Chapter 32: Under The Trees

Astrid

We tried to follow what we believed was the right trail back to camp, but the rain had only gotten heavier, drumming steady against the leaves overhead, and the forest looked nothing like it had an hour ago.

Xander checked our direction for the third time. "This should’ve taken us back."

I looked around at the unfamiliar trees. "You’re lost."

He looked offended. "I’m temporarily uncertain."

"You’re lost," Reed said flatly.

I laughed despite the rain soaking through my jacket.

We tried another route, but a fallen tree blocked the path, and the stream we’d been following had swollen well past its banks.

"We’re not crossing that," Reed said.

The rain made continuing unsafe, and Reed eventually spotted a rocky overhang further up the hill, just visible through the sheets of water coming down around us. We climbed toward it, Xander complaining the entire way about the academy’s definition of educational fun.

"Next year they should teach us indoor wolf life," he muttered.

"You’re a Lycan prince," I said. "I’m sure you’ll survive."

"That’s exactly what someone who wants me dead would say."

The mood lightened despite the cold, though once we reached the shelter, Reed switched immediately into practical mode, checking me over before either of us had even fully caught our breath.

"You’re soaked," he said.

"So are you."

"I’m not the one who fell down a hill."

I rolled my eyes, though I couldn’t argue with that.

Xander got to work building a fire using dry material tucked beneath the overhang, and within a few minutes he had one going, small but steady.

"You actually know how to do that?" I asked, impressed despite myself.

"I contain multitudes," he said, clearly proud of himself.

"You used that line before."

"Because it’s still true."

Reed handed me a dry piece of cloth without comment, pulling it from somewhere inside his jacket where he’d apparently kept it sheltered this whole time. I realized, taking it, that he’d been keeping it dry specifically for this, tucked somewhere it wouldn’t get soaked through with everything else.

I didn’t say anything about it. I just noticed.

Once we’d warmed up somewhat, the conversation turned easier, Xander recounting how miserable the wilderness program had been when he was younger, teasing Reed relentlessly about being the overly serious twin even as a child, the kind of story he’d clearly told a hundred times before but still found funny.

"He once corrected a professor’s map because the mountains were drawn two centimeters wrong," Xander said.

"They were wrong," Reed said, unbothered.

I laughed.

Then Xander turned to me. "What about you?"

"What about me?"

"What were you like as a kid?"

I hesitated, thinking of my mother, of the life I’d had before everything shattered apart in one terrible night.

"Quiet," I said finally.

Xander’s teasing dropped away. "You?"

"I wasn’t always this annoying."

"Debatable," Reed said, the corner of his mouth twitching.

I smiled, though something sad sat underneath it.

"Did you have anyone?" Reed asked quietly.

I looked at the fire. "My mother." I let the silence stretch before adding, "She was the only person who ever made me feel like I was enough."

He didn’t push for more. "Then she must have been important."

"She was," I said.

He didn’t ask any further questions. He just sat beside me, letting the silence hold whatever I hadn’t said, and that restraint mattered more than I could have explained.

Xander noticed the heaviness settling over us and quietly steered us elsewhere, launching into a ridiculous story about Reed falling into a pond during royal training as a child.

"That story is exaggerated," Reed said immediately.

"You were six."

"And you pushed me."

"Details."

I laughed, the heaviness breaking apart entirely.

Later, when I wasn’t paying close attention, Xander added another piece of wood to the fire, and then quietly shrugged out of his outer layer, setting it beside me.

"Put that on," he said.

"You’re going to freeze."

"I’m fine."

I realized he was doing exactly what Reed had been doing all evening, taking care of me without making it into something I had to acknowledge or thank him for.

We settled into the shelter properly after that, me sitting between them near the fire, the rain still hammering steadily against the rock overhead. For once, I didn’t feel the need to stay alert, to keep watching the edges of the light for danger.

I wasn’t thinking about escaping. I wasn’t thinking about the King. I wasn’t thinking about the whispers that followed me through the academy hallways.

I was simply sitting there. Safe.

That realization unsettled me more than it should have. I trusted them. Not completely, not enough to tell them the whole truth about who I was or where I’d come from, or the name I’d been born with before I ever set foot on this campus. But enough that if something went wrong, I knew exactly who I’d look for first.

Reed noticed me staring into the flames. "What are you thinking about?"

"Nothing," I said automatically.

"You say that often."

I smiled faintly. "Maybe I think too much."

"Maybe." A pause. "But you don’t have to think about everything tonight."

I looked at him. It was such a simple sentence, and yet it reached somewhere inside me I hadn’t realized was tired.

"Thank you," I said.

He nodded, no teasing, no follow-up questions, just quiet acceptance.

"I’m beginning to think I’m being excluded from this emotional moment," Xander announced.

I laughed. "You were literally sitting right there."

"Exactly. And nobody thanked me for the fire."

"Thank you, Xander," Reed said dryly.

"That sounded painful."

I laughed harder, the sound echoing softly against the rock overhead.

Eventually I lay down beneath the shelter, Xander still mumbling something about the academy’s terrible wilderness program, Reed telling him to sleep with the same flat patience he seemed to reserve entirely for his brother. The fire crackled low beside us, throwing soft orange light across the rock.

I closed my eyes.

For the first time in longer than I could remember, I wasn’t alone, and I let myself sit with a thought I wasn’t quite ready to say out loud.

Maybe being cared for didn’t make me weak after all.

Outside, the rain kept falling steadily through the trees.

And somewhere beyond the reach of our small fire, the forest stayed quiet, dark and dripping and patient, as if it were waiting for something none of us could yet name.

For now.