Wren POV
Wren did not sleep after the kitchen.
She went back to her room, changed out of her wet shirt, and sat on the edge of her bed with her wrist pressed against her chest until the sky outside her small window turned gray. She kept checking for the glow. It did not come back. By the time the pack house started filling with morning noise, she had almost convinced herself she imagined it.
Almost.
She got through the morning by counting.
Sixty-one days. That was all. Sixty-one days of keeping her head down, doing her work, eating whatever scraps she was allowed, and not giving anyone a reason to look at her too closely. She had gotten very good at not being looked at. It was its own kind of skill. Move quietly. Answer when spoken to. Never show anything on your face that could be used against you. Sixty-one days and she would be gone and none of this would be her life anymore.
She told herself this while she hauled firewood to the back storage room.
She told herself this while she refolded the clean linens that someone had deliberately knocked off the shelf.
She told herself this while she stood outside the dining hall and waited for the main pack to finish breakfast before she was allowed in for leftovers.
The waiting was the part that cost her the most. Standing outside a room full of warmth and noise and belonging, listening to the sound of a family she was never part of, pretending it did not touch her at all. She had been doing it for twelve years. She was very good at pretending.
The door swung open and pack members filed out around her like she was a post in the ground. No one bumped into her on purpose today. Small mercies. She went in, took a plate, and went to the far end of the long table where she always sat.
She was three bites into her food when the whispers started.
She did not look up. She knew what they were saying without needing to hear the words clearly. Late shifter. Still no wolf. Defective bloodline. Alpha Reid took her in out of obligation and she cannot even manage a basic shift. My youngest shifted at thirteen and she is almost eighteen. Something is wrong with her. Something has always been wrong with her.
Sixty-one days, Wren told herself. Just eat.
"You are doing the face again."
Daya dropped onto the bench beside her so fast the whole table rattled. She was small and fast and warm the way a fire was warm you just felt better near her without being able to explain exactly why. She pushed a second piece of bread onto Wren's plate like she was pretending it fell there by accident.
"What face," Wren said.
"The I want to set someone on fire face." Daya leaned in and lowered her voice. "Specifically you are doing it at Zane, and people will notice."
Wren looked up without meaning to.
Zane was across the dining hall at the Alpha table, sitting straight-backed and unreachable, talking to one of the senior pack warriors. He looked exactly like what he was. The next Alpha. Built for it. Born for it. He had never once in his life questioned whether he deserved to take up space.
Wren looked back at her plate.
"I do want to set him on fire," she said.
"Obviously," Daya said. "Fair enough. But maybe do not advertise it."
Wren almost smiled. Almost. "How was your morning?"
"Terrible. I found something in the archive room."
Wren looked at her. Daya's voice had shifted still quiet, still casual on the surface, but underneath it something careful and tight. Wren had known her long enough to hear the difference.
"What kind of something," Wren said.
"The kind I do not want to talk about here." Daya glanced sideways. "Tonight. Your room."
Wren spent the rest of the day counting down to that instead.
She got through her afternoon work supply inventory, which was lonely but at least nobody bothered her by thinking about Daya's face when she said it. The tightness in it. The way she had checked sideways before speaking. Daya was not a dramatic person. She did not make things bigger than they were. If something had scared her, it was actually scary.
She was almost back to the pack house when River passed her on the path.
She felt him before she saw him. That was new. Since last night since the kitchen and the glow and the pacing sound in the hallway she had been more aware of the three of them in a way she could not turn off. Like a sound she could not unhear. River walked past her without speaking, which was normal. He almost never spoke to her directly. But today something made her look up right as he passed.
He was already looking at her.
Their eyes met for less than a second. His were dark and completely unreadable. Then he looked away and kept walking and was gone around the corner of the building.
Wren stood still on the path for a moment.
Her wrist was warm.
She pressed her hand over it hard and walked faster.
Daya came to her room after dinner with the door barely shut behind her before she pulled a folded piece of paper from inside her jacket. Old paper. The kind from the physical archive books that the pack kept for official records. She had clearly torn it carefully rather than removed a full page just one section, one entry.
She set it on the bed between them.
Wren looked at it.
It was a payment record. Official pack format, Alpha Reid's authorization signature at the bottom. The amount was large enough that Wren read it twice. Paid to one name: Maren. No last name. No address. No description of services.
The date at the top of the entry was six years ago.
Three days after Wren's sixteenth birthday.
"Who is Maren," Wren said.
"I do not know yet," Daya said. "But I kept looking." She hesitated. "Wren. I found one more thing. In the oldest section of the archive, before Reid's leadership. There is a file under your parents' names."
Wren went very still. "My parents were rogues. They did not have pack files."
Daya looked at her with an expression that made Wren's chest tighten.
"That is what we were told," Daya said quietly.
She reached into her jacket again and pulled out a second piece of paper.
At the top, in faded official print, were two names Wren had not seen written anywhere in twelve years.
Desmond Cole. Vivienne Cole.
And underneath, a title that made no sense at all.
Crescent Alpha Pair. Eastern and Western Bloodline Seat.
Wren stared at the paper.
The glow on her wrist came back, stronger than last night, and this time it did not disappear.