Chapter Text
A designation tells us how your body works. It tells us nothing about your heart.
Shane first caught sight of the newcomers a few weeks after they arrived.
News of the Rozanov siblings had spread quickly through the village, and ever since their arrival, a steady stream of neighbors had wandered over to offer condolences or introduce themselves.
The people of Mir (мир) were a peaceful group, their pack known to all as a sanctuary for those fleeing violence. They welcomed wolves of every second gender without prejudice. Alphas worked beside omegas, betas sat on the council of elders, and no one was given more respect simply because of the designation they were born with. An elder’s authority was earned through years of wisdom rather than designation.
Despite forgoing dated traditions, a designation still spoke volumes about a wolf’s character and genetic tendencies. Every wolf carried a signature in their pheromones the way they carried an expression on their face. But it was treated the way most people treated weather forecasts: useful information, nothing more.
The Mir wolves were content with the land they possessed and never felt the pull to claim more. Greed, their elders often said, was mankind’s greatest weakness. The moment a wolf believed he deserved more than his neighbor, peace became impossible.
But that didn’t mean they were weak.
Neighboring packs knew better than to bring their savagery to Mir’s borders. Years of hard-earned victories had taught everyone that Mir pack would never start a fight, but they would end one. It was that respect that had turned their home into something of a “safe zone,” a place where refugees of every shape and size could start again.
Wolves escaped neighboring packs where unpresented children were already promised to political mates, where omegas were hidden away during heats, and alphas were measured by degrees of conquest. In their eyes, Mir was a safe haven.
It was considered impolite to comment on it outright, but everyone noticed how refugees carried their old territory in their scents for months after arrival, woodsmoke and unfamiliar soil, and whatever herbs their home pack had favored. It faded eventually. But for now, the Rozanov siblings smelled like a place that no longer existed.
Their homeland had been reduced to ash after a brutal raid by pillaging alphas, the kind of pack that had built its entire hierarchy on dominance. By the time the smoke cleared, little remained. Among the handful of survivors were seven-year-old Ilya Rozanov and his eighteen year-old sister Svetlana.
The journey to Mir had taken weeks, their tracks covered by mud and rain to hide Svetlana distressed pheromones from pillagers and thieves who tracked frightened wolves the way hunters tracked wounded game. By the time they arrived, exhausted and half-starved, they wanted nothing more than somewhere they could finally stop running.
Fortunately, they were greeted with open arms.
Shane stood on the edge of the fence surrounding the communal square, balancing carefully as he peered over the top. He was curious about the newcomers, and wanted to take a look.
The boy everyone had been talking about, Ilya Rozanov, sat quietly on a weathered log while one of the pack elders explained the work he had been assigned.
Every member of Mir contributed to the town. Even children as young as six were given small responsibilities, partly to help the community, partly to discover what suited them. Those who found something they enjoyed apprenticed beneath experienced craftsmen.
No one expected the younger ones to master a trade overnight, but they were expected to take the work seriously.
From where he stood, Shane couldn’t tell whether Ilya was excited, nervous, or completely indifferent. His expression barely changed as the elder spoke. Word around the pack was that he rarely smiled and kept almost entirely to himself.
It wasn’t a surprise. As soon as the young wolf got settled, the elders had asked him to surrender his family name.
Legacy surnames weren’t uncommon in the pack, but they were careful not to appear affiliated with neighboring political factions. The council didn’t want anyone mistaking Ilya for a loose thread of a rival territory especially when peace with the surrounding packs was already a fragile thing. Rather than take on a new surname, Ilya had simply gone without.
Just Ilya.
Shane thought that was sad. Unfair, even.
Being a Hollander was woven into every part of who he was. His family had held the title of village herbalists for three generations, their name stitched into half the salve jars in town. He couldn’t imagine having to cut a piece of himself like that. Especially after losing his birth-pack and his home.
Like everyone else in town, Ilya was wearing the pack's work uniform: a simple brown tunic gathered at the waist with a black leather belt. On most wolves, it looked effortless and fit like a second skin.
On Ilya, it looked borrowed, as if no matter how carefully the tailors had taken his measurements, the fabric still hadn’t figured out how to belong to him.
