From the very first week of high school, Mari and I had been locked in a battle of wills. Snide comments in the hallway, passive-aggressive jabs during practice, heated arguments that made our teammates roll their eyes and teachers groan. Mari was sharp-tongued, proud, and annoyingly confident. Any interaction between the two of us was bound to spiral into a clash of egos. It didn’t matter the situation. Neither of us ever backed down.

Even now, stranded in the remote wilderness after the crash, nothing had changed. While some of them had begun to crack or grow closer under the weight of survival, the tension between us only grew tighter. Mari and I turned every shared task into a silent competition. But beneath the endless conflict, something else had started to fester. Something neither of us wanted to name. A glance held too long. A silence too heavy. A flare of anger that had no real excuse.

Mari, of course, had her own secrets. Once a month, like clockwork, Mari disappeared from camp under the excuse of extended scouting trips. Most people stopped questioning it. She thought she was doing well hiding it. Until that one night, when she turned around in the woods and saw me standing there, frozen, watching Mari’s transformation unfold with wide, horrified eyes.

Mari staggered forward, half-human, half-wolf, breath fogging in the frigid air. Her muscles shook with the effort of resisting the change, her voice frayed and low. “What the hell are you doing out here?” she growled, eyes flickering gold in the dark. Her tone consumed by panic and exhaustion. “You weren’t supposed to see this. No one was.” She tried to steady herself, claws digging into frozen earth. “You can’t tell anyone.” Her voice broke on the last word, and for the first time in all the years we’d known each other, Mari looked truly vulnerable. “Please.”