She'd been quiet most of the day, the way she got when watching Maren hit the floor made her angry enough that going quiet was the only way she didn't make Maren do something stupid in the hallway. Sitting like you're guarding the door. "Habit." From who? Your dad's two floors down reading contracts. Nobody's coming. "I know." Maren didn't move anyway. Her wolf sighed, the kind of sigh that vibrated somewhere behind her ribs instead of out loud. One day you're going to stop flinching before anyone's even raised a hand. "Maybe," Maren told her. "Not today." Dinner was silent except for the clink of forks. Corwin showed up fifteen minutes late, smelling like the gym, dropping into his chair like he owned gravity itself. Their father's whole posture changed when Corwin walked in. He straightened, warmed, like someone flipped a switch behind his ribs that only had one setting and it was never pointed at Maren. "How was training?" their father asked him. "Killed it. Coach says I'm ready for advanced drills next month." "Good. Good man." Their father actually smiled. Maren could count on one hand the times she'd seen that exact smile, and none of them had ever been aimed at her. She ate her food and said nothing, because nobody had asked her anything, and she'd learned a long time ago that offering information nobody requested just gave people more to use against you later. Corwin glanced at her once, at the faint shadow still ghosting her cheekbone. For one second it looked like he might say something, might actually ask. His eyes flicked to their father, then back to his plate. He didn't say anything either. Maren waited until midnight, until the house had gone fully still, before she climbed out her window and dropped onto the soft grass below. This was the one rule she'd never managed to follow. Stay inside after dark, Maren, a Beta's daughter doesn't wander. Because staying inside after dark meant staying inside her own head, and some nights she couldn't survive that without running. The training field behind the pack hall was empty this late, lit only by the half moon and the two security lamps Delta Pierce never bothered to fix because he liked training in shadow. She shifted before she even reached the fence, clothes folded under a loose board, the only other living thing that knew about that particular hiding spot being the wolf currently wearing her skin. The grass was cold and wet against her paws, the air sharp with pine and the faint mineral smell of the creek that cut along the eastern border. Somewhere out past the tree line a fox barked twice and went quiet. Hollow Pine at night belonged to no one, not her father, not Brielle, not the council with its sealed doors and careful smiles. Out here the only rank that mattered was speed. Running on four legs was the only time her whole body agreed on something. No flinching. No bracing for a hit that might come from any direction. Just legs and lungs and wind, and a wolf in her head who finally, finally stopped being angry on her behalf and just ran. Better? her wolf asked, after the second mile. Better, Maren told her. They didn't go back inside until almost two in the morning, and even then Maren lay awake another hour, staring at the ceiling, wondering, not for the first time, what exactly she had done, at nine days old, to make her own father look at her like she was something he survived instead of something he loved. She didn't get an answer. She never did. But some night, she told herself, somebody was going to have to explain it. She just didn't expect that night to come as soon as it did.