Dawn found the preserve wrapped in a mist like sleeping cloth. Pines dripped silver; the air tasted of cold earth and the slow clean of things that know how to wait. The cabin smelled faintly of coffee and smoke and the small, comforting sharpness of rosemary hung from a beam. For a place that could deal in teeth and claws, it had been made hospitable with the same stubborn care a family gives its hearth.
Ethan woke to the sound of Riley's bootlaces being tugged tight and Ari's low voice outside, already at work. He sat up on the pallet, limbs still humming from the previous night's exertion, and felt the panel under his sleeve like a secret pulse. The blue glow was hidden from everyone — a private instrument that only he could consult — and that fact made it feel both like advantage and burden.
He rose, pulled on dry clothes found on a crate, and joined the pack in the crisp morning. The younger scouts were already on their feet, trading quiet jokes as they checked traps. Maya, hair tangled from sleep, smiled at him with a shy, grateful light that had become a small, steady thing between them. Ari handed him a tin cup of broth without ceremony and gave him the kind of nod that meant trust was earned by doing, not by speeches.
"Breakfast," Ari said. "Then drills. We move before noon."
Ethan sipped, feeling the warmth settle through him. He watched the pack move — efficient, easy in small rituals — and felt a soft, dull pride that he'd been allowed to stay. The panel could give him shortcuts he did not need to show. That was the point; his advantages must look like sweat and learning to the people whose lives intertwined with his. Only he had the ledger; only he knew the numbers.
They began with footwork. Ari's instructions were blunt and precise. "Step quiet. Weight low. Breathe with the ground." Riley demonstrated, smooth as a practiced instrument, and Ethan tried to mirror her. It was harder than it looked — it required patience, the kind he'd never owed himself before. He misstepped the first round and Riley's hand came to his shoulder, a tiny, efficient correction. No scorn, only instruction.
"Again," she said.
He did. His movement smoothed. There was a satisfaction in small improvement that had nothing to do with the Panel and everything to do with his own body learning its own language. He liked learning that way. He liked the earned ache in his calves, the way a missed step burned into a better one.
Mid-morning brought tracking drills. Ari laid out a simple pursuit pattern: find the markers left by a scout in the hollow and bring them back without alarming the birds. Ethan and Riley worked in tandem, shoulders close, breath synced. Riley leaned low and pointed out details he would have missed — the way dew clung to an overturned leaf, the half-crumbled moss indicating a step. He benefitted, quietly, from the Panel's tracking module he'd purchased the first night — not by waving glowing arrows in front of him but by having a steady, deeper sense of direction. He never let the panel's HUD appear in public; instead he narrated the feel of the ground as if he'd simply grown attuned.
"You're getting better," Riley said at one point, and there was no condescension in it. Just fact.
They found the markers easily, all of it folding into a small, private triumph. The pack rewarded neat work with a lighter pace for the rest of the morning, ribbing and small, comfortable jests. Ethan savored the normalcy like clean water.
At noon they broke for a ritual of sorts: each person at the circle said one small thing they'd done that day to help the group. It was a way to make ordinary duties visible. Maya thanked someone for sharing bread; a scout admitted to mending a torn strap; Ari threw a quick, wry compliment at Riley for a night-time watch that had saved them from a surprise skulk. When it was Ethan's turn he felt oddly self-conscious — the ledger inside him could have paid for luxuries and modules that would look miraculous to anyone who knew what the panel was. He resisted the urge.
"Helped reinforce snares," he said plainly, because it was true and it was work. "Kept watch for an hour last night."
Ari nodded. "Good. Useful hands." No one asked for more, and that was as it should be. The pack valued things that could be carried through hard nights.
In the afternoon Ari set him to a private lesson: hand-to-hand technique, not to maim but to control. They worked close; Riley demonstrated a counter he couldn't yet feel in his bones. He missed it once, and Ari corrected him with a grip that showed exactly how weight should move through a partner. Ethan began to appreciate structure — the way patterns could hold and shape power. Training tempered what the Panel had given into something readable, plausible, safe.
