The Quiet Wolf

Chapter 3

Maren's POV.

Ninth grade started with new uniforms, new schedules, and exactly the same Brielle Hart, except now with a fresh trick Maren hadn't seen before.

Brielle had discovered that if she got one of the senior boys to do the actual shoving, the resulting bruises looked different enough, bigger hands, different angles, that even if a teacher noticed, it would be harder to pin on her circle specifically. Smart. Cruel, but smart. Maren would never give Brielle credit for kindness, but she'd give her credit for strategy.

That's how Maren ended up slamming into a locker hard enough to actually rattle her teeth, courtesy of some senior named Garrett who Brielle had clearly flattered into thinking this was funny instead of pathetic. Garrett wasn't even one of the ranked kids, just a regular pack boy who'd do almost anything for five minutes standing close enough to Brielle that people noticed. That was the part that depressed Maren more than the impact itself. How cheap her own pain had become, traded for somebody else's five minutes of borrowed importance.

"Happy Monday," Maren muttered to the floor, because somebody had to acknowledge it.

"Watch where you're standing, cow." Brielle's heels clicked closer. A slap landed across Maren's cheek, not hard, but Brielle's rings cut, and Maren felt the thin trickle of blood at the corner of her mouth before she tasted copper.

She didn't fight back. She never fought back, not here, not in front of an audience, not where it counted as evidence instead of training. She'd learned that lesson the expensive way in seventh grade, the one time she let her wolf's instincts win for half a second and caught Brielle's wrist before her next slap connected. Brielle had gone home with a bruised wrist and cried to her father, a council member, by dinner. Maren had gone home to a week locked in her room with no meals and a lecture from her father about image that she could still recite word for word if she tried.

So now she just absorbed it, and let Brielle get bored faster than she'd get satisfied.

"You don't even understand basic gratitude," Brielle continued, because apparently today came with commentary. "I'm doing you a favor. Nobody else would bother paying attention to something like you."

"Lucky me," Maren said, because some sarcasm slipped out even through the careful blankness she wore like armor.

That earned her a second slap, harder. Worth it, probably. Brielle eventually lost interest the way storms lose interest, not because they're satisfied, just because something shinier rolled past, in this case Corwin and his friends rounding the corner from the gym, freshly back from a summer at the Central Court's leadership camp and apparently three inches taller and twice as loud as they'd left.

Brielle's whole demeanor shifted like a light switching channels. The sneer dropped, replaced by something practiced and bright. "Corwin! When did you get back?"

Corwin glanced at Maren, at the blood at the corner of her mouth, at Garrett still smirking nearby, and for half a second something flickered behind his eyes that almost looked like recognition. Almost looked like the brother who used to share a blanket fort with her until they were nine.

Then he looked away. "Couple days ago," he told Brielle, like Maren wasn't even bleeding three feet from him. "You staying for the bonfire tonight?"

Maren left while they were making plans, because watching her own twin choose someone who hurt her over acknowledging that she existed wasn't something she needed a front row seat for twice in one week.

That summer changed all of them. Corwin, and his five boy circle who would one day run this entire pack between them. They came back from leadership camp taller, broader, with that particular swagger boys get when they start to feel their own strength settling into their bones. Every girl in school noticed. Brielle and her circle noticed hardest of all.

Maren noticed something else. She noticed how much louder her own training had gotten in the months they were gone, not the school kind, the real kind, the predawn sessions with Delta Pierce that nobody had scheduled for her and nobody had bothered to cancel either. She noticed how much stronger she'd gotten without anyone watching.

There was a particular kind of loneliness in that, one she'd never found the right words for. She could throw a grown warrior twice her size onto his back now, could read an opponent's weight shift before they'd finished deciding to move, and not a single person who shared her last name had any idea. She used to think that not being seen meant not being hurt. She was starting to suspect it also meant not being known, and those weren't quite the same kind of safe.

It was strange, growing strong in private. Like building an entire house with the curtains drawn, knowing you'd never invite anyone in to see it.

Someday somebody's going to see it whether you draw the curtains or not, her wolf told her one night, after a session that left her knuckles raw and her mind quiet for the first time all week.

"Not if I'm careful."

You can't out careful the truth forever, Maren. Eventually it finds the gap.

She didn't believe her wolf. Not yet. Not until November, when the gap her wolf was talking about walked through the training gate wearing a confidence Maren had never once let herself wear in public, and introduced herself like she had no idea what invisible even meant.