(Luna) The ground shudders again, harder this time, dust sifting down from the tunnel ceiling in a fine grey rain.
Kael doesn’t wait for an explanation.
“Move,” he orders, already reaching for me, careful of the claw marks torn across my shoulder, urging me back the way he came at a pace just short of a run.
“Whatever’s down here, it’s waking up further.
We need to get you out.” I don’t have the strength left to argue, or to shift back, or to do much of anything except stumble along beside him on four unsteady legs while the tunnels around us groan and settle like something enormous is stretching itself awake far beneath our feet.
Every step sends a fresh jolt of pain through my shoulder, and somewhere beneath the pain sits a colder fear, the kind that has nothing to do with my body and everything to do with the way Kael keeps glancing back over his shoulder like he expects the dark to follow us.
By the time we make it back up through the narrow passage behind the tapestry, my legs are shaking so badly I nearly collapse the second solid, familiar hallway floor meets my paws.
The shift back to human comes on its own this time, painful and fast, wrenching through me like something tearing loose rather than settling into place.
Kael catches me before I hit the ground, wrapping his jacket around my shoulders and pressing a hand hard against the wound still bleeding freely.
“You need a healer,” he says, voice tight, jaw clenched like the words cost him something.
“Now.” I don’t remember much of the walk after that, just fragments: Kael’s arm around my waist, the cold night air biting at my skin, someone’s voice calling for help that sounds a lot like Sage’s.
By morning, the wound is bandaged, the worst of the exhaustion slept off, and word of what happened in the Undercroft has already spread through every corner of Hollowcrest like wildfire, the kind of news that changes the way people look at you before you’ve even walked into the room.
I’m summoned to the main hall before I’ve even finished breakfast.
The note arrives on heavy parchment, Seraphina’s elegant script offering no explanation, just a time.
By the time I push open the doors, my pulse is already climbing.
When I walk in, I understand immediately that this isn’t a small conversation.
Seraphina stands near the center of the room, and behind her, gathered along the edges, are more faces than I expected.
Professor Greymane sits toward the back, silver haired and silent, his expression giving away absolutely nothing.
Ember leans against a pillar near the door, arms crossed, watching me with an expression that isn’t quite hostile anymore, something more careful sitting underneath it.
The Twins are practically vibrating near the front row, Ash already grinning like Christmas came early, and even Alder, usually the steadier of the two, looks like he’s holding back questions he can barely contain.
“Luna,” Seraphina says, crossing the room toward me, her violet eyes bright with an intensity she doesn’t quite manage to hide behind her usual composed warmth.
“I understand you shifted last night.
Under considerable duress.” “I didn’t have much choice,” I say, flat, arms crossing over my chest before I can stop them.
“No,” she allows, something flickering behind her eyes, quick and calculating, gone before I can name it.
“I’d like to see it.
Your wolf form.” She doesn’t phrase it as a question, and the smile that follows doesn’t reach the rest of her face.
“The Council will want a full report regardless of your preference in the matter, so we may as well see it done properly, and in front of witnesses who can attest to it.” The room goes very quiet, the kind of quiet that presses against my ears and makes my pulse feel too loud.
I glance toward Sage, who gives me a small, encouraging nod, and then toward Kael, standing off to one side with his arms crossed.
His jaw is tight, his gaze locked on me with something that looks almost like dread, like he’s bracing for a confirmation he already knows is coming and doesn’t want to witness.
I hesitate a beat longer than I mean to, aware suddenly that nobody in this room is looking at me the way you look at a person.
They’re looking at me the way you look at something you’re about to write down.
I shift.
It comes easier this time, the tearing rush of it settling into something almost bearable, and when it’s done I stand there on four legs in the middle of the main hall, black fur catching the candlelight, silver corona glowing faint and steady around me like moonlight refusing to leave my skin.
Nobody speaks for a long moment.
Seraphina circles me slowly, close but not touching, her violet eyes tracing every inch of my wolf form with an intensity that makes the fur along my spine want to rise.
“Unprecedented,” she murmurs, mostly to herself, awe bleeding into something colder underneath it.
“No wolf has carried a corona like this.
