Chapter 4: What the Box Held

Wren waited until the house was dark and her mother's door had been closed for an hour before she let herself go to the box under her bed.

It was small, plain wood, the kind of thing nobody would look twice at if they found it. She hadn't opened it in weeks. She told herself that was because she'd been busy, not because she already knew what was inside and hadn't been ready to look at it.

She was wrong about being ready now too. Her hands trembled as she lifted the lid anyway.

The carved wooden wolf sat on top, small enough to fit in her palm, its edges worn smooth from being turned over and over between her fingers years ago. Beneath it, a pressed flower had gone brittle and colorless, and a folded scrap of paper had softened at the creases from being opened and closed too many times to count. Kade had made the wolf for her the summer they were both sixteen, before either of them understood what a mate bond was, back when he used to sit beside her at the lake and complain about his father's training regimen while she pretended she wasn't in love with him.

She'd carried it in her pocket for three years after that, tucked against her hip during training, worn smooth from her thumb passing over it during long pack meetings when she couldn't sit still. She'd stopped only when the bond confirmed itself, when the whole pack started treating it as inevitable, official, sealed. She'd put it away because she thought she wouldn't need luck anymore. She already had him.

Wren's hand closed around the carving. Her throat worked once, twice, and then the sound came out of her before she could stop it, small and broken, nothing like the flat voice she'd used with Selene that morning.

She pressed her free hand hard against her mouth.

The tears came fast once they started, hot and humiliating even with no one there to see them, and she let herself sink down against the side of the bed because her legs didn't feel steady enough to hold her upright anymore. She cried the way she hadn't let herself cry in the clearing, in front of Selene, in front of the whole pack watching to see if she would break.

Her fingers tightened around the wolf until the carved edges bit into her palm. She pressed it against her chest, hard enough to hurt, and let her forehead drop to her knees.

A sob shook loose from her chest, ugly and unguarded.

She cried until her whole body ached with it, until her eyes were swollen and raw and her breath came in short broken pulls, until the wooden wolf was slick with sweat from how hard she'd been gripping it. Her shoulders shook against the wooden bed frame. Somewhere outside her window a night bird called twice and went quiet, and the sound of it was almost enough to make her stop, almost, before the next wave hit and pulled her back under.

Somewhere in the house, a floorboard creaked.

Wren froze, breath catching. She scrubbed her sleeve hard across her face, dragged in one unsteady breath after another until her voice would hold, and by the time her bedroom door cracked open she was sitting upright against the bed frame with her face arranged into something almost calm.

Her mother stood in the doorway, silhouetted by the hall light, saying nothing for a long moment.

"I heard you," her mother finally said.

Wren swallowed hard. "I'm fine."

Her mother didn't move closer at first. She didn't cross the room to sit beside her, didn't reach for her the way Wren had wanted someone to reach for her every single hour since the ceremony ended. She stayed in the doorway, one hand braced against the frame, and for a moment Wren thought she might simply turn and go back to bed the way she always did.

Instead her mother crossed the room slowly, lowered herself onto the edge of the bed, and looked down at the small wooden box still open on the floor between them.

"He made that for you," her mother said quietly. It wasn't a question.

Wren didn't answer at first. She uncurled her fingers slowly from around the wolf, just enough to let her mother see it.

"I remember the day he brought it over." Her mother's voice had gone soft, almost far away, her eyes fixed somewhere past Wren's shoulder like she was seeing it happen again. "You wouldn't stop talking about him for a week afterward. Drove your father half mad."

"Please don't." Wren's voice cracked on the second word.

"I'm not trying to hurt you." Her mother reached out, not for Wren, but for the box, closing the lid gently, like she was putting something to rest. "I just want you to know I remember. All of it. I know what he meant to you, even if I never said it out loud."

Wren pressed the back of her hand against her eyes, hard, until she saw spots. "Then why didn't you say anything last night?"

Her mother was quiet for a long moment. "Because there was nothing I could have said that would have changed what he did. And I didn't want to make it worse by pretending otherwise."

It wasn't the answer Wren wanted, not really. It wasn't an apology either. But it was more honesty than she'd gotten from anyone else since the ceremony, and something in her chest loosened slightly at the sound of it.

Her mother stayed until the worst of it passed, until Wren's breathing evened out and her hands stopped shaking, and then rose quietly to leave her to sleep. She paused at the door, hand on the frame.

"Get some rest," she said. "Tomorrow the Alpha wants every unmated wolf in the pack down at the training grounds. Something about the new transfer wanting to see what we're made of."

Wren's stomach turned over. "Darius."

"That's the one." Her mother's eyes lingered on her a moment longer than necessary, something unreadable passing behind them. "Word is he asked for you by name."