“The predator in you isn’t the problem,” she says after a moment, her tone softening in a way that feels less like a correction and more like a hand placed firmly on someone’s shoulder. “It’s a tool.” A long pause follows, filled only by the rustling of leaves overhead. “Everything you are now…” she continues, “… the speed, the strength, the instincts… those belong toyou.”
Charlie answers too quietly for me to make out the words.
Brynn responds immediately, “Stop trying to carve those pieces out of yourself,” she tells her. “You’re not broken.” Another breath of silence drifts through the trees. “You’re evolving.”
I bring the axe down again and don’t look toward the woods.
That conversation belongs to them.
Still, I feel the weight of it settle in my chest. Brynn has always been the one who could reach people where the rest of us couldn’t. Watching her work is like watching someone quietly reset the bones in a broken limb.
By late afternoon, the sunlight has turned warmer, slanting low through the trees and setting the clearing aglow in softamber light. Charlie moves differently now, the tension in her stride replaced by something sharper, more focused.
Talon’s leaning against the porch rail when Charlie tosses an empty water bottle toward the steps. His eyes track her movements for a moment before a slow grin spreads across his face.
I know that grin.
It’s the same one he used to get right before starting fights in the training yard.
“You’re fast,” he says.
Charlie stops pacing and looks at him. “So?”
Talon pushes away from the rail with the lazy confidence of someone who has never once considered the possibility of losing. “Race you.”
Charlie snorts like the suggestion is ridiculous, but the glint in her eyes betrays her. For the first time in days, the fire in her doesn’t look like something that’s about to burn her alive.
“No tricks,” Talon adds. “Just the trees to the ridge and back.”
Charlie is already moving before he finishes the sentence.
They burst into the woods together, two streaks of motion weaving through the trunks and underbrush. Talon runs like a storm, tearing through the forest, all long strides and reckless momentum, while Charlie moves with a sharper edge, her body slipping between obstacles with the fluid precision of a blade.
The first run ends too close to call.
The second doesn’t.
Charlie hits the clearing first, her boots skidding across the dirt as she spins back toward the trees just in time to watch Talon emerge seconds later. He slows to a stop, staring at her like he’s just witnessed gravity reverse itself.
“Well,” he says finally, breathing hard. “That’s fucking embarrassing.”
Charlie laughs, the sound hitting me harder than it should.
It’s bright, sudden, and alive in a way I wasn’t sure I’d hear again this week.
They spend the next several minutes pacing back and forth across the yard, arguing about technique and stride length while Talon insists she cheated and Charlie informs him that he runs like a drunk elk.
I lean on the handle of the axe and watch them, something quiet settling into place at the back of my mind.
Kade had taken the storm out of her head.
Brynn had shown her how to live with the predator.
And Talon had reminded her that the predator could still run.
The strange part isn’t that it worked.
The strange part is that none of us ever talked about it.
