Astrid
I woke sore, my body still aching from a full day hunched over dusty books in the archives, and pulled on my uniform slower than usual. When I checked the schedule pinned to the inside of my closet door, my stomach sank straight through the floor.
Combat Fundamentals.
Of every subject at this academy, that was the one I dreaded most. Not because I disliked fighting. I’d grown up sharp-tongued and quick on my feet, more than capable of holding my own in an argument. My body had simply never cooperated the way it should have. I tired faster than other children. Bruised easier. Ran slower, no matter how hard I pushed.
My mother used to press a hand to my cheek whenever I came home from being teased about it and say, "Some battles aren’t won with strength."
I repeated the words under my breath as I laced my boots, and headed out to face the one class I’d never once looked forward to.
The training grounds buzzed with excitement the whole walk over, students trading stories about their wolves, comparing bloodlines, bragging about whose family line produced the biggest shift. Ivy walked beside me, quieter than usual once she noticed my mood.
"You hate combat," she said. Not a question.
I nodded. "I’m terrible at it."
"You survived moving in with the Ashwood twins," she offered, nudging my shoulder.
"Barely," I admitted, and the small joke loosened something tight in my chest, at least for a moment.
The arena was massive, lined with training dummies and weapon racks, a raised stone platform at its center already gleaming under the morning sun. Professor Lyra strode in without a word of introduction, sharp-eyed and unsmiling, and gave exactly one command.
"Pairs."
Students scrambled into position. Lyra walked through the rows, rearranging a few matchups herself, clearly aiming for something balanced rather than convenient.
Then, before anyone could spar, she gave a second order.
"Shift."
One by one, students transformed around me, bodies bending and stretching into enormous wolves, silver and black and brown and white, the arena filling fast with low growls and shifting fur. I could hear the sound of bones reshaping, and the raw power in the arena.
I stayed exactly as I was. Human. Still.
The whispers started almost immediately.
"She didn’t shift."
"Can she not?"
"I thought every Lycan could."
I kept my eyes forward, refusing to look toward the small cluster where I already knew Selene was watching, the satisfied curve of her mouth practically audible even without turning to check. Ivy shot me a worried glance. I pretended I hadn’t heard any of it.
Lyra walked over and studied me for a long, silent moment, the kind of look that felt like it was cataloguing every weakness I had at once.
"Then survive without your wolf," she said finally.
No pity in it. No disappointment either. Just a challenge, flat and simple.
"Yes, Professor," I said.
My first match lasted seconds. My opponent, a boy easily twice my size in wolf form, threw me to the ground before I’d even found my footing. A few students laughed. I stood back up anyway, dust clinging to my palms.
"Again," Lyra said, watching from the edge of the platform.
The second round went worse. I hit the ground harder, my whole body screaming by the time I forced myself upright, breath coming ragged now, every muscle already protesting the abuse.
Still, I stood.
By the third round, the laughter had mostly died out. I think some of them had expected me to give up after the first fall, or the second at the latest, and my continued refusal to stay down seemed to unsettle more people than it entertained. My opponent actually hesitated before the final exchange, something almost guilty crossing his face.
I attacked anyway. I lost anyway. But I landed one clean hit before it ended, solid enough to make him stagger, and something in that single moment felt like it mattered more than the loss around it.
When class finally ended, I sat on the edge of the arena, bruised and sweating, too exhausted to care how I looked. Lyra approached and stood over me for a moment before speaking.
"You’re weak," she said.
I lowered my eyes, waiting for whatever came next.
"Weakness can be trained." A pause, longer this time. "Quitting can’t."
She walked away without another word.
I blinked after her, half convinced I’d imagined it. That might have been the closest thing to praise Professor Lyra had ever offered anyone.
As I gathered my things, Xander approached with Reed a step behind him, both still in their training gear.
"You really don’t know when to stay down," Xander said, whistling low.
I brushed dirt off my sleeve. "Neither do you."
He laughed, and for once there wasn’t a trace of mockery in it, only something closer to genuine amusement.
Reed held out a bottle of water without a word. I hesitated before taking it.
"...Thanks."
He nodded once. "The observatory," he said. "We’re already late."
That was all he offered, and somehow it was enough.
The walk across campus drew the usual attention, students glancing over, some whispering, some outright staring at the sight of the three of us together again. I’d mostly learned to tune it out.
Then one conversation cut through clearly enough that I couldn’t ignore it.
"Did you hear? The King still hasn’t found her." Said a boy’s voice.
Another voice, lower. "Apparently the King has been searching for her ever since."
My feet nearly stopped moving entirely. My breath caught somewhere in my chest and refused to release.
"Imagine if she were hiding here at Moonshade," the first voice added, and laughed like the idea was absurd.
Xander noticed me slowing. "You alright?"
"Just tired," I said, forcing my mouth into something resembling a smile.
He accepted it easily enough and kept walking. Reed didn’t say anything at all, but I felt his gaze linger on me a second longer than it needed to, careful and quiet in a way that made me wonder exactly how much he was starting to notice.
The observatory came into view at the top of the hill, ancient stone rising against the darkening sky, its domed roof catching the last of the sunlight like something out of an old painting. I forced my attention back to the assignment waiting inside, to books and treaties and territorial disputes, anything that wasn’t the sound of that boy’s voice repeating itself over and over in my head.
One problem at a time, I told myself.
I had no idea yet how many more were already circling closer than I realized, or how little time I actually had left before one of them finally caught up to me.