*Kieran*
The first snowmelt came in a rush that smelled like rot and beginnings.
Water ran in thin, dark streams down the mountain gullies, cutting through the drifts, baring dead grass and old leaves. The river swelled, cracking ice, carrying chunks downstream like broken shields.
The pups went wild.
“Spring!” Edda shouted, flinging her arms out as she stood atop a melting snowbank. “Sort of! Kinda! The concept of spring!”
“It’s March,” Sage said dryly. “You have at least one more blizzard in you.”
“Blasphemy,” Edda said. “Don’t jinx it.”
Sage laughed.
The sound did things to me I wasn’t ready to examine.
We were at the lower meadow, a rare afternoon without immediate crisis. Mara had declared a “pack day” and threatened to hex anyone who brought work to the circle.
“Magic is not for your convenience,” she’d said. “It’s for survival. Right now, surviving means not letting fear eat us from the inside.”
So we played.
Pups chased each other through the slush.
Teens wrestled.
Adults half-shifted and rolled, shaking off months of tension in controlled bursts of chaos.
Sage stood with her boots half-submerged in mud, notebook forgotten in her pocket, eyes bright as she watched a group of adolescents practice shifting mid-stride.
“I should hate this,” she murmured under her breath as a lanky fifteen-year-old named Liam sprinted, leapt, and hit the ground as a wolf. “From a health and safety perspective.”
“You do,” I said, coming up beside her. “She’s just louder.”
She smiled.
Edda yelped as Rafe pelted her with a slush ball.
“You’re dead, you know that?” she shouted, lunging.
He shifted, fur ripping through his skin in a blink, and bolted, tail high, snow spraying under his paws.
“You live in a cartoon,” Sage said.
“Yes,” I agreed. “A violent one.”
She shook her head, but there was fondness in the motion.
“Is it always like this?” she asked. “This…lightness. In spring.”
“Some years,” I said. “Depends on who we lost in winter.”
Her smile dimmed.
“You didn’t…” She hesitated. “Did you lose many this time? Besides—”
“Levi wasn’t ours,” I said. “And Mara dragged him back from the edge.”
“She keeps saying ‘dragged’ like it was a bad thing,” Sage muttered. “He’s breathing.”
“At a cost,” I said.
“Is he…okay?” she asked. “Have you seen him since?”
I looked toward the northern ridge.
Levi’s scent hung there these days—fainter than Northridge’s main line, sour with confusion.
“He’s…alive,” I said. “Ronan’s keeping him close. Cassian…doesn’t know what to make of him yet. That scares me more than if he’d gone straight for the throat.”
“Because if he decides Levi’s an asset, he’ll use him,” she said quietly. “And if he decides he’s a liability…”
“He’ll do what my father did,” I said.
Her hand found mine.
Squeezed.
We stood like that for a moment, side by side, watching our respective worlds collide in the mud.
“Doc!” Jess’s voice cut across the meadow.
Sage turned.
Jess ran toward us, feet sliding on the wet ground, cheeks flushed from exertion and embarrassment in equal measure.
“Hey,” Sage said, smiling. “Did you fall in a puddle or is that a new fashion statement?”
Jess looked down at the streak of mud up the side of her jeans. “Tyler pushed me,” she said. “Said it would ‘build character.’”
“Tyler’s an ass,” Rafe called from where he’d flopped into the slush in wolf form.
Jess’s gaze skipped over him, not *seeing* him.
Not that way.
She’d been here half a dozen times now, helping Sage with small errands, listening to stories, leaving offerings at the bone tree.
She knew *something* was different about this valley.
But not what.
Yet.
“I, um.” She shifted, glancing between us. “I brought you something.”
She held out a folded piece of paper.
Sage took it.
Unfolded.
My eyes caught the header.
BRIDGER HIGH SCHOOL – CREATIVE WRITING ASSIGNMENT.
The title read: *The Wolves That Watch.*
“Oh,” Sage breathed.
Jess fidgeted.
“It’s just…for class,” she said quickly. “We had to write about a local legend. I picked…you. The tree. The…eyes. I changed your name,” she added in a rush. “Don’t worry. You’re ‘Dr. Raya Meadows’ now. Very original.”
Sage laughed softly. “Can I…?” she gestured to the page.
