(Luna) I spend the rest of the day rattled.
Classes blur past me without really landing, my mind still stuck on the training field, on the exact feeling of my body moving faster than it should, faster than I asked it to.
I catch myself staring at my own hands more than once, as if expecting them to act without my permission again.
There’s a strange betrayal in that, in not trusting the very things that have always been mine.
By the time the sun starts sinking behind the mountains outside, I still haven’t shaken it off.
I decide the library is as good a place as any to hide for a while.
Sage mentioned it during our marathon talk last night, calling it the one place at Hollowcrest quiet enough to actually think.
She wasn’t wrong.
The second I step through the doors, the noise of the Academy falls away behind me, replaced by the hush of old paper and candlelight and shelves that climb so high into the shadows I can’t see where they end.
For the first time all day, my shoulders drop an inch, some of the tension I’ve carried since the training field finally easing loose.
I’m not alone for long.
“You’re late,” a voice says.
I turn to find a boy leaning against one of the reading tables, arms crossed, watching me with an intensity that makes my whole body go still.
Dark hair falls across his forehead in a way that looks careless but probably isn’t, and his eyes, amber, striking, lock onto mine and don’t waver.
Something unsettlingly familiar lingers in the way he studies me, as if he already knows more about me than I’ve told anyone.
“Late for what?” I ask.
“Nobody told me I had anywhere to be.” “I’m Kael Blackthorn.” He pushes off the table, moving toward me with an easy, predatory grace that raises the hair on the back of my neck, though not entirely out of fear.
“Seraphina assigned me as your mentor.
Basics of shifting, control, all the things that keep you from tearing your own body apart before you learn how to hold it together.” “Nobody mentioned that to me.” “Doesn’t surprise me.
She does that, hands out assignments and lets the rest of us catch up.” Something almost like amusement flickers across his face, gone as fast as it arrives.
His eyes drop to my forehead, to the mark still settling into itself after two days, and I watch his amber irises brighten, actual light gathering behind them like embers catching a breeze.
“May I?” I don’t know what he’s asking permission for exactly, but I nod anyway, and he steps closer, close enough that I catch the faint smell of woodsmoke clinging to him, close enough that my pulse picks up for reasons that have nothing to do with fear.
A small, traitorous part of me wonders what it says about me, that after everything, my body still finds room to react like this.
He doesn’t touch the mark.
He just studies it, his glowing eyes tracing the shape of it with an intensity that feels almost too personal, as though he’s reading something written just for him.
“I’ve read about marks like this,” he says quietly.
“And?” “I didn’t believe half of what I read.
Now I believe all of it.” His eyes drop from my forehead to my own, and for a second neither of us says anything at all, the library gone silent and close around us.
Something passes between us in that silence, unspoken and heavier than it has any right to be after five minutes of knowing each other.
He clears his throat first, stepping back, and the moment breaks.
“Let’s get started,” he says, all business now, though something guarded stays tight in his shoulders that wasn’t there a second ago.
“First thing you need to understand is that shifting isn’t something you force.
It’s something you allow.
Most new wolves try to grab at it, and that’s exactly why the Awakening kills the ones who fight it.” “Comforting.” “I’m not here to comfort you.
I’m here to keep you alive.” He moves behind me, and before I can ask what he’s doing, his hands settle on my shoulders, adjusting my stance with quick, sure movements.
“Feet wider.
You’re standing like you’re about to run a race, not settle into your own body.” “Old habits,” I mutter, trying to focus on his instructions and not on the warmth of his hands through my shirt, spreading out from where he’s touching me like something lit under my skin.
“Here.” His hand presses flat against my shoulder blade, correcting my posture, and heat rushes through me at the contact, sharp and unexpected, enough that I have to bite back a gasp.
“Better.
You’re holding your breath.
Let it out.” I exhale, and something in my stance shifts, settles.
“There.” His voice comes low near my ear, and I feel the words more than hear them, his breath warm against the side of my neck.
“Your wolf won’t come when you’re braced against it.
It only comes when you make room.” “Try it,” he says, stepping back.
“Close your eyes.
Stop thinking about your feet or your breath or anything else.
Just ask.
Don’t force, don’t chase.
Ask, and see what answers.” I close my eyes.
For a moment there’s nothing but the hush of the library and the sound of my own heartbeat, and then I feel it, that same hum from the training field, gathering low in my chest like a held note.
I reach for it the way he told me not to, impatient, and the hum snaps taut, then surges.
The nearest candle flares, wax spitting, flame leaping twice its height before guttering out in a thin curl of smoke.
Every book on the shelf beside me trembles, spines rattling faintly, as though something unseen brushed past them.
I stagger a step, and the mark on my forehead burns, actual heat instead of the dull warmth it’s carried since the day I arrived.
Kael’s hand shoots out to steady me, but he doesn’t let go once I’ve caught my balance.
His eyes have gone wide, the amber light behind them flaring brighter than before, and for the first time since I met him, he looks something close to unsettled.
“Was that supposed to happen?” I manage, breathless.
“No.” The word comes out low, almost to himself.
He glances at the guttered candle, then back at me, and something shutters behind his eyes, quick, deliberate, like a door easing shut before I can see what’s on the other side.
“That shouldn’t happen.
Not this fast.
Not without – ” He stops himself.
“Without what?” “It doesn’t matter.” But it does, I can see it does, in the tightness around his mouth and the way his gaze keeps flicking back to my forehead like he’s recalculating something he thought he already understood.
“We’re done for tonight.” “Kael.” “You should rest.” He’s already stepping back, putting distance between us that feels deliberate now instead of natural, and whatever had passed between us earlier in the silence has curdled into something more careful, more guarded.
“We’ll pick this up tomorrow.” He leaves before I can push further, and I stand alone among the trembling shelves, the smell of guttered wax thick in the air, turning his unfinished sentence over and over until it wears a groove into my thoughts.
My phone buzzes in my pocket, sharp and sudden in the quiet of the library, and I already know before I even glance down who it is.
Jace.
I look at the screen for a second too long, guilt curling tight and immediate in my chest, and then I slide the phone back into my pocket without answering.
I hate how easy that is.
I hate it even more that I don’t stop to think about it until several minutes later, and by then, the guilt has already settled in deep beside the other question I can’t shake, the one Kael left hanging in the air when he cut himself off.
It follows me back to the Spiritwalker Den, curling up beside me in the dark long after the candles in the library have burned low, a quiet reminder that I’m losing pieces of myself I haven’t figured out how to name, and gaining others I don’t yet understand.
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