Not in any record I’ve ever read.” Across the room, Greymane finally speaks, his voice carrying easily despite its quiet register, grim and low like a warning bell.
“And do you know what it means, girl?
What bloodline produces a corona like that, and what it cost the last wolf who carried one?” He doesn’t wait for an answer he clearly doesn’t expect me to have.
“No.
I didn’t think so.” Something old and wary passes behind his eyes, and his gaze flicks to Seraphina before returning to me, his mouth tightening like he’s biting back a name he refuses to speak aloud.
Whatever warmth had gathered in the room a moment ago curdles slightly at the edges, replaced by something more watchful.
“It’s beautiful,” Ash breathes, reverent, and Alder elbows him, though he’s grinning just as wide, unable to help himself despite whatever caution he was trying to hold onto a moment ago.
Ember pushes off the pillar and studies me for a long moment, arms still crossed, and when she finally speaks, her voice comes out grudging but honest.
“Alright.
That’s actually terrifying.
I’ll give you that.” It’s the closest thing to a compliment she’s given me since I got here, and coming from her, it lands harder than I expect, warming something in my chest I didn’t realize had gone cold.
I shift back, Sage draping a spare cloak over my shoulders the second I’m human again, and the room slowly starts to move again, murmurs breaking out, students filtering toward the doors now that the show, apparently, is over.
“This isn’t finished,” Seraphina says, her voice pitched to carry, cutting cleanly through the murmurs.
“The Council will decide what she is before this school does.
Until then, I’d ask everyone to remember that decision isn’t ours to make prematurely.” She says it lightly, almost pleasantly, but it lands in the room like a closed door.
Ivy catches me near the entrance, and I brace myself out of habit for whatever cutting remark she’s about to deliver.
It doesn’t come.
Instead she studies me for a moment, her expression sharper than usual, something almost thoughtful underneath the sharpness.
“Your wolf is beautiful,” she says, quiet, almost reluctant.
“And terrifying.” She lets that sit a moment before continuing, her voice dropping lower.
“You should be careful who sees you as one versus the other.
People will decide which one you are long before you get the chance to decide for them.” It’s the first genuinely useful thing she’s said to me since I arrived, and I don’t have a response ready for it, so I just nod.
She walks off without waiting for one, blonde hair swinging behind her, leaving me standing there with her words settling uneasily in my chest.
I noticed him earlier, actually, standing near the back during the shift itself, apart from the others in a way that had nothing to do with space.
Where everyone else had leaned in, hungry or wary or both, he’d simply watched, still and unreadable, like he was seeing something the rest of the room had missed entirely.
I’m still standing there processing Ivy’s words when he approaches, steady and unhurried, and I turn to find a boy I don’t recognize watching me with calm, forest green eyes.
Sandy brown hair, a scar cutting across his jaw, broad shoulders relaxed in a way that feels deliberate rather than careless, like stillness is something he’s practiced rather than something that comes naturally.
“Rowan,” he says, by way of introduction, offering nothing more than that.
“Stonefang Den.” “Luna,” I say, though he clearly already knows that.
“I saw you shift, just now.” He tilts his head slightly, studying me without the intensity Seraphina had, without the hunger for information.
Just steady, quiet attention.
“You looked like you were fighting it.
Even after it happened.
Like you were still bracing against something.” He pauses, weighing whether to say the next part, then does, voice low and even.
“I know what that looks like because I’ve done it myself.
Held my own wolf at arm’s length so long I forgot how to stop.” “I don’t know how not to,” I admit, quiet, the words slipping out before I can stop them.
“I could help with that,” he offers, simply, no expectation behind it, no agenda I can find hiding underneath the offer.
“Not the mechanics, you’ve clearly got those down.
I mean the part after, where you stop treating your own body like something to survive.
Maintaining the shift without fighting your own instincts the whole time.
It gets easier once you stop treating your wolf like something you have to win a fight against.” “You don’t even know me,” I say, wary, though something in his tone keeps the edge out of it.
“No,” he agrees, a faint, easy smile touching his mouth, gone almost as soon as it arrives.
“But I know what it looks like when somebody’s fighting themselves.
And you don’t have to.”