Chapter 8

“They said you fought three rogue wolves at once and didn’t even shift for the first 10 minutes. That you broke one of their jaws with just your boot.”

“Boots are sturdy,” I said, tapping mine against the table leg.

“I heard you chased off the Rink’s old Beta once. The one with the scar down his face.”

“Only because he called me sweetheart and smacked my ass like I was some maid,” I replied, cracking a tiny smirk. “Didn’t see him after that, did you?”

Mira giggled, then quickly covered it up with her hand like laughing around me might get her in trouble.

It didn’t.

“I always wondered what you looked like,” she said, voice quieter now. “They just say you’re dangerous.”

I leaned back in the chair. “That’s not a description. That’s a warning label.”

She tilted her head. “You don’t look dangerous.”

I gave her a slow, pointed look. “I chased someone through three miles of forest last week because they said my mashed apples were lumpy. I'm dangerous, the big bad wolf.”

Her eyes widened and her cute button nose twitched as her cheeks flushed. What a sweetheart, I wanted to pinch her cheeks and carry her to a nice warm cave and guard her from the harshness of life. But I knew that won't do her any good. we lived in a tough world. And shifters had it harder than any human, cause only the toughest survived. Death became of those who didn't fit our criteria. Like Betsy Lui. She was still a youngling born with no vision. She didn't last long enough to even understand what was wrong with her when the Lions took her. She was probably dead by now. And if Mira didn't grow a leg soon she would end up like her or worse 'locked up in the Den until she's ninety,'

“Okay, you do look a little dangerous.”

I grinned, then let it fall a little. “But I’m not dangerous to you.”

Mira tapped her fingers on the table, thoughtful. “They say wolves that fight too much forget who they are.”

I didn’t respond right away.

Because I wasn’t sure I hadn’t.

“They also say,” she added, “that you stayed with a dying Sentinel once. That he wouldn’t shift back because it hurt too much, and you stayed with him as a wolf until he passed.”

I blinked.

That wasn’t something I expected her to know.

“Haden said you howled for him,” she said. “Loud enough the whole valley heard it.”

My throat went tight.

“Yeah,” I said, voice low. “I bet he told you all kinds of stuff."

Mira nodded like she understood. Then she looked down at her leg.

At the absence of it.

And asked, “Do you think I’ll ever shift again?”

I paused.

Lying wasn’t my style. Especially not to someone already carrying the weight of survival like a second skin.

“I think,” I said slowly, “you might not shift the same way everyone else does. But you’ll shift. One day. When it matters. And no one’s gonna forget it.”

She stared at me a second longer.

Softly, almost in a barely audible whisper she asked, “Do you still like being a wolf?”

The question hit harder than I wanted it to.

I thought about the feeling of the wind in my fur. The metal tang of rabbit blood in my mouth. The rage and clarity all twisted into one. How the world got silent except for the pulse of the hunt. The constant pain of something pulling inside of me. My broken mate bond. A pack who refused to understand my desire to be a sentinel.

“I don’t know,” I said honestly. “Some days, yeah. Some days, I wish I was just bones in the dirt.”

Mira didn’t flinch. “Same.”

We sat in silence again, two broken things pretending we weren’t.

After a while, I leaned over and grabbed the small wooden stick from the basket nearby. I flicked my claw open and used it to carve her name in the stick. I slid it across the table to her.

“Here,” I said. “Every war queen needs a blade or in your case a wand.”

She looked at it like it was gold.

And when she picked it up, I saw her hold it like she already knew how to fight.