*Vanessa*“I can’t believe you were ballsy enough to actually ask him that!” Amara’s eyes shine with excitement. She didn’t ask immediately about what happened, but her curiosity was obvious enough to read into her body language, and for some reason, I was actually looking forward to telling her once Shawn left. I shake my head in embarrassment, blowing off her praise. “I really wasn’t.”“Oh, come on. You’re a stranger at the complete mercy of a pack you don’t know, and yet you just asserted yourself to their Alpha. That takes guts. I don’t think I would’ve been able to do that.” She peels back one of my bandages and I grit against the pain.She smiles apologetically at me before her features return to their usual focused expression. I brave a look toward the wound on my arm and the sight turns my stomach. “You’re one to talk about being brave,” I say, laughing shakily. “I can’t imagine doing what you do and seeing the kind of injuries you see on a near
*Shawn*Vanessa’s determination threw me for a loop. I’d put her on the spot, essentially demanding she either admit to being unable to complete the trial or to lie … but she did neither. Instead, she accepted it with a conviction I would never have expected from someone who was dragged into this compound half-dead a week ago. It wasn’t just that she agreed to do what would be an impossible task for most people. Even I am struggling to come up with a way to compensate for our lack of numbers in a way that can allow us to both hunt and protect the pack. I could tell that she doubted herself, for just a moment there. But it was the way she seemed to push through all of that and look me in the eye to tell me that she would do it. That was what shocked me.I wasn’t being dishonest when I said that I believed she could handle it. But still, seeing the change happen right in front of me where she just snapped into that focus, was unexpected. “Hello? Again? M
*Vanessa*I can’t say that I’m too pleased with having a new babysitter.Granted, I wasn’t expecting Shawn to give me free rein to move around the compound wherever I liked even while completing this challenge of his, but I definitely wasn’t super thrilled about my new warden being Aaron. But even the slight anxiety I feel about having him watch over me with his hawklike stare can’t dampen the excitement I feel. And last night, when I fell asleep still thinking about Shawn’s compliments, I had the best rest I’ve had in ages. Against all expectations, I was beginning to find my footing. The next morning though, when I get ready to leave the infirmary and meet Aaron at the territory entrance, I remind myself that I’ve already come a lot further than I thought I would in a strange pack.Having been pleased with her final assessment of me, Amara gives me a sympathetic look as she sends me on my way.“Just a heads up, don’t let Aaron intimidate you. His bark
*Vanessa*The next day is set up similarly to the one before. A tour around the compound revisiting all the groups I did before, only this time I'm supposed to be joining in a meeting to discuss the solutions I’d come up with at each station. I worked well into the night, trying to streamline as much of their current systems as I could, but it was daunting. Not the challenge in coming up with solutions itself —I was finding that to be the easier bit. No, it was figuring out how I was going to aim for improvement without overstepping my boundaries or giving Ashborne any more reason to suspect me. If Shawn thought he wasn’t able to change things as he wanted without the pack misreading his intentions, I wasn’t sure where my confidence was supposed to come from. But this is the only choice I have. I have to make it work.Aaron meets me at the same spot we did yesterday morning, his face no happier to see me than it was then. But—and it’s a very cautious ‘but’—I
*Vanessa*I’m running faster than I’ve ever run before. My feet pound into the ground beneath me with every step, right into the forest floor, sinking half an inch into the hardened mud before shooting out and propelling me forward once more. My lungs feel like they’re going to burst and sweat drips down my neck and back, cooling rapidly in the frosty air. Behind me, I hear the shouts coming up in the familiar voices of my pack. They scream obscenities at me as they chase me, the promise of bloodshed thick in their tone. As though I’m prey or a foreign threat they’re driving out of their territory and not one of their own. Tears are falling down my face, wetting my cheeks, and dripping into my mouth until it's filled with salt. There’s no moon above. The only light comes from the glowing yellow eyes of my pursuers, incomprehensibly bright enough to dimly light the path ahead of me, which terrifies me because it means they’re drawing closer.
*Vanessa*“Alright, listen up. I want you all to pair off in groups of two, with one shifter being the medic and the other the patient. I’ll go through the medical protocol for various hunting-related injuries and I want you guys to simulate how you’ll go about addressing the wounds with the kits I provided.” Amara’s voice is laced with authority, and when I take a look at the dozen shifters before us, I can see the deference in their faces. It gives me an odd sense of pride. Amara and I had spent the rest of the night going through ways to improve Ashborne’s medical system. She listened to me, asking questions, making notes of the answers, and even offering some suggestions of her own. It was strangely validating, to be taken seriously. Like Aaron, she let me introduce all of the new ideas to the shifters first before she went into detail implementing them. I could tell that they couldn’t see the point behind the small first-aid sessions I’d suggested and
*Vanessa*“I told you it would take around two months. I got it almost to the day,” Amara says triumphantly, removing the last stitch from my arm. “This isn’t permission to lose your mind and go cliff-diving or anything like that though, got it?”I flutter my eyelashes at her innocently. “Why not? You’re such an excellent medic, I feel fully confident that I could do anything and know that you’ll patch me up.”“Ha, ha,” Amara adds sarcastically. “I can promise you that if you waltz in here with any stupidity-induced injuries I will not raise so much as a finger. You’ll have to find another medic.”“And I thought we were becoming friends,” I note, hopping off the bed and stretching.“I have standards even for my friends,” Amara replies, packing the equipment she’d been using back into the kit and beginning to tidy up. I smile, enjoying the feelings of comfort and familiarity her friendship brings me. The two months since the attack flew past in the blink o
*Shawn*She looked nervous when I asked her to dinner, like she still wasn’t sure whether or not she could trust me. I guess I can’t blame her. It may have been two months since she first came here, but I know that even without any of the details, whatever reasons she has for not being able to return to her old pack must’ve wrecked her faith in people. It pains me to think that she has a reason to feel that way, and even more so when she downplays her skills. Over the past few weeks, she’s dismissed most of the compliments she’s been given by me, or the other occasional shifters. But I’ve watched her grow exponentially even in this last month alone. I’ve memorized the look on her face when she’s really concentrating on something, the way she wrinkles her nose slightly and constantly tucks her hair behind her ear, even when it’s perfectly neat. Or the way she lights up when she finally manages to come up with a solution to a problem that’s been i