My Sister's Mate

The Walls Closing In

The new room smelled like iron and cold bread.

They didn’t say the words out loud, not to my face. No official notice. No confrontation. Just an early morning knock and a stiff, faced she, wolf who handed me a key with a clipped nod and the phrase, “You’ve been reassigned to supply quarters. Pack protocol.”

Protocol.

That was a generous word for exile.

We’d moved into the main packhouse after Julia’s mating ceremony; my father, Julia, and I, folded in with the elite family like we belonged. It hadn’t felt like home, but it had been something.

Now I was unpacking what little I owned in a low, ceilinged room with paper, thin walls and a mattress that sagged in the middle like it had already given up. Supply quarters. Where junior patrol and inventory wolves slept. Where old tools came to rust. Where the laughter from the main house didn’t reach.

I started supply duties that same day.

No pause. No adjustment period. Just a clipboard, a count sheet, and a curt directive: inventory everything in storage B, 3 before sunset. It was the old wing, dark, narrow, and heavy with the smell of mold and copper.

Boots. Shelves of them, mismatched and unlabeled. Some so small I wondered if they were leftovers from cub training days. Some so big they could’ve belonged to the warriors of old, the ones in the stories. The ones who died in wars I was too young to understand.

The others worked in pairs, snickering behind clipped glances. I heard them, even when they whispered like cowards.

“She’s the one who ruined the ceremony.”

“Bet she thought she was next in line. What a joke.”

“She should be in the waste trench, not counting boots.”

One brushed past me intentionally hard, shoulder clipping mine. “Careful. Might catch whatever she’s got.”

I kept counting.

Thirty, nine. Forty. Forty, one.

I refused to look up. If I did, I wasn’t sure I’d stop myself.

It wasn’t until midday that the smell of bread broke through the damp.

Warm. Soft. The kind of scent that clung to childhood, to kitchens before grief, to mornings before everything cracked.

Selene didn’t say anything at first. Just set a tray down on the crate beside me, bread, soup, a wrapped piece of dried fruit. She didn’t ask if I was hungry. Just watched me for a moment, her silver eyes unreadable. She didn’t need to speak. Her presence always filled in the gaps people tried to ignore.

She touched my arm, briefly. Firm, grounding.

And just like that, the silence shifted. Just a little.

Selene had always known how to move without being seen, how to fold into a room like she’d always belonged there. It was hard to believe she hadn’t. Seven years ago, she was found collapsed at the edge of our borders, bleeding and barely conscious. Lena’s mother had taken her in without hesitation. No name. No origin. Just a girl and a wound.

Now she was one of us.

More than me, apparently.

Lena stormed into my new house around dusk, dragging her sarcasm like a sword.

“This place smells like dead ambition,” she muttered, looking around my room with a face that barely concealed her rage. “You’re not seriously staying here, right? This mattress should be put down.”

I cracked a smile. She plopped beside me anyway, frowning at the cracked plaster and warped floorboards.

“We could hex their soap. I know a guy. Makes your skin turn blue for a week.”

“Lena.”

“Fine. No soap hexes. But we could switch out Julia’s perfume with fox urine. I’ll just say it was a mix, up.”

“Lena.”

She exhaled hard, all her fire crumbling into ash. “I just hate this. Watching you shrink into corners like you’re not made of war and steel. You’re... fading, Ava.”

I didn’t know what to say to that. Because it was true. Every day felt like a little less of me existed. Like my ribs were closing in.

Selene appeared in the doorway, quiet as wind through tall grass. She fixed a crooked picture on the wall, the kind of gesture most people wouldn’t bother with.

“You’re not losing,” she said softly. “You’re enduring.”

There was a difference. I just didn’t know if it mattered anymore.

Dinner was still held at the main packhouse.

Of course.

Protocol might’ve reassigned me, but public appearances were still required. Even if the table felt more like a stage.

It was just the seven of us that night, Julia, Kieran, Sebastian, Lena, Selene, my dad and I . A family dinner. If your family included a snake and the man you couldn’t stop thinking about.

