Chapter 6: Sent to Watch

"You've got to be kidding me."

Wren stood at the Kade border gate, liashe, owned it, arms crossed, and travel cloak dusty from the road.

"Nice to see you too," she said.

"I didn't say anything."

"You didn't have to. Your face said plenty."

"What are you doing here?"

"Diplomatic visit. Ronan's orders."

"Ronan doesn't send diplomatic visits. He sends people he can't be bothered to deal with himself."

"Careful. I could still leave."

"Please do."

"You don't mean that."

"Try me and find out."

She didn't move. Neither did the guard standing beside her, waiting on my word.

"Why are you actually here, Wren?"?

"I told you. Diplomatic courtesy. Ashguard wants to know how you're settling in."

"Ashguard wants to know if I'm still alive to be a problem for them."

"That too, probably."

"So which is it? " Courtesy or surveillance."

"Does it have to be one or the other?"

"With you, usually."

At least she wasn't pretending too hard.

"Fine," I said. "You can come in. But you're not staying long, and you're not causing trouble."

"When have I ever caused trouble?"?

"I have a very specific memory from three weeks ago involving a courtyard."

"That wasn't a problem. That was just accurate."

"There's a difference between accurate and cruel, Wren."

"Not always. Sometimes, they overlap."

"Comforting."

"I never claimed to be comforting."

I let her through anyway, mostly out of morbid curiosity.

A pack member nodded at me as we walked, an actual nod, not the careful avoidance I used to get back home. Wren's jaw tightened.

"They know you already," she said.

"It's been three weeks."

"That's fast."

"Maybe I'm just easy to get used to."

"You've never been easy to get used to. That's kind of the point."

I wasn't sure if that was an insult or the closest thing to a compliment she knew how to give. With Wren, it was usually hard to tell the difference.

We passed the training yard, and I caught sight of Asher running drills with a group of newer wolves. He spotted me and waved us over without hesitation.

"Briar. Good timing. Come show me that block again. You had your elbow too high last time."

"I have a guest."

"Guest can watch. Come on."

Wren's eyebrows went up, but she followed at a distance while I stepped into the yard. Asher fell into an easy stance across from me, nothing formal about it, the kind of comfortable familiarity that only comes from actually knowing someone.

"Elbow down, weight through your back foot," he said, tapping my arm lightly to correct the angle. "Like that. You're strong enough that a small mistake in form costs you more than it would someone smaller. Precision matters more for you, not less."

"Nobody's ever explained it that way before."

"Nobody's ever had to. Try it again."

"Like this?"

"Better. Elbows are still creeping up, though."

"It doesn't want to stay down."

"Make it want to. You're stronger than the habit. You just haven't convinced your arm of that yet."

I ran the block a few more times, his hand on my shoulder once to adjust my stance, easy and unbothered. When I glanced past him, Wren was watching with an expression I hadn't seen on her before.

"You two seem close," she said once Asher moved off to correct someone else.

"He's teaching me things nobody bothered to teach me before."

"That's not what I meant."

"Then say what you meant."

"Nothing. Forget it."

"You brought it up."

"And now I'm un-bringing it up. Drop it."

"That's new. You usually don't let things go that easily."

"Maybe I'm trying something different."

"Since when?"

"Since I watched my sister throw a prince into a wall. Changes a person's perspective."

We kept walking, and the training yard sounds faded behind us. Wren was quieter than I'd ever known her to be.

"How's Ronan," I asked, mostly to fill the silence.

"Fine. Busy. The council's been on him about something, I don't know what."

"You don't know, or you're not saying."

"Does it matter which?"

"It might."

"Then let's say I don't know, and leave it there."

"Fine."

"Fine."

"You always did hate not having the last word."

"So did you. I just usually let you have it anyway."

"Why did they actually send you," I asked again. "You could have sent a letter."

"Would you have read a letter from me?"

"Probably not."

"There's your answer."

"That's not an answer. That's a dodge."

"It's the only one you're getting today."

"Fair enough."

We looped back toward the training yard, Asher demonstrating a takedown to a small cluster of wolves, laughing easy and comfortable, the way I'd never once seen Ronan be in his own pack.

"He's good with them," I said, nodding toward the yard.

"He's good with everyone. That's not what I'm looking at."

"What are you looking at then?"?

"He likes you," Wren said, quiet enough that I almost missed it.

"He respects me. There's a difference."

"Is there?"?

"Wren."

"I'm just saying what I'm seeing."

"You've been here two hours."

"Two hours is plenty of time to see how a room changes when someone walks into it."

"You're imagining things."

"I can't imagine things, Briar. I notice them. That's always been my whole problem."

I didn't have an answer for that, mostly because I wasn't sure what I was seeing either. Asher caught my eye again across the yard and grinned, an easy, unguarded thing, before turning back to his drill.

"You used to hate changing rooms for me," I said. "Now you're pointing it out as it bothers you."

"It doesn't bother me."

"You sound bothered."

"I'm observant. That's not the same thing."

We stood there a moment longer, watching Asher work through the drill, his voice carrying easily across the yard, patient with wolves twice as slow as I'd been on my first day.

"He corrected your stance himself," Wren said. "In front of everyone."

"That's how training works."

"Not like that, it isn't. Not the way he did it."

"You're reading into things."

"Maybe. Or maybe I've spent my whole life reading exactly how much space someone's allowed to take up in a room, and I know what it looks like when someone's finally allowed to take up all of it."

"That sounds like a lot to read into one training correction."

"It usually is, right up until it isn't."

"You're very confident for someone who's known him for two hours."

"I don't need to know him. I just need to watch him look at you."

I didn't know what to say, so I said nothing at all. Wren wasn't looking at me anymore. She was looking at Asher, and then back at me, something working behind her expression that looked almost like calculation.

"You've been here three weeks," she said slowly, "and you already outrank half his Betas."

"That's not outranking anyone. That's just training."

"It's not just training, Briar. Watch him with you again. Then, watch him with anyone else in this yard."

I didn't need to watch it again. Some part of me had already noticed, quietly, the difference in how his hand lingered a beat longer, correcting my stance than it did for anyone else's.

Wren's jaw was tight, her shoulders stiff in that particular way she got whenever she was working hard, ot to say something she was thinking.

"What," I said.

"Nothing."

"It's clearly nothing. Say it."

"I will. Just give me a second."

"Take your time. You've clearly been building up to something all day."

"Nothing." She shook her head, gaze still fixed on the training yard. "I just think you should know, before this season's out, you're going to outrank every single person in this pack, including him. And I don't think he's realized that yet."

"That's a strange thing for you to say."

"Is it? I spent our whole childhood watching people underestimate exactly what you were capable of. I'd know the signs anywhere by now."

"You used to be one of those people."

"I know. Maybe that's exactly why I recognize it so fast in everyone else.”