Chapter 2. Wolfless and Mute

Wren POV

I didn't sleep after that.

I locked the window, pushed my desk chair under the handle and sat on my bed with my back to the wall until the sky went gray.

I didn't answer the text.

When it was light enough to see, I made myself get up and look at the window properly.

The latch was old and stiff, painted over so many times it took both my thumbs to move it. On the inside of the frame, right under it, were four fresh pale scratches in the white paint. Thin. Parallel. Close together, like fingers.

I looked down at my hands.

There were flakes of white paint under my nails. My fingertips ached, the way they did after my bad weeks, when I woke up with the sheets torn.

I must have scraped them when I locked it, I told myself. When I checked it twice.

I didn't believe me either.

I thought about waking Tessa. I thought about it for a full hour.

Then I thought about her face when I'd come home two years ago, filthy and silent, and how she'd moved back home for a whole semester because of me. How she'd sat by my bed every night and never once asked what happened, because she was afraid of the answer.

I wasn't going to start my new life by making her afraid again.

So at seven I swallowed my vitamin with a glass of tap water, put on the most invisible sweater I owned and walked to my first class like a normal person.

Corvane University sat in a valley of pine trees so tall they made the old brick buildings look like toys. The noise came at me from every side, hundreds of voices, phones, skateboards, a coffee machine screaming three buildings away.

I put my headphones on and the world shrank to something I could survive.

My first class was Writing 101, in a room with twenty desks arranged in a circle so nobody could hide. The professor, a cheerful woman with reading glasses on a beaded chain, clapped her hands.

"Let's go around. Name, major, one fun fact."

I'd prepared for this. I'd typed it out the night before.

When it was my turn, I stood and held up my phone so she could read it, then turned it toward the circle.

Hi. I'm Wren Marlowe. Undeclared. I don't speak, but I can hear you just fine. Fun fact: I have read every book in my hometown library. Twice.

The professor smiled. "Wonderful. Thank you, Wren."

I sat down. My heart was pounding, but I'd done it.

Then, from across the circle, in a voice that wasn't even trying to be quiet: "Wait. Is she actually mute, or is that, like, a bit?"

A girl with honey-blond hair and a perfect manicure was leaning toward her friend. Madison something.

"Can she hear us?" the friend whispered back. Loudly.

"Blink twice if you can hear us, Wren."

Two people laughed. The professor had already moved on to the next student and didn't notice.

I looked at my desk.

I could hear them. I could hear Madison's gum. I could hear the boy beside me swallowing nervously and the professor's watch ticking and someone's heart three seats away beating too fast because she was next.

I could hear everything. That was the problem.

I didn't look up for the rest of class.

By noon, I'd learned that Madison was in three of my classes and that she'd decided I was her new favorite joke. In the hallway, she signed something at me that wasn't a real sign. Her friends howled.

I kept walking. I'd learned a long time ago that if you don't give people a reaction, they eventually find someone more fun.

Eventually.

I ate lunch alone under an oak tree at the far edge of the quad, with my headphones around my neck because the wind in the leaves was the only sound I actually liked.

That was when I heard him.

"Since freshman year, Dom. Four years I've been doing this with you."

I went still.

The voice came from the other side of the quad, at least sixty yards away, by the steps of the athletics building. I could just make out two figures. One big and broad, leaning on the railing. One taller, pacing.

Silas.

"Your girlfriend, fine," he said. "Tessa's easy. Tessa can take care of herself. Now I'm supposed to babysit the little sister too?"

"Keep it down," Dom muttered.

"She can't hear me from there."

I almost laughed. It came out as a breath.

"She's wolfless and mute," Silas went on, sharp and low. "What exactly am I protecting her from? A paper cut? A loud noise?"

"Silas."

"I've got preseason. I've got tryouts for the new guys. I've got my father on my back about everything else, and now I'm following a girl who can't even say thank you to the library and back."

Something inside me went cold and small.

Wolfless.

I didn't know what it meant. I'd never heard the word in my life. But I knew who he meant. There was exactly one mute little sister on this campus.

And he'd been told to follow me.

By who? Why?

My hands were shaking when I pulled out my phone and opened the message from last night. It sat there, alone. Lock your window. It's open.

I typed before I could stop myself.

ME: Who is this?

The reply came in less than ten seconds.

UNKNOWN: Someone keeping an eye on you.

I stared at it. Across the quad, Silas had stopped pacing. Dom was talking now, too low even for me. Students walked between us, and when they passed, both men were gone.

ME: That's exactly what a serial killer would say.

UNKNOWN: Serial killers don't tell you to lock your window.

ME: The considerate ones do.

A pause. Long enough that I thought I'd scared him off.

UNKNOWN: Did you lock it?

ME: Did YOU open it?

No answer.

I sat under the oak tree until my next class, my thumb hovering over the block button.

I didn't press it.

I told myself it was because blocking him wouldn't stop him from watching. That it was smarter to keep a door open and see who walked through.

That was true.

It wasn't the whole truth.

Madison found me again that afternoon, in the restroom outside the science building. She was fixing her lipstick. I was washing my hands. My phone was on the edge of the sink, the notes app open.

She picked it up before I could reach it.

"Oh my God," she said, scrolling. "She writes everything down. Look. 'Thank you for holding the door.' 'Where is room 204?' That's so sad. That's honestly so sad."

Her friend giggled.

I held out my hand.

Madison smiled and held the phone over the open sink. "Say please."

The water was still running.

For a second, the thing under my skin lifted its head. Heat climbed up the back of my neck, and I wanted, very badly and very clearly, to show her my teeth.

I swallowed it down. I always did.

Instead, I took a pen out of my bag, grabbed a paper towel and wrote in big, neat letters. Then I held it up.

At least when I'm quiet, nobody wishes I would stop.

Her friend snorted before she could help it.

Madison's face went red. She dropped my phone into the sink and walked out.

I fished it out. It still worked. I dried it on my sweater with hands that would not stop shaking, and I didn't cry until I got back to the apartment and locked my door.

That night, I dreamed of the room.

Concrete walls. A metal door with no handle on my side. The smell of iron and bleach. A light that never turned off.

And a man's voice in the dark, calm, almost gentle.

They'll look at you, and they'll see an animal. Nobody keeps an animal in the house, sweetheart.

I woke up choking on a scream that didn't come out. It never did.

The room was dark. The window was locked. The chair was still under the handle.

My phone glowed on the pillow next to me.

UNKNOWN: They won't bother you again.