Julia was radiant. Not in the way of stars, but of polished marble. Cold. Designed. Her dress was deep red tonight, cut to accentuate grace and dominance in equal measure. She stood beside Kieran like she’d been sculpted for that spot. She smiled as I entered, a little too slowly.

“Little sister,” she said sweetly, her voice dipped in honey and blade. “How’s the supply wing treating you?”

There it was. She didn’t need to sneer. The silence that followed was plenty.

I sat without answering.

She tilted her head. “I hear the boots have personalities. Which one’s your favorite so far? Or are you still counting them like lovers?”

Lena choked on her drink.

Kieran’s fork paused halfway to his mouth, tension crackling along the edge of his jaw. He didn’t look at me.

Sebastian muttered, “God, Julia, dial it down,” but she only shrugged with the careless poise of someone who thought cruelty was just cleverness in heels.

My father cleared his throat. Loud enough that the room froze for a second.

“I wasn’t informed that Ava’s reassignment was immediate,” Elder Elias said slowly, his voice gravel, lined and dangerous in its calm. “I would’ve appreciated being consulted before my daughter was placed with inventory crews.”

Julia raised her brows, all faux surprise. “It was a protocol decision, Father.”

“I don’t recall protocol involving humiliation,” he replied, still polite, but the steel had returned to his spine. “She has been a loyal daughter of Blackthorn. She’s earned more than this.”

I felt it then, Selene’s hand under the table, brushing against mine. A quiet lifeline. Lena, on my other side, kicked me gently under the table. Her version of saying, I’ll kill her if you say the word.

I didn't squeeze Selene's hand back. Didn’t flinch. Didn’t speak.

Kieran hadn’t said a single word, but his gaze lingered.

Julia noticed.

She leaned ever, so, slightly toward him, her voice lower now, private but pointed. “You’ve been quiet, my Alpha.”

He didn’t rise to it. Didn’t even turn his head. But his next words were cool enough to frost over the wine.

“Not everything deserves a response.”

Julia smiled, but it didn’t reach her eyes.

Beside him, Sebastian smirked and muttered something into his cup. He and Kieran had been inseparable since before I understood what bonds meant. Both lost their parents in a border war years ago, the same one that took Lena’s father. It tethered them in a way that wasn’t just friendship. It was survival.

Dinner continued, barely. The food tasted like ash and tension, the roast too dry and the wine too sweet. I kept my hands folded in my lap and my shoulders square. I didn’t break.

Not here. Not tonight.

I took the long way back to my quarters.

The air was cold. The halls quiet. And for a moment, I let myself pretend I was invisible.

Until I wasn’t.

They stepped out from behind a row of crates the laundry hall, three or four of them, young warriors I recognized vaguely from training days. Faces that used to cheer with mine. Now twisted into something uglier.

“Evening, supply girl,” one of them purred.

Another leaned close. “Did the Alpha sample you before choosing the better sister?”

Their laughter stung more than the words.

I didn’t move.

Didn’t cry.

Didn’t break.

Eventually, they got bored. Cowards always do. They wandered off, cracking jokes and snapping towels like we were still cubs playing war.

I stayed there, gripping the windowsill until the edge of the stone bit into my palm.

Selene and Lena found me minutes later.

She didn’t ask what happened. Just pulled the shawl from her shoulders and draped it over mine.

“We don’t want you to walk alone, Ava,” she whispered.

“I didn’t ask you to come.”

“You didn’t have to.”

I thought the day had given me all the venom it could.

I was wrong.

Back in my room, the first thing I noticed was the silence. It was too perfect. Then I saw it.

The necklace.

My mother’s. The one my father gave me after my first shift. Said it would protect me. Said it was all she left behind.

Snapped clean in half.

No note. No scratches. Just the cold, quiet aftermath of intrusion.

Selene’s hand trembled as she picked up the pieces. She looked at them like they were a body.

“You’ve had too much broken already,” she whispered.

Then, more firmly, “Let me fix this.”

But I didn’t answer her.

Because in that moment, with the walls pressing in and the air closing up my throat, I didn’t want anything fixed.

I wanted something to bleed.