Chapter 2 Invincible

Mira

The worst part of living with people who don't love you isn't the silence.

It's the politeness.

That sharp, brittle edge barely tolerates your existence.

The Caldwell house was a two-storey relic tucked between newer, flash homes. It looked like it had been nice once. Now it just felt tired-cracked paint, stiff windows and a front porch that groaned under your feet.

I walked through the door after classes, my headache blooming again, and I was instantly met with the scent of chicken stew.

Sia was on the couch, legs curled under her in perfect yoga pant indifference. She glanced at me once and turned her eyes back to her phone.

"Ohh," she said dryly, "look who survived another day of peasant school."

I ignored her; I was too tired for her usual routine.

Cassie and Lan were at the dining table pretending to study while gaming on their laptops.

Lan flicked his eyes up briefly.

"You've got paint on your shirt."

I looked down. A streak of gold shimmered across my sleeve. Leftover from the emergency design board, Professor Langston made me reprint during lunch.

"It's metallic", I answered, "it's supposed to be there."

He snorted like that somehow made it worse.

In the kitchen, my dad stirred the pot slowly, as if he were in a commercial about midlife crisis management. His salt-and-pepper hair was slicked back like always, his face as expressionless as ever.

"You're late," he said without turning.

"I had studio cleanup," I replied. "Langston kept me rehanging the mock-ups."

"I thought that was group work."

"It is."

He finally turned around, "So why are you the only one doing it?"

I paused "because no one else does it right".

It wasn't even a lie. I just didn't say the rest-that my professors let it happen. That I'd gotten used to being invisible. That even when I had ideas, they were stolen or ignored. That when I spoke up in critique, eyes rolled like I'd interrupted something more important than my own education.

He sighed. "You always make things more complicated than they need to be."

I blinked. "What does that even mean?"

"It means you need to stop playing the victim."

The words hit harder than I expected.

"I'm not..." I started but stopped.

What was even the point? Outsiders treat you according to how your parents keep you. But mine?

Every time I tried to explain how I felt, how I was treated like an unpaid intern in my own project, how I stayed hours after class cleaning up while the others got full credit-he acted like I was inventing problems just to complain.

To him, hard work was supposed to hurt.

And recognition? That's earned with smiles and obedience. Not with defiance and sensitivity.

"I'll be upstairs," I said instead, walking out before I cracked.

My room was the smallest in the house. It had been the storage closet before my father married Talia. Now it was my safe space.

Except it wasn't safe. Not really.

Not when the walls were thin enough to hear whispers. Not when Sia sometimes invited friends over just to joke about me from the next room.

Some days , it wasn't just whispers. They had the speaker turned in loud, music thumping through the wall, but everytime the beat dropped their voices slid through the cracks.

"She still sleeps in the broom closet," Sia said, and a chorus of laughter followed.

"Bet she's in there right now, sketching her little sad designs." Another voice skimmed in.

I sat frozen at my desk, fingered hovering over my sketch pad.

"Or maybe she's listening." Sia said her voice rising with mock drama

The girls shriked with laughter,

Then came a sound of footsteps- light at first then heavier- and the deliberate rattle of my doorknob.

"She locks it?" One of them asked.

"Hey, come out, we wanna show you something."

I didn't move.

Scared? They asked.

And they finally laughed their way back down the hall, music swallowing their retreat.

I exhaled. Just the permission to breathe.

And then that was when the mischievous changed- lower, bass heavy, like a slow heartbeat under the floor. I heard the shuffle of feets, a door closing, and a muffle of giggle.

Then came a sound of fabrics heating the floor, the soft slap of skin on skin, a male voice- Low, amused- murmuring something I couldn't make out.

Sia gasped sharply, turning into a high, breathy moan that carried through the wall as clearly as if she were standing beside me. "Turn," he said. The man answered with a guttural hum.

And the then the headboard began to thud against the wall - steady, rhythmic, harder each time.

Her moans stretched into long, shaky gasps. He said something filthy and she laughed, the sound breaking into a sharp cry as the pace picked up.

The mattress creaked under their weight, spring groaning in protest.

I could hear the wet sound of him moving into her, the slap of their body meeting over and over.

She wasn't trying to be quiet. If anything, her voice got louder - moaning his name, swearing, gasping, letting me know exactly what was happening.

Every noise drilled into me: the stutter in her breathing when he changed angles, the urgent rustle of sheets, the sharp smark of skin that made her yelp and then laughed helplessly.

The bed frames flamed against the wall so hard I felt the vibration through my desk.

And then - silence, except for the uneven rush of their breathing. A few seconds later, a low moan, slower now, stretched out into something satisfied and smug.

I sat there frozen, my palm damp, my face hot.

The silence afterwards was worse than the noise. It pressed in around me, heavy and deliberate , carrying the certainty that she knew that d heard every second - and that was the point.

My phone buzzed.

Langston [6:11 pm]:

"I need you to stay behind tomorrow and help fix the dimensional model. Group three was a mess. You're the most reliable."

Reliable.

That's what they called me when they didn't want to say "dormant".

I clenched my hand around the phone.

I wanted to scream. I wanted to throw the phone across the room, break the window, shift into whatever monster I knew lived under my skin and roar loud enough that every smug voice around me finally shut up.

But I couldn't; I didn't have that monster. I was not in contact with my wolf.

And I didn't.

Because Mira Caldwell didn't scream.

She stayed quiet.

She fixed what others ruined.

She didn't cry even when the migraine pressed so hard against her skull that her vision blurred.

I curled onto my bed and stared at the ceiling.

What if I'm not just tired? What if I'm changing?

What if all this - the migraines, the dreams, the pain in my blood - was a warning?

I blinked at the ceiling.

The moonlight had shifted through the window. It patched my sketch pad in silver.