Prompt: Wynter + angst
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"Hey!"
The voice comes from behind her while she's watching Bonzo lift one of the human girls up into the air (she stands tall and proud, one foot in his hands, and for a brief moment Wynter feels the urge to try it herself, just to see how it feels). She turns to find Lacey and Stacey standing behind her, joined at the hip as always. Their eyes are hungry, like sharks looking for fish to swallow, and they are not fixed on the flyer.
But she's being silly, thinking these girls she barely knows would be here to hurt her. It's the wild getting in her head again, that's what the others would say – nothing here is like the forest. Humans aren't wolves.
"Hi," she says, and fixes on her brightest smile, so that no doubt will flash across her face.
"You're Wynter, right?" Lacey smiles back, one strand of her hair twisting and untwisting around her finger. "I was just talking to Stacey and like, your buns are so cute."
"Oh," Wynter says and touches the white piece of her hair, tucked up in a ball atop her head like it is every day. "Thanks! My mum taught me how to do it when I was a pup. I could show you how if…you want…"
The cheerleaders share a look between them, all shifting eyes and grins that tug at their lips, barely concealed, and she trails off.
"Too much?" she asks, but their furrowed brows are nothing like Willa's withering stare, or Wyatt's wry acceptance of the things he cannot change. She withdraws anyway, hands held close to her chest like she's not sure what else to do with them.
"So you're joining cheer, huh?" Lacey asks instead, changing the subject before Wynter can make any more of a fool of herself.
"I think so," Wynter replies, trying to be cautious with her words. "I don't know much about it, but Addison says she can help me."
"Oh, yeah, Addison loves a project," Lacey says, and smiles with all her teeth. If she had a set of fangs, she'd almost be intimidating.
"She'll take anyone on the cheer team," Stacey adds, and the girls share a laugh.
"Are you going to try being a flyer?" Lacey asks.
"Maybe?" Wynter wrings her hands, looking from one to the other nervously, trying to gauge if this was the correct answer or not. They look unimpressed – maybe for once, she isn't giving enough. She takes a deep breath and presses on. "It would be so cool to be up in the air like that. It'd be like jumping out of the big tree into the river and-"
The girls share another look and her mouth snaps shut.
Lacey puts a sickly-sweet smile onto her face. "Well, good luck!" she says, and she sounds almost too cheery. "Even if you don't make the team, I'm sure you'll do great."
"Even if I…don't make the team?" Wynter is almost afraid to ask.
"Oh, yeah." Lacey waves a hand. "Cheer is really competitive, you know?"
"Yeah," Stacey agrees, nodding along with her. "Super competitive. Especially this year. There probably won't be spots for…slow learners…"
"Slow is probably the wrong way to put it," Lacey puts in, before Wynter can even react. "She just means, new people probably won't get on the team this year." She smiles, but it seems fake and plastic. Wynter shakes herself.
"Um…thanks," she says quietly, very unlike the tough werewolf she wants to be, and backs away slowly. "I'll keep…working on it…"
"You'll be great!" Lacey says one last time, and waves with just her fingers as Wynter turns away.
She tries to ignore the sound of giggling as she crosses the gym, running back to the other werewolves that had been brave enough to join cheer.
"Are you okay?" Wyatt asks as they walk home through the forest, dropping back to walk with her. The other wolves bound off at top speed, the older ones chasing the pups down the path and out into the wild beyond, quickly lost to the trees.
Wyatt stays. She's not sure if he's here as the pack's Beta, or as her friend.
"I'm okay," she assures him, and she tries to sound like her usual bubbly, cheerful self, tries to smile and look him right in the eye like she usually would, but it falls flat and miserable, stomped into the ground by their boots as they circle around an errant tree. Wyatt frowns.
"Are you sure?" he asks dubiously. "You've been kind of quiet all day."
She freezes, her feet stuttering to a halt. Her fingers pick incessantly at the fur on her wrist, the bit of rabbit skin she'd crafted into a bracelet one cold winter when she was a pup. Wyatt waits patiently. He's always patient, especially when he knows he can break her in under two minutes. It's why she prefers Willa and her hot impatience out of the two; at least with Willa, she can sometimes keep a secret.
"Am I dumb?" she blurts out, not thirty seconds later, and then curses herself for being so quick to fold under pressure.
Wyatt is taken aback. "What?" he says in surprise. "No, you're not dumb. Why would you think that?"
She looks down, scuffing the toe of her boot in the dirt. "Some of the girls said I wouldn't be on the cheer team," she tells him. "And…and I'm bad at maths, and those boys laughed at me yesterday because I brought the wrong books, and then Ward told me Willa's only friends with me because I agree to everything she says, and-"
"Wynter," he says and places a hand on her shoulder. All of a sudden, she realises she is babbling. Her mouth shuts with a snap – she wants to press her hands to her head, to wonder out loud why she said so much, so quickly, when she hadn't meant to say anything at all. She swallows down the urge to do anything at all.
"You're not stupid," he tells her, firm, like he is with the pups, patient in a way that Willa would not be, if it was Willa she accidentally told all of her secrets. "You can't do maths because the elders taught us to hunt and track instead of count and spell. And you're friends with Willa because she likes you, not…whatever Ward said."
"But…" She doesn't know why she argues, why her face screws up in frustration when he's only trying to make her feel better. "I make so many mistakes, and the others always laugh at me." She looks around at the trees, the forest – at home – like it might contain the answers to all her problems. Her eyes end up back at Wyatt, none the wiser for the journey. She sighs.
"Maybe I am dumb," she says dejectedly, trying to accept the notion on face value, and continues walking.
"That's just who you are, Wynter," Wyatt insists, falling into step beside her. "You don't have to be the smartest to be funny, or kind. And you're just as smart as everyone else in the den. You're way smarter than most of the humans at school."
She looks at him from out of the corner of her eye, trying to judge if he is being honest or just trying to make her feel better. She's no good at reading people, but she thinks he's speaking earnestly. "You really think that?" she asks just in case.
His face splits into a grin, the same wolfish expression he gives her when she finds him hunched over a fireplace making s'mores with the pups. "Would I lie to you, Wynter?" he asks, and she can't help the smile that creeps across her face as he says it.
"You would lie to me," she argues, but it's in jest. "You lie to me all the time."
"Yeah, but not about this." As he says it, a howl sounds from somewhere in the woods, a sharp sound of pain from a pup, a summons to the nearest responsible wolf. Wyatt's head turns towards it, already pinpointing the location, the distance he has to cover. "I'll see you back at the den?" he asks, and doesn't wait for her to say yes before he disappears into the woods.
Slowly, her hands fall back to her sides, and then find her pockets, her shoulders slumping forwards as she begins the walk home again alone.