Between rounds the conversation drifted. Riley talked about small things: a childhood winter she'd spent lost and the old woman who'd given her a scarf; Ari mentioned a relative who used to teach the young scouts to mend nets; Maya fidgeted with a strip of fabric, listening. The human details were small stitches in a life that was otherwise too often about survival. Ethan felt less like an interloper the longer he sat with their stories.
As dusk softened, Ari gathered them for a short "mirror" drill: move as your partner moves, anticipate their correction, then lead. The exercise left him with muscles in a pleasant, exhausted hum and his mind quieter in a way he hadn't felt since the bus stop. It was the kind of fatigue that certifies work well done.
After the drills, the pack gathered at the hearth. Food passed around, conversation low. The ritual of evening in this place was modest and exact: credit is given openly, blame rarely, and there's always time to hear about a small kindness. It made Ethan think about the ledger hiding under his sleeve. He had tens of thousands of PP now, a private line of power he could spend to change outcomes in ways the pack could not trace. He liked that the pack could not see it. He liked, more, that he could choose to make what he did appear as earned.
When people drifted off to tend small chores, Riley stayed by the fire and beckoned him to sit beside her. There was none of the grand declaration of romance in it — no dramatic pause, no clumsy theatrics. Just a steady closeness.
"You could spend a fortune and be a miracle," she said quietly, her hands warming around a tin mug. "You don't."
He glanced at her. "I… don't want to be a miracle. I want to be someone who earns trust."
She studied him like someone weighing a tool. "That's rare. Most people look for the quick fix. They forget who they'll be when the magic wears off."
He wanted to tell her how the Panel pulsed at his wrist, the way items were listed in a calm menu, the secret arithmetic of PP and costs. But he did not. He kept it to himself, like a small, dangerous book he had not yet decided to share.
Riley reached out, touched his forearm with a casual, deliberate gesture. "You're keeping something," she said. Not accusing, only noting.
"Yes." He let the truth be that much. "I don't want to drag you into the how. I'll show by what I do."
She nodded, and it felt like permission and acceptance folded together.
When the moment thinned, she leaned forward and kissed him.
It was a steady, careful thing — short and wholly consensual. It was not the fevered, inexperienced first kiss of a teenage drama but a measured warmth that fit two adults who trusted each other enough to be gentle. Ethan answered with the kind of careful tenderness that felt earned: hands finding the curve of her waist, then retreating because the pack had rules and the moment was an ember to keep, not blaze.
They parted with small smiles and a quiet, mutual agreement. No ruins, no promises to the moon — only the human fact of being chosen to stand beside someone. He felt, in that small contact, more rooted than he had in years.
That night Ethan lay awake longer than usual. The panel pulsed softly beneath his sleeve — an unreadable ledger for everyone but him. He flipped through the images that had filled his day: the exacting way Ari had trimmed his stance, Riley's steady hands adjusting his balance, Maya's shy grin over a shared scrap of bread. He thought of the PP numbers he could spend to end future fights before they began, to buy safety that would look like miracle. But more than the temptation to spend, there was a new, quiet conviction: the best use of the Panel would be to magnify what the pack already did well — their care, their skill, their willingness to make small mercies matter.
Outside, the forest breathed. Inside, the cabin held the easy warmth of people who had chosen one another for reasons that survived hard nights. Ethan closed his eyes and let a private ledger and a public life sit beside each other. He had power that no one else knew existed; he had friends who trusted him without that knowledge. The balance felt fragile and right.
Tomorrow, he told himself, they would run another course. He would train harder, earn more, and spend sparingly. He would keep the panel secret until the moment he could spend it in a way that could be read as courage, not theft.
For now, there was sleep, rosemary in the rafters, and the small, fierce warmth of a hand in his on a pallet across the room. He slept with the knowledge that he belonged — and with the secret that only he carried.