Jess nodded, flushing.
Sage read.
I read over her shoulder.
Jess’s words were…raw.
Awkward in places.
Poetic in others.
She wrote about the bone tree as if it were a lighthouse in a sea of snow. About wolves on ridges, eyes like coals. About a scientist whose boots left careful prints between worlds. About a valley that hummed when she closed her eyes at night.
She wrote about respect.
Not as something given.
As something earned.
“Jess,” Sage said, voice thick. “This is…amazing.”
Jess ducked her head. “It’s just a school thing,” she muttered. “Mr. Kline will probably circle all the run-on sentences and yell at me about commas.”
“Mr. Kline is an idiot,” Sage said.
Jess snorted. “He’s…fine.”
“Next time he circles something,” Sage said, “tell him you’re using comma splices for stylistic effect.”
Jess’s eyes widened. “I can *do* that?”
“Yes,” Sage said. “Weaponize grammar.”
I bit back a grin.
Jess glanced at me then, really seeing me for the first time.
Not as a shadow at Sage’s side.
As…someone sage had introduced as “Ryan” on one of the earlier visits.
“You’re…Ryan, right?” she asked.
“Yes,” I said.
“You, uh, lift things?” she offered lamely.
“Sometimes,” I said.
She nodded, satisfied with that amount of personal history.
“Tyler’s…recovering,” she said to Sage. “Arm’s still gross. Mom won’t let him near the stove. He keeps trying to milk it.”
“Sounds like him,” Sage said.
“He…hasn’t stopped talking about you,” Jess added. “About…the wolves. The bone tree. That night.”
Sage’s expression tightened. “Does he…remember seeing…anything unusual?”
Jess chewed her lip.
“He says he saw a big black wolf with a collar,” she said. “Then he saw…fire. And…you. He thinks maybe he hallucinated the rest.”
“The rest?” Sage asked gently.
Jess shivered.
“He said…for a second, he thought the wolf got back up,” she whispered. “That it looked at him. That its eyes weren’t…wolf eyes. But…human.”
My stomach clenched.
Sage’s hand tightened in mine.
“What does he *think* now?” Sage asked, carefully neutral.
“That he was in shock,” Jess said. “Everyone keeps telling him that. Mom. The rangers. The doctor. Kim said sometimes brains try to make sense of trauma in weird ways.”
“Kim’s not wrong,” Sage murmured.
Jess’s gaze flicked between us.
“You…don’t think I’m crazy, right?” she asked. “For…writing this. For…coming up here. For believing there’s…something.”
Her voice shrank at the end.
Sage stepped closer.
“No,” she said firmly. “I think you’re…paying attention. That’s rare. And brave.”
Jess’s shoulders loosened a fraction.
She smiled, quick and shy.
“Okay,” she said. “Cool. I, uh, gotta go before my mom texts me a hundred times. Thanks for…reading.”
“Thank *you*,” Sage said.
Jess jogged away, waving awkwardly.
We watched her go.
“That girl is going to save the world,” Sage said under her breath.
“Or burn it down,” I said.
“Same thing, some days,” she muttered.
She folded the essay carefully.
Slid it into her notebook.
I watched her do it.
“This is working,” I said.
She blinked. “What is?”
“Your stories,” I said. “Posters. Talks. Trees. Kids writing about wolves instead of…werewolves.”
She flinched slightly at the word.
“People are still scared,” she said. “Kurt’s still ranting. Town council still…counselling. But yeah. Jess exists. Tyler exists. That…matters.”
“It buys us time,” I said.
She nodded.
“Time,” she repeated. “Our favorite currency.”
She shivered.
The air had taken on a sharp edge as the sun dipped lower.
“Cold?” I asked.
“A little,” she said. “Mostly thinking about Levi and old oaths and how we’re using English assignments to divert the apocalypse.”
I snorted.
“You have a gift for drama,” I said.
“It’s not drama if it’s true,” she said.
She wasn’t wrong.
Again.
***
We found Levi at dusk.
Not on purpose.
We were running the northern ridge—Edda, Rafe, and I—our paws sinking into the softening snow, the world tinted blue with approaching night.
His scent hit like a bruise.
Wrong.
Old Northridge musk threaded with something…sharper. The cold metallic tang of Mara’s magic. The sour note of pain.
