Fourteen: Wren

I run.

The world is white and silver and cold, and every part of me is made for it. Wind razors through my coat, dense and electric, each flake of rime like a pinprick. My lungs are black bellows—draw, empty, draw again, tighter and tighter. Each inhale is so sharp it should cut, but it fuels me, kicks me harder. Every breath is purpose. Every step is terror.

Beneath me, the ground is a slick of needle-thin ice, topped by last year’s mulch, every footfall stinging with memory: the time I split my knee on the root behind the old diner; the splintering pain when the bouncer at Wayward Pine cracked my hand over a barstool; the cold, sticky echo of my own blood in the alleyway. The wolf remembers none of these, but I do, and the memory is acid, spurring me to keep moving.

The forest is a blizzard of information—scents tripping over each other, urgent and intimate. Rabbit, faint and old. Fox, fresher. Human, everywhere, each trace so thick it’s like wading through river silt. But above all, higher and hotter and closer, is the scent of them: the others. My pursuers. The pack.

They are close. Too close.

They move together, not in a panic, but with the patience of things that have all night to finish the job. I can hear them, even now: the heavy thump of weight compressing snow, the hollow snap of twigs, the low, almost musical rhythm of their breathing. I double back, veer left, try to cross my own path, but their formation is perfect—a living net, woven tighter with every stride.

Panic ricochets through my body. My heart is a stone, slamming itself against my ribs, faster than the wolf wants, faster than anything should. My tongue is numb, mouth flooded with the taste of copper and heat. Somewhere in the confusion, I can feel my own mind trying to surface—human logic, weak and soft, screaming that this isn’t possible, that I am hallucinating, dying, dead.

But the wolf doesn’t stop for impossible. It stops for nothing.

A ravine opens up ahead, shallow but wide, the edges iced in a rictus of shattered branches. I leap, and for one perfect second I am airborne, the world falling away underneath. The landing is ugly—paws slip on hard-pack, claws bite too late, and I tumble sideways, rolling through frost and pain and the stink of my own sweat. The wolf wants to yelp, to whine, but I clamp it down and keep running, even as something wet and hot opens along my flank.

Behind me, the pack flows over the ravine as if it’s nothing. They don’t stumble. They don’t break stride. They are machine-perfect, almost beautiful. My muscles burn with envy.

I try to cut right, toward the river. The air there is dense with water and the bite of old iron—someone’s left a rusted oil drum to rot on the bank, and the stink of it is so loud I nearly gag. I skirt the shore, ice slapping against my legs, and for a moment I think maybe, just maybe, I can lose them in the reeds.

It doesn’t work. The reeds hide nothing. The reeds are a trap.

They close the gap—six of them, moving like they share a single mind. I catch flashes of color, shapes blurred by speed: one is dark as midnight, another mottled brown, the rest a grim parade of grays and silvers, each coat glossy and hard. Their eyes burn with reflected moon, and when they look at me, I see not hatred, but inevitability.

They are not angry. They are not kind. They are doing what must be done.

I run.

The ground here is a minefield of rocks and trash, every footstep a gamble. I push through anyway, crashing through a tangle of blackberry vines that slash at my legs and belly. The pain is less than nothing. There’s only forward, only outpace, only get away. The path narrows, closes in, and I realize too late what they have done: they’ve funneled me.

Ahead, the trees break, and there’s a clearing—a wide circle, stamped flat by old logging equipment, the grass dead and brittle. The moon is so bright here that it hurts to look up, so I keep my eyes on the ground, ears up, senses exploding.

Behind, they emerge from the undergrowth, fanning out in a semicircle. Each one is different: one limps, a ghost of old injury; one wears a white slash across her muzzle, like war paint; another—bigger than the rest—hangs back, shoulders high, tail low, watching with the patience of someone who’s done this a hundred times.

I double back. The way is closed. I try left, then right—nothing but bodies and breath and the ever-narrowing circle.

I turn to face them, and for the first time, I understand the point of bar fights: sometimes it’s not about winning, just not backing down.

I bare my teeth, hackles up, tail out. My lips peel back from my jaw—an ugly, jagged snarl, all fang and spit. The sound I make is nothing like a human scream, but it is just as furious. The wolf at the center steps forward, matching my posture, her own lips curling in a silent, clinical challenge.

We hold there, frozen. In another life, I would have said it was a standoff. But here, in this body, in this night, I know it’s just the pause before the killing blow.

The others start to move, slow and deliberate, closing the arc. Their eyes reflect the world in shards of ice and flame. Their ears flick, tails flick, and I can see the silent communication—each gesture a word, each shift a sentence. I am the only one who doesn’t know the language, and it feels like a joke I was never meant to get.

I refuse to give ground.

They come closer, muscles sliding under their coats, mouths open just enough to show the tools they will use. The big one is still behind, holding back, waiting for the perfect moment.

A gust of wind rattles through the clearing, bringing with it a hundred new smells: old blood, fresh sap, the ozone tang of oncoming snow. For a moment, I want to drop to my belly, surrender, let it happen. But the thought is cancer, and I rip it out.

The wolf with the war-paint muzzle closes the gap, two steps away now. I lunge at her, snapping, catching nothing but fur and frost. She dodges, not even phased, and the others ripple in response, the formation tightening.

Another tries from the right. I twist, claw out, rake her shoulder. She recoils, but not far, and the wound is already clotting, thick and dark. They are testing me, wearing me down.

I growl, deep and guttural. I have never made a sound like this. It vibrates my whole skeleton, rattles my teeth in my head. For a second, it seems to work—the nearest wolves hesitate, re-calibrating.

And then, all at once, they press in.

I fight.

It is ugly, savage, nothing like the old bar fights. I throw myself at them, jaws wide, claws scraping bone. They meet me with equal violence, but never lose control—they are careful, measured, never reckless. I take a chunk out of one, and the next one is already on me, pinning my shoulder to the ground. I twist, bite, kick, but their weight is overwhelming, a tide that pulls me under.

My mind fractures—wolf and human both screaming, both refusing to yield. I taste my own blood, hot and electric, and the pain is a fireworks display behind my eyes. The pack is silent now, not a sound but the hiss of breath and the crunch of bodies hitting snow.

Then, as fast as it started, it stops.

I am flat on my side, three bodies holding me down—one at the throat, one at the ribs, one anchoring my back legs. The pressure is enormous, but not enough to kill, just enough to make the point.

In the sudden quiet, I hear it: a single footstep, heavier than the others, deliberate. The big one steps forward at last, breaking the ring. His eyes are not just reflective, but alive—burning with something that I almost recognize.

He doesn’t speak. He doesn’t need to.

He approaches, slow and sure, and for the first time, the wolf inside me doesn’t know what to do. I want to fight, but I can’t move. I want to run, but there’s nowhere left to go.

He lowers his head, and his breath is fire in my face.

I wait for the killing blow.

But it doesn’t come.

He holds there, just long enough for the fear to settle in my bones, then looks away, a flick of the ears sending the message down the line.

The bodies ease up, just a hair, but it’s enough. I gasp, air filling my chest in a way that feels obscene after so much panic. The big one circles, inspects, then sits back on his haunches, watching me.

He is in charge. There’s no question.

But he doesn’t hate me. He doesn’t even care. I am just another problem to be solved, another line in the ledger.

The others back off, forming a new circle—this one looser, but no less effective.

I roll onto my stomach, legs shaking, and glare at them all. If they want me, they’ll have to take me alive.

For a moment, no one moves.

Then, from the trees, a sound—an echo of my own howl, but lower, colder, ancient.

The pack stands, as one, and waits for what comes next.

So do I.