Chapter 17 – Human Skills, Wolf Territory
853 Words
By the time we got back from the forest, my legs were jelly and my head was… quieter.
Not okay. But less like a bomb.
“Maia!” Marcus waved from a low building that smelled like hot oil and old exhaust. “Got a sec?”
Silverpine’s garage was smaller than mine, but familiar: lifts, tool boards, a graveyard of wounded vehicles. Tools everywhere. Parts in random piles. My left eye twitched.
“Who organized this?” I asked.
“Me,” Marcus said. “And Rowan. Why?”
“It looks like a moose threw up,” I said. “On purpose.”
Mira laughed from the doorway. “She’s not wrong.”
Marcus spread his hands. “Then tell us how to do it right.”
It was the first time since Riverglen I’d heard him ask me for something without flinching.
I blew out a breath. “Rule one: if you have to move three things to get to a wrench, your system sucks.”
We started there.
For the next hour, we cleaned and rearranged. I sorted sockets into actual trays, yanked cracked hoses out of “maybe useful” bins, shoved the most-used tools to the easiest hooks. Marcus hauled boxes and listened while I muttered about workflow and access.
“Trash,” I said, holding up a frayed belt.
“Still got some life—”
“Trash,” I repeated. “Unless you want a patrol truck dying on the border.”
He grimaced and dropped it in the bin. “Bossy.”
“Competent,” I corrected.
“Same thing,” Mira murmured.
It felt… good. Stupidly good. Hands busy, brain busy, no Council, no wolf politics—just bolts and gravity and cause-and-effect I understood.
“Your dad would’ve liked this,” Marcus said quietly, watching me line wrenches up by size. “The way you lay things out.”
My jaw tightened. “He liked a lot of things more than me, remember?”
Marcus flinched. “Maia, I—”
“Later,” I said. “We’ll do guilt hour some other time. Right now your 10‑mil sockets are mating with the 12‑mils and that’s a crime.”
His mouth twitched. “Yes, ma’am.”
“Stop calling me that,” I muttered. “I work for a living.”
Footsteps sounded behind us. The air shifted—pine, rain, command.
Caleb filled the doorway, taking in the room with one long look. “Looks better,” he said.
“Your pack’s been committing garage atrocities,” I replied. “I’m issuing citations.”
His gaze tracked the newly labeled drawers, the cleared bench, the sorted bins. “We’ll try to live up to your standards,” he said. “With supervision.”
“You need someone who speaks both ‘starter motor’ and ‘don’t freak out humans,’” I said. “Last time one of your guys took a truck into town, it still had half the forest on it.”
“We do fine,” he said.
“You park like wolves,” I shot back. “Diagonal is not a lifestyle, it’s a warning sign.”
Mira snorted.
Caleb’s mouth twitched. “You offering to fix our image, Ms. Thorn?”
“Hourly rate,” I said. “Very high.”
“Can’t match city money,” he said. “I can offer protection, food, and not letting the Council drag you off in a van.”
“That’s blackmail.”
“Accurate,” he agreed.
Nyra was practically wagging. We’re useful, she said. They need us.
Marcus cleared his throat. “She’s not wrong, though. We could use you. Teaching basics. Setting up systems. Some of the kids would kill to learn this stuff.”
Kids with grease on their hands, learning which end of a wrench to hold, flashed in my mind. It hit somewhere soft I didn’t like examining.
“You want me to run Wolf Auto 101?” I asked.
“Something like that,” Caleb said. “Your human life gave you tools we don’t have. We need those as much as fangs.”
No one was asking me to be a weapon. Not in this moment. They were asking me to be what I already was—just not alone.
“Trial basis,” I said. “No promises. No Luna‑of‑the‑Garage title.”
“Trial basis,” he echoed.
I grabbed a marker and slapped it into Marcus’ palm. “Fine. Lesson one: label everything. Lesson two: no one ‘borrows’ tools without putting them back, or I start charging in blood.”
Mira raised her mug. “I like her teaching style.”
Nyra settled behind my ribs, content. This, she said, fits.
Outside, scouts watched for Council cars.
Inside the little, oil‑smelling building, I watched a different kind of line being drawn—one made of socket sets, shared work, and the first quiet admission that maybe my human half had a place in this pack, too.
- Writer
