Chapter Text
Packs are supposed to protect their own.
That’s what they say, anyway. That’s what the stories promise—the circle of bodies, the shared heat, the certainty that if you fall, someone will catch you. About alphas who stood at the front so no one else had to bleed first. That’s what every pup dreams of–but that’s not what everyone gets.
And that dream pack? Our pack liked to pretend it was one of those.
From the outside, Neil Hargrove’s territory looked strong. Big. Orderly. Clean lines, strict rules, obedience drilled in so deep it passed for loyalty. Other packs didn’t cross our borders. Humans kept their distance. Vampires wouldn’t step within a 100 mile radius of us. People whispered Neil’s name with respect, or fear, or both. But Neil led with fear. He called it order. He said it was strength.
Inside the den, it was quiet.
Not the good kind of quiet. The kind where everyone learns how to breathe without making a sound. The kind where you learn the exact creak of every floorboard and what mood it means when the alpha’s boots hit them too hard. The kind where you flinch before the blow comes, because it always does. I learned early that strength, in his mouth, meant silence—mine, mostly. It meant stillness. It meant taking what was given and thanking him for it with your head bowed and your teeth tucked away.
I learned to keep my eyes down before I learned to read. I learned my place early.
Before everything went wrong—before Susan, before Max, before the house filled up with shouting and rules and fear—there was my mom.
That was the time before everything went sharp-edged, when the house smelled like something warm. Like clean cotton and rain that had just finished falling. My mother used to hum while she cooked, soft and low, like she didn’t want to startle the world. Alice Creel smelled like warmth. Like rain-soaked clothes hung up to dry, like vanilla and something smoky underneath, like safety. When I was little, she used to press her forehead to mine and breathe with me when my chest felt too tight, when Neil’s voice thundered through the house and made the walls feel thinner.
She taught me how to run quietly, too—not away, not then. Just how to place my feet, how to listen. How to know where exits were without looking like you were planning to use them. How to run quietly through the woods. How to keep my steps light. How to listen to the land instead of fighting it. She told me that wolves weren’t meant to be alone. She cared, and she showed me how to care.
Then she was gone.
At first, Neil didn’t explode the way I expected him to. He went quiet. Too quiet. His scent changed, sharp with grief and rot, like something left out too long in the sun. Like a decaying animal. He stopped speaking to me unless he had to. When he did, his voice sounded scraped raw, like every word hurt to say.
That was when I started lying to myself.
He’s grieving, I told myself.
He doesn’t mean it.
He just needs time.
The first time he hit me after she died, it was sudden and confusing. I dropped a plate. It shattered on the kitchen floor, porcelain skidding like bones across tile. The sound was too loud in the silence she’d left behind.
Neil’s hand came out of nowhere.
I remember blinking at him from the floor, ears ringing, tasting blood, and thinking: Oh. This is new.
He didn’t apologize. He didn’t explain. He just stared down at me like he was deciding whether I was worth the air I was breathing. Clearly I wasn't.
Later, when the bruises bloomed purple and green across my ribs, I told myself it was an accident. That he didn’t know his own strength. That alphas hit harder when they’re hurting. That all those broken bottles, all those cuts, were just his grief.
The second time, I knew better—but I lied anyway. I’ve been lying for a long time.
After that, it became routine. Not every day. Neil was careful. He didn’t want the pack whispering. He didn’t want visible damage when others were around. He didn’t want them to judge. He waited until the house was empty, until the woods swallowed any sound I might make.
Sometimes it was fists. Sometimes it was dominance—his will crashing into mine until my knees buckled and my wolf whimpered under my skin. Sometimes it was words, sharp and precise, aimed to cut deeper than claws ever could.
“You're weak.”
“You're wrong.”
“You’re just like her.”
“Abomination.”
“Disgrace.”
“Faggot.”
I told myself it was grief. I told myself if I was patient, if I didn’t fight back, if I absorbed it quietly, he’d calm down. That one day he’d wake up and realize what he was doing.
I was wrong.
Susan came later. She was a beta, soft-spoken and careful, with eyes that slid away when Neil’s shadow passed over her. She tried. I think she did. But trying is a thin shield, and it cracks easy. She was a beta, quiet and careful, always watching Neil’s mood like prey watches a predator. For a while, things… softened. Not good. Never good. But quieter. Neil seemed distracted, focused on her, on building something new. The hits stopped, the late nights away ceased. The yelling dropped to mutters and slammed doors instead of fists.
For the first time in a long time I let myself hope.
When Susan got pregnant, Neil changed again. He became almost proud. Possessive in a different way. He talked about legacy, about heirs, about strength. Not having a another faggot child. For months, the house existed in a strange, fragile peace.
Then Max was born.
