1

The scent of damp earth and scorched wood hung in the air like a memory no one could forget. Ash clung to every leaf and stone, a silent reminder of another night of wildfires lit by carelessness or vengeance.

In the farthest edge of the rogue encampment, where the forest crept closer and silence was less a blessing and more a shield, a girl sat cross-legged on the dirt floor of a rundown cabin. Her fingers were smudged with charcoal and dry paint. Streaks of blue and crimson stained her forearms like bruises. A small, half-finished canvas rested in her lap, where, a forest, half-burned, half-alive.

This was her sanctuary. A space no one wanted to enter, and thankfully, never tried.

Charollet.

Nineteen years old. The girl who never shifted.

The girl they all whispered about behind her back if they even remembered she was there at all.

She had grown up among the rogues, left swaddled in a threadbare blanket at the edge of their border the night the moon turned red. They never knew who her parents were, or which pack had cast her away. And they never really tried to find out.

The rogues had no use for orphans. No patience for the weak. Yet she had survived barely thanks to Viktor.

Old, scarred, and half-blind in one eye, Viktor had been the first to pick her up that night. He'd wrapped her in his coat and growled down the others when they suggested leaving her for the crows. Over time, he became the closest thing she had to family.

“They left you for dead, little one,” he’d once said. “Don’t let them kill what’s left.”

But surviving wasn't the same as living.

Growing up rogue meant growing up rough. Most of them were exiles and cast out from their packs for crimes, betrayal, or simply being inconvenient. They were the wild dogs of the werewolf world. They fought for scraps, turned on each other in a heartbeat, and viewed compassion as a weakness.

To them, Charollet was always… other.

She hadn’t shifted at sixteen. Or seventeen. Or even eighteen.

And now, at nineteen, when others led attacks or secured new territory, she still hadn’t shifted.

To the rogues, that made her dangerous. Or useless. Or both.

“She’s a human,” some muttered when they thought she couldn’t hear. “Or cursed.”

“She’s a mouth to feed and no teeth to fight.”

“She’s soft. A ghost.”

They weren’t wrong about the last part. Charollet had learned early on to fade into the background. To keep her head down, her voice low, her presence barely there.

When the rogues gathered for battle plans or feast nights, she stayed in her small wooden shack no more than four walls and a leak-ridden roof and painted.

Art was the only place she didn’t feel broken. In brushstrokes, she found something like peace. In color, she found herself.

She painted the forests she wished she could run through. Moons she imagined whispering secrets. Wolves she had never become.

Most of her paintings were hidden under a loose floorboard, her secret world, untouched by the cruelty around her.

Only two people ever stepped into that world willingly.

One was Viktor.

The other was Mia.

Mia was a mystery, even among rogues. Tall and striking, with coppery brown hair always tied back and sharp eyes that missed nothing, she had once been a beta female in a powerful northern pack. Her mate rejected her for a higher-ranking she-wolf, casting Mia out like trash. But unlike most broken wolves, Mia didn’t shatter, she sharpened.

She had joined the rogues five years ago and quickly made herself useful. She fought when she had to, healed when others couldn't, and was one of the few who could negotiate borders and land without spilling blood.

Mia was respected. Feared. But to Charollet, she was… kind.

Not soft. Never soft. But real. Honest. Protective in a way that didn’t suffocate.

“You don’t owe them your pain,” Mia had once said, kneeling beside her after a rough night. “Let it out on the canvas, not your skin.”

Since then, Mia had brought her spare paint, patched her roof, and sometimes left food outside her door without a word. She never pitied Charollet. She just saw her.

And in a place like this, that was everything.

Still, kindness didn’t shield Charollet from the rest.

Most days, she helped quietly where she could like mending clothes, gathering herbs, cleaning wounds when Mia was out on patrol. But she was never truly accepted.

The rogues didn’t laugh with her. They didn’t share fire-whiskey with her after raids. They didn’t teach her the strategies of war or the sacred oaths of wolves.

They barely acknowledged her unless they needed a scapegoat or a target for boredom.

Once, when a raid had gone wrong and a rogue returned with a mangled leg, he’d snarled at her for using the wrong salve. Another time, a stolen food ration had mysteriously disappeared, and she’d been blamed without evidence. The punishment? No food for two days.

She took it all in silence. She always had.

Because what else was there?

She had no wolf to defend her. No pack bond to fall back on. No name whispered in reverence like the others. She didn’t even know her birth name. Charollet was the name Viktor had given her and he said it was the name embroidered on the torn edge of her blanket.

A name with no roots. No history. Just a girl and a whisper of what could’ve been.

And yet… she endured.

Every morning, she woke before the others, brushed her fingers over her secret paintings, and whispered to herself, One more day. That’s all we need.

Somewhere deep inside, she clung to the foolish hope that her wolf was there silent, maybe, but waiting. Waiting for the right moment. The right reason.

Maybe she just hadn’t found it yet.

Or maybe, she thought grimly, it had already died inside her before she ever learned to listen.

A loud crash outside broke her train of thought.

Voices rose. Urgent. Tense.

She tucked her canvas away and stood, brushing the dust from her tunic. The cold morning air bit at her skin as she stepped outside.

Two rogues were dragging a body toward the center of the camp.

Mia walked behind them, blood on her hands, a hard look on her face. She caught sight of Charollet and gave the barest nod.

Charollet didn’t ask questions. She never did. She just stepped forward and fetched clean water from the barrel near her door, then reached for the healing salve she’d made with crushed sage and feverleaf.

She wasn’t one of them.

But she knew how to put broken things back together.