We slowed.
Slunk.
Followed the trail to a stand of firs, half-toppled in an old rockslide.
Levi lay in the hollow between two boulders, half-shifted.
His body was a mess of angles and wrongness.
His left arm was human.
His right, furred, paw-like, claws digging into the earth.
His legs were somewhere in between, bones jutting oddly under skin and fur.
His face…
He’d stopped halfway.
Muzzle shortened but not gone, jaw tugged, leaving his teeth too big for his mouth.
His eyes were human.
And wild.
They snapped to us as we stepped into the clearing.
He snarled.
“Stay back,” he rasped.
His voice was shredded.
Like his throat.
I shifted enough to answer.
Ribs popping.
Skin crawling.
“Levi,” I said.
He bared his jagged teeth.
“You did this,” he hissed. “You and your witch.”
“You were dying,” I said. “We pulled you out.”
“Should have let me go,” he spat. “Better the dark than…this.”
He gestured at his own body with the human hand.
It shook.
Pain.
Fear.
Rage.
I smelled all of it.
“We didn’t do this alone,” I said. “Your Alpha sent you to die in a human’s bullet line. He put Blue Tag’s collar on you. He set you on that creek.”
“He gave me a chance,” Levi snarled. “To prove myself. To bring glory.”
“And then?” I asked softly. “He left you.”
He flinched.
“Ronan tried,” he muttered. “After. To…bring me back. Cassian stopped him. Said…if I couldn’t shift out, I wasn’t…worth the trouble.”
My stomach twisted.
Ronan.
Trying.
Cassian.
Watching.
Levi’s gaze burned.
“He looks at me now like I’m…broken glass,” he said. “Interesting to look at. Dangerous to touch. Useless for drinking.”
“That’s not true,” Edda said, half-shifted, ears pricked.
He snorted.
“To *you,* maybe,” he said. “He sees a tool that snapped halfway. A warning to the rest of you. ‘Shift clean or die like Levi.’”
“Then don’t be his tool,” Rafe said roughly. “Be his ghost.”
Levi’s eyes flicked to him.
“What,” he croaked.
“Cassian wants to use your pain,” Rafe said. “Turn it into fear. Control. Show the pack what happens when they cross him. You could make him choke on it instead. Show them…he’s not infallible.”
Levi laughed.
It was an ugly, broken sound.
“You think they’ll listen to a…half-thing?” he rasped. “They look away when I move. Even my mother. Like it hurts to see.”
My chest ached.
Behind me, I felt Mara’s presence like a prickle on my spine.
She stepped out of the trees a moment later, human, bundled in her coat, eyes old and sad.
“Levi,” she said softly.
He recoiled.
“No,” he snarled. “You don’t get to…say my name. You did this. You pulled me through.”
“Yes,” she said. “I did.”
“Why?” he spat. “To prove you could? To fuck with Cassian? To balance some old ledger we never got to see?”
She met his gaze without flinching.
“Because a boy was dying in front of me,” she said. “And I know what it is to watch that and do nothing. I wouldn’t carry another on my bones.”
He glared.
“You didn’t save me,” he said. “You trapped me.”
“Yes,” she said quietly. “Between. For now.”
He snarled.
“You could make it…complete,” he said. “All the way wolf. Or all the way human.”
“Yes,” she said again.
“Why don’t you?” he demanded.
“Because you don’t know which one you want yet,” she said. “And if I choose for you, I become your father.”
He flinched like she’d struck him.
“We’re not our fathers,” she added. “We get to…choose differently.”
He slumped against the rock, breath coming ragged.
“What choice,” he muttered. “Cassian on one side, you on the other. Your valley humming under my skin like a fever. I can’t sleep. Can’t eat. Can’t *run.* I used to love running.”
“I know,” she said.
“No, you don’t,” he snarled. “You’re old. You’re stone. You stand still and make things move around you. You don’t know what it’s like to wake up every morning and not know what shape your hands will be.”
Mara’s mouth tightened.
“Yes,” she said softly. “I do.”
He blinked.
She rolled up her sleeve.
Exposed her forearm.
Halfway between her wrist and elbow, the skin shifted.
Not visibly.
But…wrong.
Like it wasn’t hers.