The image stayed with Shane the whole walk home.
He’d meant to go over and introduce himself, maybe even welcome the newcomer properly. Instead, all he carried with him was a quiet ache that returned every time he pictured Ilya’s face.
--
The next day, Shane wandered through Mir’s bustling market district, weaving between merchants calling out their wares. The air here was rich with scent layered on scent: cinnamon, roasted meats, crushed florals, the mineral tang of fresh iron. He passed a textile stall where an omega merchant pheromones turned sour with irritation over a stubborn customer.
Travelers often returned from distant lands with foreign trinkets and odd little treasures to sell. Shane loved picking through them. Looking at objects from places he’d never seen made him feel like he’d traveled farther than the borders of Mir, even though he’d never left home himself.
He was about halfway past one of the stalls when a single word caught his eye.
Rozanov.
He stopped so abruptly someone nearly walked into his back.
Doubling back, he leaned over the merchant’s table for a closer look. Nestled between tarnished silver and cracked leather goods was a worn little book with faded lettering pressed into the cover.
A Study of Rozanov's Culture and Customs.
Ilya’s face flashed through his mind — that distant expression and those lonely eyes that never seemed to settle anywhere.
Shane found himself already flipping through its pages. It appeared to be the journal of a traveling scholar who had spent several years living among the Rozanov wolves, recording everything from their traditions and festivals to the smallest everyday customs outsiders rarely noticed. It was a window into the world Ilya had lost.
“Sir, how much is this?”
The merchant glanced up, eyes dropping briefly to the book in Shane’s hands.
“Two shillings,” he said, his voice gruff. He barely looked away from the unsold goods cluttering his table. Business had clearly been slow, and he wasn’t in the mood to haggle with a pup.
Two shillings wasn’t an impossible sum, but for a seven-year-old, it was a month’s worth of allowance gone in one breath. Shane pressed his lips together, silently doing the math. Fewer honey-cakes for a while, that was all. And definitely no shiny glass marbles he’d been eyeing the next stall over.
With a heavy sigh, he dug through his satchel until his fingers found two worn coins. He had no idea if he would actually find anything useful in the book. Maybe there wouldn’t be anything useful at all. But he knew that if he didn’t try, the heavy weight in his chest would only grow heavier.
An hour later, after combing through nearly every page, Shane finally found what he was looking for. It was a small six-sided token engraved with the Rozanov crest. According to the book, the empty space beneath the crest was traditionally filled with a symbol chosen by the person giving it away. Each symbol carried a different wish for its recipient.
A clover for luck. A heart for love. A rising sun for hope.
A footnote caught Shane’s eye. Among bonded adults, the scholar writes, this token was sometimes exchanged as a courting gift. Among children and family though, it was a heartfelt wish.
Shane rested his chin in his hands, turning the options over in his mind. What did he want for Ilya? Wealth? Success? He sat at his desk for a long while, candlelight flickering across his thoughtful frown before the answer finally came to him. He clapped his hands together.
Happiness. That was it. He just wanted Ilya to be happy.
Once the idea took hold, there was no changing his mind. The elders often joked that Shane possessed a stubborn streak a mile wide. Once he decided on something, the entire village could tell him otherwise and he’d still do what he wanted.
“Mom!” Shane called through the house. “Can you make something for me? Please?” It took some convincing to win his mother over. After a few minutes of back-and-forth, Shane finally admitted the truth: it was for Ilya, something to remind him of home while he adjusted to life here. His mother’s expression softened at those words. She smiled, ruffled his hair, and quietly reached for her sewing basket without another word.
hearth flame— May you always have warmth to return to
Shane was thrilled to find that the finished token looked almost identical to the illustration in the book. Etched into the fabric was a small hearth flame, steady and contained, like a fire carefully kept alive inside a home. Flames like this, as they book stated, were said to symbolize happiness rooted in warmth, safety, and belonging.
Shane admired it all morning.
Unfortunately, his confidence evaporated like smoke the closer he came to the Rozanov's cabin. What if Ilya wasn’t home? Should he just come back another time? What if receiving a gift from a stranger was considered weird?