She was small. Loud. Furious about the world in the way only babies can be. I remember the first time I held her in my arms, her tiny fists curling around my fingers, her eyes barely open but already scanning, already daring. I couldn’t breathe for a second, not because I was afraid, but because I was in awe. She was real, fragile and fierce all at once, and she was mine to protect.
Something snapped in me the moment I looked at her. I knew instinctively, like some deep, primal part of me recognized her before my mind even could: I was her shield now. Nothing was going to touch her if I could stop it. Neil, the pack, the world—none of it mattered. She didn’t ask for it, she didn’t know what was coming, but I made a silent promise as I held her close: I would take every hit. I would bear every scream and bruise. I would die before she ever felt the weight of this pack like I had.
She cried, and the sound was sharp and perfect. My wolf inside me stirred, tense and protective, ready to pounce on anything that even looked like it might hurt her. And I realized then, holding her against my chest, that nothing else in the world had ever mattered more. This tiny red-headed girl, this fire in a swaddled body, was the reason I had survived all the years of abuse. She was the reason I would fight, run, and endure again.
Max didn’t just become my sister in that moment. She became my mission. My responsibility. My heart. Every instinct in me screamed at me to guard her, to teach her, to keep her safe from the shadows Neil had cast over our lives. I watched her chest rise and fall, tiny and fragile, and I swore to myself silently, I will never let you be broken. I will never let you feel what I’ve felt.
Even before she could walk, even before she could shift, I was already imagining the ways I would protect her—showing her how to hide, how to run, how to listen to the forest and the night. Every small noise Neil made, every tense shadow in the hallway, I was watching, calculating, anticipating. Max didn’t yet understand that I had taken on the role of her protector, but I did, and that bond formed instantly, unbreakable and raw.
And somehow, just holding her, I knew. I knew I would do everything in my power to give her the freedom and safety I had never had. No matter the cost.
We grew up fast.
By the time Max could walk, I was already teaching her how to run quietly, how to shift without making a sound, how to listen to the wind for approaching danger. She was small but fierce, stubborn as a tree in a storm, and it made me proud—and terrified—all at once. Neil’s anger never stopped. Some days, it was sharp and precise; others, it was a rolling storm we had to hide from. I became an extension of her safety, her shadow, her shield. I learned to take his wrath in ways that kept her invisible, untouched, learning which threats required immediate action and which I could absorb.
By the time Max was six and I was twelve, we had carved our own routines in the house. She knew the quiet signals I gave, the small tics that meant danger, the pattern of the rooms that were safe. I knew her moods like I knew the lay of the forest outside: when she was scared, when she was angry, when she needed encouragement, when she needed to fight. She laughed more than I expected a child could in a house like that, but I learned to cherish it like sunlight in the dark corners of our lives.
Our bond became a language of glances and gestures, silent communication that kept us alive. Even when Neil’s fists or dominance crashed down, even when Susan’s fearful whispers filled the gaps, we had each other. Max looked to me, trusted me, and I did not falter. She became my responsibility, my heartbeat outside of my own body, and it shaped every choice I made.
By the time I was sixteen and Max ten, we were a unit. I was stronger now, taller, faster, more aware, and my wolf had grown with me, fierce and sharp and protective. Max could shift confidently, her fur gleaming red in the moonlight, and she trusted me to guide her when instincts surged. We knew the boundaries of our home and the edges of Neil’s patience, and we counted the days until we could leave for good.
I realized we couldn’t stay the night Max stopped laughing.
It wasn’t dramatic. No shouting, no blood. Just the quiet way her shoulders went tight when Neil’s boots crossed the threshold. The way she stood behind me without thinking. I saw myself in her then—not the version I pretended to be, but the scared kid I used to be. And I knew.
I started planning without meaning to. Counting patrols. Watching the moon. Stashing food in places no one checked because no one thought I was smart enough to plan. I told Max only what she needed to know. Run when I say run. She nodded like she trusted me with her life. That trust weighed more than anything Neil had ever laid on my shoulders.
He sensed it, I think. Alphas like him always do. The last beating wasn’t worse than the others, just more deliberate. A reminder. I didn’t fight back. I let him believe he’d won. Inside, I was already gone.
We ran on a night the moon pulled hard at my bones. I shifted first, the change tearing through me like relief. Max followed, smaller, faster than she knew. The pack boundary burned as we crossed it, a line drawn in pain and fear and freedom all at once. I didn’t look back. I couldn’t. Running felt like fire in my lungs and blood in my mouth and something like hope I didn’t trust yet.
We didn’t run toward safety.
We ran away from him.
By the time the forest swallowed us whole, exhaustion set in heavy and final. The world narrowed to breath and heartbeat and the sound of Max’s paws keeping time with mine. When we finally fell, it was together, tangled in leaves and dark and the first quiet that didn’t feel like a threat.
That’s how they found us.
Not as strays. Not as lost kids.
Just two wolves who learned, too young and too well, how to run.