Arielle's POV
Wren had not cried since the day he arrived at Nightshade.
Not during the first week when he had been so quiet that I had checked on him three times a day just to make sure he was still breathing. Not when Dessa had run her medical examination and had sat with him for an hour afterward with a carefully neutral face that I recognized as the face of someone delivering information that hurt. Not when Kael had, with his characteristic directness, handed Wren a training schedule and told him he had three weeks to get up to basic pack standard.
He had not cried. He had just worked.
I watched him the way he had once watched me in the forest, carefully and from a slight distance, letting him find his own footing.
Six weeks in, I came looking for him at the time I usually found h
