ECHOES OF QUIET

Tyra's POV

I shoved my trembling hand deep into the pocket of my coat and kept walking, as if hiding it could make me forget what I had just seen glowing beneath my skin.

My heart hadn't slowed down since the garden. I kept flexing my fingers inside the pocket, waiting for that strange warmth to return, and I didn't know whether to be relieved or more afraid when it didn't.

It was stress. It had to be stress.

I took the back corridor instead of the main hallway, because the last thing I needed was another audience, and for the first time since I landed, the house was quiet enough that I could actually hear myself breathe.

The quiet should have helped, but it only made room for everything else.

The walls still carried the same old portraits of stern Forrest Alphas in heavy gold frames, and the air still smelled of polished wood and old books. I used to walk this exact corridor at fifteen with my head down and my arms wrapped around a stack of textbooks, counting my steps so I wouldn't have to think about how alone I was.

Nothing had changed here, I thought bitterly. Only I had.

I slowed in front of the tall windows that overlooked the training fields. Below, a group of young wolves were sparring on the frost-tipped grass, laughing and shoving each other, and the sight hit me harder than I expected.

I remembered standing at this very window, watching the pack kids play games I was never invited to join. I remembered the pack healers dragging me out onto that same field week after week, making me stand in the middle of a circle of strangers while they tried to provoke a shift that never came. I remembered the silence that followed every failed attempt, and the way people's pity always curdled into something meaner once they walked away.

I had buried all of it under degrees and awards and grant letters, and I had honestly believed it was gone.

But standing here now, it felt like every one of those failures was still hanging in the air, waiting for me.

The faint scar on my palm began to prickle, the one I got the day I fell down the stairs, and I curled my fingers over it inside my pocket.

"Well, look who finally remembered she has roots."

I knew that voice before I even turned around.

Some voices never leave you, no matter how many oceans you put between yourself and them, and this one still had the power to make my stomach drop straight to my feet.

Slowly, I turned around.

Valentina Xane was leaning against a doorframe a few feet away, her arms folded across her chest. She had the same glossy blonde hair, the same perfect, sharp smile that used to slice through every girl in the pack like a blade. The only thing that had changed was the packaging, because the designer gym sets she used to strut around in had been replaced by a sleek cream pantsuit.

For one humiliating second, I wasn't Dr. Tyra Valerius anymore.

I was fifteen and lying at the bottom of the staircase with a bloody palm and a ringing head, staring up at the balcony where she had stood laughing, a volleyball in her hands and a "Fire in the hole!" on her lips.

My throat went tight, and I hated that it did.

"Valentina," I said evenly, forcing my voice to stay calm even though my pulse was pounding in my ears. "I didn't expect to see you still here. I thought you had bigger plans and all this was beneath you."

"Oh, I'm still here," Valentina drawled with a soft, tinkling laugh, pushing herself off the doorframe. "Unlike some people, who ran away the moment things got a little hard."

Her eyes swept slowly over me, from my polished boots to my understated jewelry, lingering on every detail like she was pricing it.

"I hear you've been living the high life," she continued sweetly. "Beijing, wasn't it? Labs, awards, conferences… how impressive."

The old instinct rose in me so fast it scared me. My shoulders wanted to curl in, my eyes wanted to drop to the floor, and every part of me wanted to mumble something small and harmless and get away from her as fast as I could.

That was what I had always done. I had shrunk, I had stayed quiet, and I had let her win, because winning had never seemed worth the cost of fighting back.

But I wasn't fifteen anymore.

I made myself lift my chin and meet her eyes.

"I chased my bigger plans and got them," I replied coolly, letting my gaze slide over her the same way hers had slid over me. "Unlike some people."

Something flickered across Valentina's face, a crack in the polished surface, gone so quickly I almost missed it.

"I see you've become more… mouthy," she said slowly, stepping closer, her voice dropping into something low and silky. "And yet here you are, back where you started. Some of us always wondered if you'd come crawling home eventually. I guess we were right."

My jaw tightened. "I didn't crawl back anywhere," I said firmly. "I was invited."

"By your mother?" Valentina asked, tilting her head with mock curiosity. "Or by the twins?"

The question landed exactly where she meant it to.

"I just hope you won't drive them out of their own home this time," she went on, her voice dripping with false concern. "You remember how they used to disappear every time you came back, don't you? They couldn't stand to be under the same roof as you. This ceremony is important, Tyra, and the pack doesn't need any… disturbances."

Heat rushed to my face, a scalding mix of anger and humiliation.

Because she wasn't lying, and that was what made it hurt.

Every summer I had come home, the twins had vanished. Every holiday, every visit, the house had gone quiet and their rooms had gone empty, and I had sat alone at that long dining table telling myself I didn't care. The whole pack had seen it. Valentina had seen it. And every single person who had ever whispered "defect" behind my back had taken it as proof that even my own stepbrothers couldn't stomach me.

Last night, I had found out why, and somehow it still didn't erase a single one of those empty summers.

My hands curled into fists at my sides.

"You should watch your mouth," I hissed, my voice shaking with the effort of keeping it low.

Valentina's smile widened, slow and satisfied, like a cat that had finally found the soft spot on a mouse.

"Why?" she asked softly, circling a step closer. "Are you afraid I'll remind everyone what you really are? The Alpha's charity case, the girl without a wolf who thought she could buy her way into belonging." Her eyes flicked to the empty corridor behind me, then back to my face. "Or maybe you think you can claw your way back into favor now that they're feeling generous again."

"You don't know anything about me," I said through gritted teeth.

"Oh, I know plenty," Valentina purred, leaning in until I could smell her expensive perfume, sweet and suffocating. "I know you used to follow them around like a lost pup, and everybody saw it. Alaric ignored you, Osric pitied you, and you still came running every single time." Her voice turned to pure syrup. "Tell me, sweetie, does pity still feel the same now that it's dressed up as attention?"

For a moment, the corridor seemed to tilt.

That old, familiar shame rose up my throat like bile, thick enough to choke on, and I could feel the fifteen-year-old inside me crumbling, ready to cry, ready to run, ready to apologize for taking up space.

Then something else rose up beneath it, something hot and steady that had been sleeping for ten years.

I was so tired of running.

I took one slow step toward her, close enough that she had to tilt her chin up to keep looking down her nose at me, and I watched her smile falter.

"Do you know what I find fascinating, Valentina?" I asked quietly, my voice so calm it surprised even me. "Ten years ago, you tripped a grieving fifteen-year-old down a flight of stairs and threw a ball at her head while she was bleeding on the floor, and you laughed about it."

"That was a joke—" she started, her jaw tightening.

"And ten years later," I continued, cutting her off without raising my voice, "I've built a career on three continents, and you're still standing in the exact same hallway, picking on the exact same girl, hoping it makes you feel tall." I let my gaze drift over her slowly, from her perfect hair to her expensive shoes. "So tell me, which one of us never left high school?"

The silence that followed was so sharp it could have cut glass.

Valentina's face went white, then red. Her eyes flashed with something ugly, and for one dangerous second, I saw her hand twitch at her side like she was seriously considering slapping me.

My heart was slamming against my ribs, but I didn't step back.

I didn't look away.

And then a low, menacing growl rolled down the corridor behind me, so deep it vibrated through the floorboards and straight up my spine.

It wasn't mine, and it definitely wasn't hers.