CHAPTER 5 THE WEIGHT OF BEING NOTHING
1093 Words
The days between waking at the Ashwood border and the morning Soren first raised a blade against her blurred together into something Wren couldn’t fully separate into hours, each one built from the same small, humiliating tasks: carrying water she was too weak to carry properly, stacking wood her arms shook trying to lift, failing, quietly, at things she’d watched other camp members do without a second thought.
“You’re doing that wrong,” Tessa told her on the fourth morning, watching Wren struggle to bind a bundle of kindling with rope that kept slipping loose in her unpracticed hands.
“I’m aware.”
“I’m not criticizing. I’m offering to show you.” Tessa crouched beside her, quick fingers demonstrating a knot Wren’s own hands fumbled twice before finally holding. “You’ve never done camp work before, have you.”
“I’ve never done any work before,” Wren admitted, the shame of it rising automatic and familiar, the same shame that had lived in her chest since childhood. “Frost Hollow didn’t let the wolfless mate do much of anything except stay quiet and stay out of the way.”
“That sounds less like a life and more like a sentence.”
“It felt like both, most days.” Wren finished the knot, imperfect but holding, and felt an unfamiliar flicker of something like pride at the small, ordinary accomplishment. “I used to think that was just what I was worth. Enough to keep alive, not enough to actually include in anything that mattered.”
Tessa was quiet for a moment, studying her with an attention that made Wren want to look away. “You say that like it’s just a fact about the world. Not like something anyone should be angry about.”
“I used to be angry about it. Being angry never changed anything. Eventually you just get tired and stop.”
“That’s not being tired,” Tessa said, standing, brushing dirt from her knees. “That’s giving up and calling it acceptance so it hurts less to say out loud.” She offered a hand down to help Wren up. “You’re not at Frost Hollow anymore. Nobody here cares what you were worth there. You get to decide what you’re worth here, starting today, and nobody’s going to hand you a smaller number just because that’s the number you’re used to.”
Wren took the offered hand, and the simple gesture, small as it was, settled into her chest with more weight than she expected. Nobody at Frost Hollow had ever offered her a hand up from anything without expecting something in return.
“Why does it matter to you?” she asked. “What I decide I’m worth.”
“Because I was rejected too, three years before you. My own pack, for a mate bond that turned out to be a mistake on the moon’s part, or so my Alpha decided when a better prospect came along.” Tessa’s voice stayed light, but something harder moved beneath it.
“I spent a year believing what they told me about myself before Soren’s predecessor pulled me off a border a lot like the one you woke up on. Took me another year after that to stop flinching every time someone raised their voice near me. You’re not behind, Wren. You’re right on schedule.”
That night, alone in the small shelter the camp had given her, Wren lay awake turning Tessa’s words over and over, the strange, unfamiliar idea that her worth might be something she got to decide rather than something handed down by people who’d never once asked what she wanted it to be.
The weeks that followed tested that fragile new belief more than Wren expected, small daily indignities of camp life, learning tasks she’d never been permitted to learn, failing at them publicly in front of wolves who hadn’t yet decided whether she was worth their patience. She burned a meal badly enough that the smoke drew concerned attention from three shelters over. She fumbled a simple rope lashing so completely that an older camp member finally, gently, took the rope from her hands and redid it without comment, sparing her the humiliation of watching him wait for her to fail again.
“You’re allowed to be bad at things here,” Tessa told her, after one particularly frustrating afternoon spent failing to properly skin a rabbit for the evening meal. “That’s the part I don’t think you understand yet. Being bad at something isn’t the same as being worthless at everything. Frost Hollow taught you those were the same lesson. They’re not.”
Wren turned the rabbit over in her hands, the small, humiliating failure of the task sitting heavy in her chest despite Tessa’s reassurance. “It doesn’t feel different yet.”
“It won’t, for a while. Then one day it will, and you won’t even notice the moment it changed. That’s usually how it goes.”
Marta found her later that same week, sitting alone at the edge of camp with her hands pressed flat against her knees, and settled beside her without asking permission, the particular kindness of someone who understood that not every silence needed filling with questions.
“Tessa tells me you’re improving,” Marta said eventually. “Not just at the tasks. At letting yourself be seen failing at them.”
“It doesn’t feel like improvement. It feels like constant humiliation with slightly better lighting.”
Marta’s laugh was warm, unexpected. “That’s a fair description of most growth, honestly. Nobody tells you that part when you’re young. Growth mostly feels like humiliation you eventually get tired of running from.” She studied Wren carefully. “You carry yourself like someone bracing for the moment this all gets taken away too. Like Ashwood is a loan you expect to be called in.”
Wren didn’t answer immediately, the accuracy of the observation settling uncomfortably in her chest. “Everything else was.”
“I know. That’s not a small thing to carry, or a quick thing to unlearn.” Marta’s weathered hand found Wren’s, brief and warm. “But
I’ve watched this camp for thirty years, child. It doesn’t work the way Frost Hollow worked. Nobody’s keeping a ledger here, waiting for the day your usefulness runs out. You’re allowed to actually believe that, whenever you’re ready to.”
She didn’t believe it yet. Not fully. But for the first time since the ceremony, she wanted to.
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