Sixteen: Wren

He enters the clearing like he owns it.

The air goes electric; every wolf in the circle drops their gaze, tails twitching just above the snow. The birds in the trees stop singing, the wind itself seems to pause. I feel it before I see him—a heaviness, a pressure against the skull, like the gravity in the room just doubled.

Then he’s there. Lucian Vale.

He is larger than any wolf I’ve ever seen, twice the mass of the biggest in the circle, coat shot through with pale and steel-gray, the kind of silver that reflects moonlight even when the rest of the forest is dark. He moves with the precision of a glacier—slow, inevitable, impossible to stop. When he lifts his head, the moon draws a perfect line down his spine, like a blade ready to cut the world in half.

My body goes rigid. Every instinct screams: Danger. Run. Hide. Die if you have to.

But I don’t run. I crouch lower, hackles up, and meet his stare.

He stops twenty feet away, just outside the reach of a lunge. The wolves on either side step back, giving him the stage. The cold gets sharper. My blood feels thin.

For a long, terrible moment, nothing happens. Just Lucian, just me, just the moon and the million eyes watching from the woods.

He bares his teeth.

Not a snarl—something else. A command.

The sound he makes is thunder, low and rolling, a challenge so deep it rattles the marrow. I answer with a shriek, high and desperate, but it feels like screaming into a hurricane.

He comes at me, not fast, but deliberate—each step a promise.

I break and run, but he’s already there, body slamming into mine with the force of a truck. I hit the ground, snow packed into my mouth and eyes, and for a second I can’t even breathe. His jaws clamp around my neck—not puncturing, not killing, just holding. The humiliation is nuclear. I kick and twist and snarl, but it’s nothing, not even sport for him.

His eyes find mine, even upside-down. They are dead cold, a blue so pale it’s almost white. But there’s intelligence there, too—a weighing, a calculation, like he’s waiting to see if I’ll do something interesting before he ends it.

The struggle leaves me. The energy burns out, leaves only the animal shame, the limp tremble of prey in the teeth of the alpha.

I want to spit in his face. I want to bite off my own tongue.

Instead, my body betrays me. The limbs go slack, the tail curls under, my belly shows itself to the moon and the entire fucking pack. I pant, mouth full of snow and defeat.

He lets go. He doesn’t even bother to check if I’ll run again.

I lie there, staring up at the moon. The circle closes, but now it’s looser, the tension gone. The pack knows who’s in charge.

Lucian gives a single, short bark. The others back off, heads down, tails low, as if even they’re embarrassed for me.

I try to stand, but my legs won’t answer. I settle for breathing.

He circles once, just to make sure I understand, then plants himself in front of me, eyes never leaving mine.

I don’t look away. Not because I’m brave. Because I have nothing else left.

Above us, the moon watches. So does the pack.

And so do I.