Chapter 17 – Kids at the Edge
1147 Words
I took Niko and Sela to the edge of the world the next afternoon.
Technically it was just the old fire road that cut between the town and the forest, but to a pair of young wolves who’d grown up with rules etched into their bones—don’t cross without an adult, don’t linger on the human side—it might as well have been a border between realms.
“Stay where I can see you,” I said, balancing a paper tray of fries and two milkshakes as we stepped out of the diner. “That includes your wolf, Niko.”
He rolled his eyes. “I’m not going to shift in the parking lot.”
Sela slipped her hand into mine, her small fingers warm and a little sticky. “Can we sit on the fence?” she asked, nodding toward the weathered wooden rail that marked the start of the reserve.
“Fence is fair game,” I said. “Other side of it is not. Deal?”
She nodded solemnly.
We perched there—Niko straddling the top rail like he owned it, Sela pressed against my side, feet swinging. Cars hissed by on the road; beyond it the forest watched, a wall of green and shadow.
Sela licked ice cream from her straw, eyes on the trees. “It’s quieter,” she said.
My hand tightened around the shake. “Since when?”
“Since you and Corren shouted at the forest,” she said matter-of-factly.
“I don’t recall shouting,” I muttered.
Niko snorted. “You absolutely shouted. In that meeting. At everyone.”
“Different forest,” I said. “Same principle, I guess.”
Truth had its own kind of volume.
“Do you still dream about the knot?” I asked Sela softly.
She made a face, thinking. “Not the same,” she said. “Before it was… mean. Like it wanted to eat everything. Now it’s… tired. And grumpy.”
Relatable.
I passed her a fry. “Tired and grumpy I can work with.”
Niko watched the traffic with narrowed eyes. “The others are still weird,” he said. “Some of the older teens. They hang around the circle even more now. Like they’re… waiting.”
“For something to tell them what to do,” I said.
He shrugged, but my resonance caught the sharp twist of his frustration.
“They heard Serin,” he said. “Some of the stuff he said about ‘order’ and ‘not letting feelings blow up the world’… it sounds smart when you’ve got parents telling you their lives got wrecked by love.”
His jaw clenched. “They forget who paid for that order.”
“Kids like you,” I said. “Like Tavis and Kiva.”
He looked away.
Sela tugged on my sleeve. “The circle doesn’t like you,” she announced.
Niko choked on his milkshake. “Wow, thanks, Sel.”
She frowned, earnest. “Not like that. It’s… scared. Of her.” She bumped her shoulder against mine. “Because she can hear all the threads.”
A shiver walked down my spine. “Has it said that to you?”
“Not in words,” she said. “In… pictures. Like when you dream but not asleep.”
I swallowed. “Can you show me?”
She screwed up her face in concentration, then pressed her palm to the weathered wood between us. Her wolf-sense reached through her small hand, brushing my resonance.
For a heartbeat, I saw it the way she did: not as a single circle, but as a tangle of glowing lines under the soil, stretching far beyond our forest. Some threads burned hot—places where Serin’s work still held. Others were dim, fraying. Ours glowed an odd, restless color. And at our knot’s center, a shape that bristled at my approach.
“See?” Sela whispered. “It remembers you tried to bite it back.”
My throat felt tight. “Good,” I said. “It should.”
Niko swung one leg over the fence, toe tapping the reserve side. “If we cut it,” he said, “what happens to the other places? The other… glowy bits?”
“We don’t know yet,” I said. “But we’re not going to swing an axe blind. That’s why we’re talking to other packs. Why Vexa’s writing those letters. Why your alpha’s letting humans like Dris into our mess.”
He scowled. “Feels slow.”
“Slow is better than killing people by accident,” I said. “Trust me, I’ve read the manual on the fast way. It’s written in blood.”
Sela leaned her head against my arm. “Will Tavis and Kiva come here?” she asked. “When they’re out?”
My chest squeezed. “That’s the plan,” I said. “Home, then maybe… other places. Safer, softer ones, where nobody expects them to hold the world together.”
“Good,” Niko muttered. “They’ve done enough.”
We fell quiet for a while, watching the river of cars. Human lives rushing past, oblivious to the invisible web humming beneath their tires.
A small sedan slowed as it passed, the driver’s gaze snagging on us—on the way we sat a fraction too still, the way our heads turned in unison toward the forest. He looked away quickly, speeding up.
“Humans feel it too,” Sela murmured. “Sometimes. They just don’t have words.”
“Lucky them,” Niko said.
“Unlucky,” I countered. “They stumble into things blind.”
He shot me a sideways look. “Like our pup on your table.”
“Exactly.”
I slid off the fence. “Come on. We’re not giving Serin free time to recruit bored teenagers while we philosophize.”
“Where are we going?” Niko asked, hopping down beside me.
“Back to the den,” I said. “You’re going to tell Maera exactly which ‘older guys’ are hanging around the circle. And then we’re going to make sure the only voices in their heads belong to people who actually give a damn whether they live.”
Sela slipped her hand into mine again.
“Will the forest be mad?” she asked. “If we cut the knot?”
“Maybe,” I said honestly. “Or maybe it’s been waiting for someone to do it right.”
My wolf stretched inside my ribs, eyes on the dark line of trees.
“Either way,” I added, “it’s not Serin’s forest anymore.”
We stepped off the fence together—three small figures between asphalt and shadow, between old rules and whatever came next.
Behind us, the road hummed. Ahead, the forest listened.
- Writer