A patch of faintly shimmering flesh, shot through with hairless lines.
I’d seen it before.
I’d never asked.
“This is what happens when you push,” she said. “When you try to be more than you are. Or less. I tried to hold someone between life and death once. Longer than I should have. They tore. I tore. We both…scarred.”
Levi stared.
“I don’t…understand,” he whispered.
“You will,” she said. “Or you won’t. Either way, you’re still here. That pisses Cassian off. That alone makes me glad I pulled you.”
He barked a short, ragged laugh.
“You’re all insane,” he muttered.
“Yes,” Rafe said. “It’s a theme.”
Levi’s gaze slid to me.
“To you,” he said. “What am I.”
“A reminder,” I said. “Of what happens when Alphas stop listening. Of what old magic can do when we ask too much. Of what *we* can do when we refuse to let Cassian choose who lives and who dies.”
He snorted.
“You sound like my grandfather,” he said. “Before Cassian ate him.”
My fur bristled.
“Is that literally?” Edda whispered to Rafe.
“Not…fully,” he muttered back.
Levi closed his eyes.
“I don’t…want to be your symbol,” he said. “Or his. I just want to…run.”
“Then run,” I said quietly.
He opened his eyes.
“I can’t,” he said. “Not like this.”
“Not alone,” Mara corrected. “Not yet. Your body remembers both shapes. It needs…help. Training. Patience.”
“You offering to be my…coach?” he scoffed.
“Yes,” she said simply.
Silence fell.
He stared at her.
At me.
At the trees.
“I can’t leave,” he whispered. “Cassian will smell it. He bound our scents. Made us run circles until our paws bled. Said if I so much as *look* toward your side of the valley, he’d—”
“Kill you,” I finished.
“Yes,” Levi said.
Mara shrugged. “He might anyway.”
“That’s not comforting,” he snapped.
“It’s honest,” she said. “You die there, you die on your knees. You die here, you die on your feet. Or you live. On your own terms. Those are the choices.”
He bared his uneven teeth.
“I hate your choices,” he said.
“Me too,” she said. “Pick one anyway.”
He laughed, a short, broken sound.
“Ronan will kill me,” he whispered. “For…defecting. For betraying. For choosing you.”
“Ronan will follow you,” Edda said unexpectedly.
We all looked at her.
She shrugged.
“What?” she said. “He loves you. Even if he’s an ass about it.”
Levi swallowed.
“He’s Cassian’s right hand,” he said. “He won’t—”
“He tried to save you,” I said quietly. “At the creek. He fought Cassian’s call. We saw it in his scent. He didn’t want to leave you there.”
Levi’s eyes shone.
He looked away.
“I can’t,” he said again, but the word wobbled.
“You can,” Mara said. “You just might die doing it.”
He stared at her.
Then, slowly, he pushed himself more upright, wincing as joints protested.
“Fuck you,” he said.
She smiled faintly.
“You’re not my type,” she said.
He laughed.
A little less broken.
“Fine,” he spat. “Fine. If I’m going to be half a ghost, I might as well haunt someone I actually like.”
He looked at me.
At Mara.
At the valley beyond.
“I’ll come,” he said. “When he’s not looking. When the moon is…thin. If he catches me, I’ll say…you dragged me. Took me. Stole me.”
“We won’t drag you,” I said. “We’ll walk beside you. That’s different.”
He snorted.
“Semantics,” he muttered.
“Stories,” Mara corrected.
He took a breath.
“You tell *her,*” he said, jerking his head toward the heart of our territory, where Sage’s scent hovered faintly on the wind. “The human. That I’m not doing this for her. Or her…project. Or her pretty tree. I’m doing it because I’m tired of being…half. And because I want to make Cassian choke.”
“I’ll tell her,” I said.
He nodded once.
Then curled back into his hollow.
“We’ll be back,” Mara said. “Soon.”
“Later,” he muttered.
The word made something twist under my ribs.
We left him there, between shapes and choices, the valley humming under him like a live wire.
As we slipped back through the trees, I thought of Sage, standing in the meadow, watching pups splash in meltwater, Jess’s essay folded in her pocket.
We’d pulled one boy from death.
We were about to pull another from a different kind of edge.
The valley was changing.
Whether it liked it or not.
***