Chapter 8: The Blame Game

By morning, the story had already changed shape.

Wren heard it twice before she reached the well. A girl fetching water told her friend that trouble had followed Wren home from her own rejection ceremony. A boy stacking firewood said it louder, so she'd hear: that the border had never once been breached in his lifetime, not until she started sneaking around with the outsider.

"Funny how that works," Wren said, loud enough to carry. "A scout bleeds out on our land and somehow it's my fault."

Nobody answered her. Nobody ever did, to her face.

"I heard he tore through three of the watch before anyone touched him," someone else said, not quite quiet enough. "I heard the outsider only stepped in because she couldn't handle it herself."

Wren turned toward the voice. A younger wolf, barely past her first shift, went pale and busied herself with a water jug instead of finishing the thought. Behind her, two more wolves suddenly found the ground very interesting.

"Say the rest of it," Wren said. "Since you started."

"I didn't mean anything by it."

"You never do. None of you ever do."

She kept walking anyway. Near the training post, two older wolves stopped talking the second they saw her coming, which told her everything their silence was trying not to.

"Go on," Wren said. "I've heard worse today already."

Neither of them answered. She didn't wait for one.

Selene found her outside the smokehouse, dressed early, hair already perfect. "There you are. I've been so worried."

"Have you."

"People are saying terrible things." Selene's voice pitched soft, sisterly. "That you drew that thing here somehow. That ever since Kade rejected you, bad luck's been following you around like a shadow."

"And you're telling me this because you're worried, not because you enjoy it."

"I only think you should know what's being said." Selene reached out, brushed a strand of hair off Wren's shoulder, the touch light as a blade. "Before it gets worse."

"It's already gotten worse. You made sure of that last time."

"That's not fair."

"Isn't it?" Wren stepped back out of reach. "You show up every time I'm already down, dressed as concern, and somehow I end up smaller after every visit. Funny how that works too."

"I'm your sister."

"You keep saying that like it means something."

Something flickered behind Selene's eyes, there and gone. "I don't control what the pack thinks of you, Wren."

"No," Wren said. "You just make sure they keep thinking it."

"Believe whatever helps you sleep." Selene's smile stayed fixed, though something behind it had gone brittle, before she turned and walked off without another word.

Wren didn't get far before Rurik found her at the training grounds, three of his friends trailing behind him like he needed an audience for everything now.

"There she is," Rurik said. "Our resident monster hunter."

His friends laughed on cue, the way they always did, like they'd rehearsed it somewhere before finding her.

"Careful," Wren said. "Last time you got too close to me, you ended up on your back."

"Luck," Rurik said. "You got lucky once."

"Then come find out again."

He didn't move. None of them did. That, more than anything, told Wren something had shifted since the fight, whether Rurik wanted to admit it or not.

"Nobody's scared of you," Rurik said, but his friends had gone quiet in a way that argued otherwise.

"I didn't say scared. I said careful. There's a difference, and you're proving it right now."

"Whatever you did out there," one of his friends said, "it's not natural. Everyone's saying it."

"So now I'm unnatural instead of unwanted," Wren said. "Pick one story and stick with it."

"Maybe you're both," Rurik said, and his friends laughed, but it was thinner this time, less certain than it used to be.

"You could ask me instead of talking about me like I'm not standing here."

"Ask you what."

"Whatever you actually want to know. Instead of standing in a group whispering like children."

Rurik didn't have an answer for that, and his friends looked at him instead of at her, waiting for one. He didn't come any closer. She noticed that too.

They left eventually, throwing a few more comments over their shoulders that Wren let slide off her without answering. She was getting good at that. She hated how good she was getting at that.

Her mother was waiting when she got home, arms crossed in the doorway. "I heard what they're saying about you."

"Which part."

"That you brought this on us somehow. That Black Fang's interested in Ashmoor now because of you." Maren's voice was careful, testing. "Is any of it true?"

"Would it matter if it was?"

"Wren."

"I fought off a dying man who couldn't have hurt anyone by the time I got there," Wren said. "That's the whole truth. Everything after that is a story people tell because it's easier than admitting they don't understand what happened."

"I believe you," Maren said. "I just don't know how many others will."

"Neither do I. I stopped counting who believes me the day of the ceremony."

Maren didn't say anything else, just stepped aside to let her in, and Wren didn't go in. She wasn't ready for four walls yet, not with her skin still crawling from a morning of being talked about instead of talked to. She turned back toward the lodge instead, telling herself she just needed air.

She circled around the back of the lodge on her way past, meaning to avoid the worst of the gossip clustered near the well, and that was when she heard the Alpha's voice through the open shutters of the side room.

"...too great a risk, keeping her on the front line," he was saying. "Whatever happened out there, it's drawing attention we don't need. Black Fang, the Elders, all of it."

"She held her ground," Corwin's voice, cautious. "That counts for something."

"It counts for a great deal of talk is what it counts for. A dead scout on our land, and the one wolf standing closest to it is the same one the pack's already watching because of the rejection and the outsider both. That's not a coincidence anyone's going to let alone."

"So we bench her."

"Pull her from active rotation. Training only, supervised, nothing near the border. For her own safety." A beat. "She'll fight me on it. She fights everyone on everything now."

"Can you blame her?"

"No," the Alpha admitted. "But I don't have the luxury of caring whether she likes the decision."

"For what it's worth," Corwin said, "keeping her close to the border hasn't caused a single problem yet."

"Hasn't caused one. Doesn't mean it won't. I'd rather she resent me for a season than give the Elders one more thread to pull on." Papers shifted again, the Alpha's voice already moving on to the next matter, like the decision was already closed and simply waiting for someone else to deliver it.

Wren went still against the wall.

"And if she objects?"

"She won't get the choice," the Alpha said. "It's already decided."