He needn’t have worried, or perhaps he should have worried more. Because Ilya stepped out of the cabin door just as Shane approached with the same unreadable expression he’d worn every day since arriving. His eyes landed on Shane, who must have looked exactly like a sailor hopelessly lost at sea.
“Can I help you?”
Shane startled a little at the sound of his voice. There was a faint accent there that somehow made his already serious face more striking.
“Hi, I’m Shane Hollander,” he said, holding out his hand. Ilya eyed it warily before cautiously taking it. “I wanted to welcome you to the pack.”
“Yes. Thank you,” Ilya said, the words coming out quickly, before Ilya’s gaze drifted away again. Shane couldn’t really blame him. Half the town probably had wandered over these past few weeks, most likely sniffing curiously at his scent. It must’ve been tiring to repeat the same rote words every single day.
“How are you liking it so far?” Shane asked, grasping for anything to cut through the awkward quiet.
“Yes,” Ilya said again, barely glancing his way. Shane shifted his weight, unsure what to do with that. It wasn’t really an answer. For a second he considered just leaving, gift and all.
First impressions weren’t exactly working in his favor.
But Shane Hollander had never been particularly good at giving up.
“I wanted to give you something.” he said in a rush, already digging through his pockets for the small trinket. “As a welcome gift.”
When he managed to get a hold of it, his heart thumping nervously against his chest, he handed it over to Ilya.
“It’s not much,” he admitted. “But I hope you like it.”
For a long moment, neither of them spoke. The token rested quietly in Shane’s outstretched palm, its stitched crest catching the afternoon light.
To Shane, the silence seemed to stretch so long it began to feel physical, wrapping itself around Shane’s shoulders until every passing second made his arm a little heavier. He could feel beads of sweat gathering at his temples each second Ilya left him hanging.
Finally, Ilya reached out and, with an unreadable expression, took the offering from his sweaty hands. His eyes stared daggers at the object and a hush fell between the two.
The stillness unnerved Shane greatly. Maybe he’d gotten it wrong? Maybe the book had been completely wrong. Maybe none of those customs existed, and he’d just handed a grieving stranger something meaningless, or worse, offensive!
Heat crept up the back of Shane’s neck. And when he got nervous, he rambled. “A-actually, I came across this book about your pack and I thought maybe you’d want something that reminded you of home while you’re here.”
His words began tripping over one another. “If I got it wrong, I’m really sorry!”
Mortified, Shane reached over to grab the offending item. “I shouldn’t have assumed—”
But before his fingers could brush the fabric, Ilya had already closed his hand around it.
He turned the token over carefully, running his thumb across the stitched symbol at its center.
A hearth flame.
His expression barely changed, but something in his eyes shifted, so slight Shane almost convinced himself he’d imagined it. “Thank you.” Then after the briefest pause. “Shane.”
It wasn’t the first time someone had said his name and it certainly wouldn’t be the last. Normally, first-names were reserved for mates, lovers, and close friends. But, Shane didn’t bother to correct him. It was such a small thing, but something about the way the young wolf said it made him feel warm and giddy.
—
From that moment forward, something shifted between them. it happened so naturally that no one noticed it at first. Then, one day, the people of Mir realized that where one boy went, the other was too, trailing behind like a shadow.
If an adult went looking for Shane and stumbled across the other instead, they only had to ask where the other would be to get their answer. The answer always ready on the their tongue, as though tracking Ilya’s whereabouts had become second nature to Shane, and Shane’s to Ilya.
At first, the townspeople couldn’t quite make sense of it. Everyone was surprised to see the two becoming something akin to kindred spirits. Analyzed individually, they made an unlikely pair: one a well-mannered, soft-spoken boy who kept to himself aside from a handful of friends; the other indifferent and guarded, the sort determined to keep everyone an arm’s length away.
Where his older sister, Svetlana, slipped effortlessly into Mir’s rhythms learning names, joining conversations, laughing with neighbors as though she’d lived there her entire life, Ilya Rozanov had a harder time assimilating with the rest of them. Some of the elders quietly wondered if it was due to Rozanov upbringing where successors were taught to read every room for a threat before they learned to read anything else.
