Chapter Eight — Finn
665 Words
He was waiting on my steps when I got back from the herb garden.
Not unusual. In the eight days I'd been in Blackthorn territory, Finn had installed himself as something I hadn't agreed to and couldn't seem to dislodge — an unofficial shadow, appearing at meals and training sessions and occasionally at my door with the energy of a large, friendly wolf who had decided I was interesting and had not yet received adequate evidence to the contrary.
Today he had a bruise forming along his jaw and a carefully neutral expression that meant he was trying not to let me see that something had happened.
I sat down on the step beside him and said nothing, because I'd learned that with Finn, the fastest way to get information was to create silence for it to fall into.
It took about forty-five seconds.
"Gregor," he said. "He's third-ranked. Been here six years. He said—" A pause. The jaw worked. "He said the Alpha brought you in because you're using your — because you're making everyone around you feel things they wouldn't otherwise feel. He said you're doing it on purpose. That you're some kind of—"
"Manipulator," I said.
Finn looked at me quickly. "I didn't say that."
"That's the word he used."
A long beat. "Yes."
I looked out at the compound. The afternoon light was long and golden across the stone paths, the kind of light that made everything look more permanent than it was. "What did you say back?"
"That he was wrong."
"And then he hit you."
Finn touched his jaw reflexively. "I may have said it more than once."
I looked at him for a moment — this ridiculous, loyal, seventeen-year-old wolf who had known me for eight days and was collecting bruises on my behalf with the uncomplicated certainty of someone who hadn't yet learned that most people aren't worth it.
"Finn," I said. "Don't fight about me."
"He was disrespecting a guest of the Alpha."
"I can handle disrespect."
"I know you can." He said it simply, directly. "That's not the point."
I didn't have a response to that. It short-circuited something in me — the part that was always preparing to justify why I didn't need protecting, why the cost of defending me wasn't worth paying, why people should save their bruises for battles that mattered.
"Besides," he said, and some of the tension went out of him, replaced by something younger and more honest, "Gregor's been wrong about a lot of things. He said I'd never control my power. He said I was too hot to be useful in a fight. He's just—" He shrugged. "He likes deciding what things are before he has to actually think about them."
"Most people do," I said.
"You don't."
I thought about that. "I used to," I said. "I decided what I was a long time ago and held onto it so I'd have something to hold onto."
Finn was quiet, considering this with the particular focus teenagers bring to ideas that are new to them. "What did you decide you were?"
"Not enough." I said it without weight, the way you say a fact you've examined so many times it's lost its edge. "I've been reconsidering lately."
He nodded, like this was the most reasonable thing I'd said. "Good. Because you're very clearly something."
I almost laughed. Not quite — but almost. The shape of it moved through me and it wasn't entirely unwelcome.
"Go put something cold on that jaw," I said.
He went, but he looked back once from the end of the path, grinning like he hadn't just taken a hit for someone he'd known less than two weeks, like that was simply what people who were worth anything did for each other.
I sat on my step for a long time after he was gone.
Deciding, quietly, that I was going to make sure he never regretted it.
- Writer
