Chapter Two
1434 Words
Amelia liked the kitchen before dawn.
It was one of the few places in the compound where no one expected her to shift, to spar, to become. Here, she could just exist—surrounded by the warmth of bread rising and the smell of wood smoke curling through the vents.
She rolled out dough with quiet focus, fingers dusted in flour, sleeves pushed up past her elbows. Outside, the forest was still dark, birds just beginning to stir in the canopy. Soon the pack would be awake, hungry, loud. But for now, she was alone with her thoughts.
The outer door creaked open.
“Mara,” she said, not turning around.
The healer’s apprentice dropped a bundle of herbs on the table with a thump. “You always know it’s me.”
“You stomp like a two-hundred-pound bear.”
“Or you’re psychic.”
“Or that.”
Mara flopped onto a chair, rubbing her eyes. “Four pups came down with stomach rot last night. I haven’t slept.”
“Want tea?”
“I want to disappear.”
Amelia poured two mugs and passed one over. They sat in silence for a minute, sipping.
“Full patrol today?” she asked.
Mara nodded. “More border sweeps. The west line again.”
Amelia glanced up. “Still?”
“Alpha Landon’s not saying much, but something’s spooked the scouts. Rumors about a rogue nearby.”
“Rogue wolves?” Her chest tightened slightly. “Here?”
“Not confirmed. But you know how people talk.”
Amelia nodded slowly. The pack was tight-knit and well-protected. Rogues—wolves who had either been exiled or abandoned their own packs—were rare this close to established territory.
But if they were creeping in…
She tucked the thought away. It wasn’t her concern. She wasn’t a scout. She wasn’t a fighter.
She was the girl who made tea, remembered the exact way Beth liked her bandages wrapped, and kept track of kitchen stock like it was sacred law.
“Anyway,” Mara said, standing again. “I’ve got root paste to grind and zero interest in life. Tell Nate to stop flirting with Taya while she’s injured. She nearly clawed his face off yesterday.”
“I’ll pass it along.”
After Mara left, Amelia leaned on the counter and looked out the narrow window.
A few wolves had already gathered on the training field. Others would be heading to the border or up toward the lake for water hauling.
She could have stayed in the kitchen all day, safe behind ovens and boiling kettles.
Instead, she pulled on her boots.
Time to face the rest of the world.
The mid-morning sun was already high by the time she reached the storage shed near the eastern trailhead. A stack of broken training spears had been left beside the door, and Amelia sighed. Again.
“Laziness isn’t a rank,” she muttered, bending to collect them.
She was halfway through sorting the pile when a shadow crossed the path.
“Need a hand?”
She turned to see Liam—the Beta’s son. Tall, competent, the kind of wolf who had shifted clean and early and never once looked back.
She straightened. “I’ve got it.”
“You always say that.”
“Because I always do.”
He didn’t move. Just watched her for a beat too long.
Then: “You going to the lake gathering tonight?”
Amelia blinked. “Didn’t know there was one.”
He shrugged. “Low-key. A few of us brought food, maybe music. Figured you might want to come.”
She hesitated. Was this pity? Politeness? Or something else?
“I’ll think about it,” she said finally.
He nodded, and left her in the quiet again.
That night, Amelia didn’t go to the lake.
Instead, she returned to the river, drawn to the hush of the water and the wind threading through the trees. The moon wasn’t full, but it cast enough light to paint the world in silver.
She sat on a low rock and let her feet dangle in the cold stream.
From far off, she could hear music—faint drums, laughter—but she stayed there.
Close. Still.
She loved her pack. She really did.
But sometimes she needed to be alone to remember it.
The woods were quiet that morning.
Not silent—never silent—but off. The usual songbirds were subdued. Even the wind seemed to move differently, rustling the canopy in uneven bursts like it couldn’t settle. It was the kind of morning that made the elders glance at the treetops with narrowed eyes and mutter about “weather in the bones.”
Amelia stood on the edge of the training field, her arms crossed loosely as she watched Nate go head-to-head with Jonas in a sparring match that looked more like a brawl.
“He’s going to break his nose again,” she murmured.
Beside her, Lila snorted. “That’s tradition at this point.”
“Fourth time in two months.”
“Which means he’s improving. Slightly.”
Amelia smiled, but her thoughts drifted. The air still felt… tight. Like the trees themselves were holding their breath.
Nate lost, of course. Jonas knocked his flat with a move Amelia had warned him about last week. He groaned from the dirt, and she made her way over to help him up.
“You saw that, didn’t you?” he muttered, dusting off his shirt.
“You mean the exact moment your ego left your body? Yes. Very clearly.”
He grinned, blood on his lip. “Still worth it.”
She tossed him a cloth. “You’re impossible.”
“Hey—if I win just once, it’ll all be worth it.”
“You won’t. Jonas has been training since before you could shift.”
Nate leaned in. “Which means I just have to get creative.”
Before she could ask what that meant, the sharp howl of a patrol signal rang through the trees.
Amelia stiffened.
So did everyone else.
Sparring stopped. Conversation died. Wolves turned toward the southern path as instinct pulled their attention in one unified motion.
Three seconds passed. Then five.
A second howl followed—shorter, clipped. Not a threat. Not a full alert.
A warning.
Beta Rafe was already striding across the field, his coat still damped from the early patrol.
“Border scouts spotted something,” he said, his voice firm. Small movement. No confirmed rogue presence, but we’re not taking chances.”
A few warriors peeled off instantly, shifting mid-run into dark fur and teeth. Others waited for commands.
Amelia stepped back.
She didn’t belong in moments like this.
But Alpha Landon appeared a moment later, calm as ever, and addressed the group.
“Routine check. We’ll be back before moon rise. Keep the younger ones close to the compound.”
And just like that, the moment passed. The field slowly resumed its rhythm, though the tension lingered like smoke after a fire.
Later, Amelia helped in the infirmary, prepping supplies just in case the patrol came back with wounds. She moved quietly between shelves and jars, crushing herbs, rewrapping poultices.
The healer, Miri, was a woman of few words but endless intuition. She handed Amelia a glass vial and said, “You feel it too, don’t you?”
Amelia blinked. “Feel what?”
“The shift in the wind.”
Amelia paused. “Is something coming?”
Miri didn’t answer right away. She arranged a set of salves, then finally said, “Something always comes. We just never know if it’s a storm or a gift.”
By sunset, the patrol returned—no injuries, no rogue, just strange tracks in the mud and a patch of dead grass that hadn’t been there the day before.
“It’s probably nothing,” Nate said over dinner. “Deer or something.”
“Deer don’t walk on two legs,” Beth replied.
Lila added, “And they don’t kill grass like that.”
Still, the adults downplayed it. No formal alerts. No lockdowns. Just more patrols scheduled, and scouts stretched thinner than usual.
Amelia pretended not to notice the way Alpha Landon kept looking toward the southern ridge.
She pretended to do a lot of things.
That night, she lay awake longer than usual, her window cracked to let in the cool air and the sounds of the forest.
The howls were distant tonight.
But her thoughts were close, circling like restless wolves in her mind.
- Writer
