A Crown Buried In Silence

Wren POV

The first punch to my ribs didn't hurt as much as the guard's laugh when I hit the ground.

"Get up, Voss." Guard Renner nudged me with the toe of her boot, not gentle about it. "You've got somewhere to be."

I didn't move immediately,somewhere behind me, I heard Tamsin sniggering, the woman who swung first. Tamsin always went for people the day before their release. Word was, if she left a mark deep enough, the next girl to take that cell would think twice before crossing her.

I used to think that logic was insane. Two years in the Hallow Quarry taught me it made perfect sense.

I pushed myself up slowly, testing the rib that had taken the worst of it. I'd broken enough times to know the difference between a cracked rib and a broken rib.

"She's mine tomorrow," Tamsin said, spitting into the dirt near my boot. "Don't get comfortable wherever you're going, Princess."

Princess. That's what they called me here, ever since some idiot found out who my family used to be. It never landed the way they meant it to. I hadn't felt like anyone's daughter in a long time.

Renner grabbed my arm and hauled me toward the block, not toward the yard where they usually took the ones with time still left. My stomach dropped before my head caught up.

"Where.."

"Processing," she said. "You're out today."

"Today's not my date." My release wasn't for another six months. Counting was the only thing that kept me from losing whatever was left of my mind in there.

Renner didn't answer that. She just shoved a tin cup into my hands at the gate, the same grey sludge they fed us every morning, bitter enough to make my eyes water even after two years of it.

"Last one," she muttered, not quite looking at me. "Drink it."

I drank it. My hands were shaking by the time I set the cup down, and it wasn't from the cold.

Nobody explained why I was leaving six months early. Nobody explained much of anything in that place. I signed where they told me to sign, took the folded shirt and pants that used to fit before the weight came off me, and walked out through the gate without looking back at the wall I'd stared at for seven hundred and some odd days.

The sun outside felt wrong. Too bright, too warm on skin that hadn't seen it properly in years.

He was waiting by the car.

Damian.

Alpha Damian Voss now, apparently, though nobody had bothered writing to tell me that either. He looked older. Broader through the shoulders, a hard set to his jaw that hadn't been there when we were kids sparring in the training yard, back when he still let me win half the time.

"Wren." He said my name like he was expecting something. Bracing for me to run at him crying, maybe, the way I probably would have before.

"Alpha." I kept my hands folded in front of me and my eyes somewhere around his collarbone.

Something flickered across his face. "It's Damian. You don't have to.."

"Alpha," I said again. "Is there somewhere I need to be?"

He stared at me like he was hunting for the sister he remembered, somewhere underneath whatever I turned into. He wasn't going to find her. She didn't make it out of the quarry.

"Get in the car," he said finally.

The drive back took three hours. Damian filled maybe ten minutes of it with talking. I filled none of it.

"The Lycan King's arriving in five days," he said, eyes on the road. "Formal dinner. Important people are coming. Calla's being considered for an alliance match, so.." he glanced at me sideways, "...I need you not to make things difficult for her."

I watched the trees go by. "I won't."

"I mean it, Wren. Whatever's going on with you"

"I said I won't."

He went quiet after that. I watched a hawk circle over the tree line and thought about nothing, which is harder than it sounds. Thinking about nothing takes work. Thinking about something means thinking about the dark, and the cold, and the sound your own voice makes when nobody's listening on the other side of a door. I'd gotten good at nothing.

"You've lost weight," Damian said eventually, like he only just clocked it. "Did they not feed you there?"

"I'm fine."

"Wren." His voice dropped, softer, and for a second he sounded like the brother who used to sneak me sweets from the kitchen when we were twelve. "I know things got bad. I should've come sooner. I should've.." He stopped. Started over. "I'm sorry it took this long to bring you home."

I didn't answer. There wasn't an answer that wouldn't have cost me something I didn't have left to spend.

When we pulled up outside the pack house, he came around to open my door the way he used to when we were kids and he was showing off for whoever happened to be watching. His hand landed on my shoulder to help me out, the kind of touch that used to mean nothing between us at all.

My whole body reacted before my brain caught up.

I flinched back hard enough to hit the car door, arms already coming up over my head, knees folding like the ground was about to drop out from under me. Every muscle locked, waiting for the hit that always came next.

"Wren….hey, Wren."

His voice sounded far away. I stayed curled where I was, breath jammed somewhere behind my ribs, waiting, until the seconds kept passing and nothing came.

Nothing came.

I lowered my arms slowly and looked up. Damian had gone still, hand half-raised in the air like he didn't know what to do with it anymore, his face drained the color of old ash.

"What," he said, quietly, "did they do to you in there?"

I didn't have an answer for that. Not one he was ready to hear.