Whispers

FENRIR

"...We talked about this!" Vidar's gaze blazed. "Theodore won't guide Fenrir! I won't let it."

"It's not *guide*... it's just being his doctor."

"Same fucking thing, Alexei! You're putting Theodore in danger. Fenrir is crazy in the head! You know what he can—"

"Vidar... let Theodore make his decision."

I was back in the glass room, the one so thick I wasn't supposed to hear their conversations, the one I had knocked down when the whispers became overwhelming. But the vibration of their voices was too loud, his silence unsettling.

*Princey.*

Standing between them, he reached pretty fingers up and pushed the glasses to the bridge of his nose, a habit he had cultivated when he was nervous. I felt the air escape my lungs.

My princey.

I don't remember anything before the Beta's family found me. Just flashes—of mountains, the smell of ice, the sound of a woman humming, then… nothing.

Darkness. It was always dark.

Not just the absence of light, but the kind of darkness that claws at your chest, dragging you deeper into a pit you can't climb out of. I'd stopped fighting it years ago. Stopped resisting the voices.

Too young to understand, too broken to care. The Beta and his wife tried to make me feel at home, but how could I when the darkness followed me everywhere?

I didn't talk much. The other kids played games, roughhousing in the woods, chasing each other under the full moon, but I stayed away. The darkness didn't let me play. It didn't let me be like them.

Vidar was the only one who could stand to be around me. Maybe because he felt some of the same darkness—just not as strong. He was there when we were little, in everything. He never feared what lurked inside him the way I did.

Then one day, when I was nine, everything changed.

I saw *him*.

From the first look at him through my window, there was a crack in my darkness, and at the first whiff of him, the whispers went silent.

I had thought to avoid him, to stay away from the calming effect he had on me, but then Vidar led me to his room one day. Of course, his new brother had to see the one in the pack that was just like him.

"Can he speak?" Princey muttered, staring at me from behind his clear glasses after I had gawked at him for two minutes without saying a word.

Vidar nudged me, and I grunted. "You're weirding my brother out," he muttered.

"Sorry." I winced, trying hard not to inhale too much of him.

But then, he touched me, ruffling my hair while smiling. "That's alright, Fenrir. You can come in here anytime you want."

In that moment, the shadows evaporated. The weight I had carried since I could remember—the anger that had caused me to accidentally knock out my best friend's tooth during a mock fight which we were still keeping a secret—disappeared.

"Just be quiet when you see him working," Vidar whispered so loud we all heard.

The human laughed, and the organ in my chest exploded.

From that day on, I'd always find my way into his room. I'd sit quietly in a corner, watching him work. I didn't say much. I didn't need to. It was enough just being near him.

The whispers—the loud whispers—stayed quiet. The darkness stayed away.

Vidar used to tease me about it, "What's with you and *Princey*, huh?" he'd joke, punching my arm. "You've got a crush or something? Well he's mine so back off."

As we got older, it got harder to stay close to him. Vidar grew stronger, faster, more like his father every day. And me? I stayed the same. Small, weak, human. At least, that's what I thought.

But the shadows were always there, lurking, waiting for their chance to come out and fulfill everything they were made for. And when I turned eighteen, the night he left for the academy, they finally did.

***

"Theodore." Vidar's voice broke through my thoughts. "Tell him you won't do it."

I grunted at the white walls. Ah, Vidar. After the night Theodore left, his face looked even more wreckable.

"Make him stay!" the whispers probed. "Take him somewhere secluded so he never leaves again! Fenrir! MAKE. HIM. STAY."

I clenched my fists. That option kept looking like the only way out. Was he afraid of seeing what I could do, even when restrained? Even when dosed with enough suppressants to kill a whole army?

Princey massaged his temples, the weight of three pairs of eyes on him. Then, leaving them, he turned and walked towards the glass walls separating us.

If only he knew that wasn't enough.

He looked at me the same way he had when I crashed through the walls of the dungeon. Unsure, uncertain, but not scared. I knew he was; he just hid it so well.

Like he had hidden the fact that he was spooked by me all those years.

And then he sighed. "I'll stay. But only for a short while. But first, I'll have to leave for the academy for a few days." He reached for his glasses again but clenched his fist midway.

The voices in my head went quiet. He was lying—I could tell.

Vidar looked like he had just been hit with the worst kind of betrayal. With one more hurt look at Theodore's back, he stormed out of the lab.

Alexei followed after him, calling out his name.

But he stayed—my Princey. Even when I rose from the bed, taking a few steps to the wall between us, he didn't move an inch.

Was it because he thought the glass was safe? I wished I could read his thoughts. I wasn't sure I wanted him to read mine.

His eyes trailed down the tattoos on my chest, down to the scars on my shoulders, and up to my pupils, especially the brownish-red ones—the ones that became flames when I lost control.

Then he pulled back. Away from me, and maybe out of the Pack house once he got out of the gates.

Where was he really going?

Wherever it was, he better come back quick, for once again, the darkness had begun to creep in, and the voices were growing loud.