No one expected Shane Hollander to be the one to break through those walls.
After they became close friends, Ilya’s personality slowly began to change. It wasn’t a dramatic shift, just tiny moments that accumulated until one day people realized the boy who had first arrived in Mir no longer looked quite so alone.
He mostly kept to Shane and his friend group, which consisted of only two other people: Rose Landry, a precocious redhead with a mischievous grin that promised trouble, and Hayden Pike, the very picture of a straight-laced student who followed every rule to the letter.
As the months turned into years, Ilya slowly unfolded, blooming under the attentive care of Shane and his friends.
At first, it was just helping out around town. The sight of him hauling crates or mending fences drawing more than a few double takes.
Eventually, Ilya stopped standing on the outskirts. He even fell in with a particularly rowdy group of boys whose loud laughter and reckless energy somehow suited him surprisingly well. Over time, he simply became another familiar face.
The evenings spent gathered around enormous bonfires where music drifted through the trees and the air filled with the easy, overlapping scents of a pack he no longer treated as a stranger.
Not only were his peers slowly warming up to him, but so were the adults.
The leader of the Hunter Training Association (HTA) took a particular interest in Ilya for months before finally approaching the council of elders.
The boy possessed a kind of strength that can’t be taught! He boasted.
The HTA trained pups for the village watch and the wider hunting parties that kept Mir fed and defended. The raw, natural strength Ilya possessed was already miles ahead of the rest of the boys twice his training. Every task involving heavy lifting seemed effortless. Sparring came to him naturally, his movements quick, decisive, and almost frighteningly accurate.
After petitioning for a transfer more than once, the elder finally got his wish. And Ilya, traded a laborer’s work for the weight of a sword and the discipline of his own fists.
Shane, meanwhile, found his own calling almost immediately. Herbalism suited him as though he’d been born for it, the Hollander legacy. His days were spent wandering meadows and forests with a satchel slung across one shoulder, identifying plants most people overlooked. His fingertips were perpetually stained green from crushing leaves into salves and tinctures, and he always seemed to carry the earthy scent of fresh herbs wherever he went. A scent that, over time, the rest of the village simply started associating with him the way they associated woodsmoke with the blacksmith’s forge.
While it might have looked like the two of them were beginning to walk different paths, fate had no intention of letting them drift apart.
Whenever they weren’t preoccupied with their respective duties, they disappeared into the forest together. Shane searched patiently beneath fallen logs and tangled undergrowth for unfamiliar plants while Ilya walked a few steps ahead, pushing aside low branches and quietly keeping watch. Sometimes he’d spot an herb before Shane did. Other times he’d simply carry Shane’s overfilled satchel the rest of the way home without being asked.
“Hey! Give me back my stuff.”
“Only if you can catch me!”
“Ilya, I swear to god!”
They sat near each other everywhere - at the long tables of the town dining hall, on the porches of their respective houses, shoulder to shoulder without seeming to notice they’d drifted that close.
And they looked after each other, fiercely and without question. Whenever Shane got hurt, Ilya would run to his side in an instant, his face set with a worry far too severe for the size of the wound. Even over the smallest scrape or bruise, he’d insist on carrying him home as though setting Shane’s feet on the ground might somehow undo the healing.
“Is okay to cry if it hurts, Shane.”
“Mmhkay.”
The same tenderness Shane had shown that very first day never faded either.
It wasn’t unusual to catch him fussing over the other wolf. At lunch time, he’d slip extra food from his own plate onto Ilya’s after an especially brutal day of training.
“Seriously stop! I’m not hungry.”
“I’m not hungry either.”
“Then leave it on your own plate. I don’t want it.”
“I see how it is. You hate me.”
“……..whatever, fine.”
Shane also stayed close and quiet by his side when the anniversary of his parent’s deaths rolled around each year. Never saying a word, just making sure Ilya wasn’t alone.
Some grief, Shane had learned, wasn’t meant to be fixed but shared with one another. So he made it his life’s work to ensure Ilya, his Ilya, never had to carry his alone.