Astrid
I read the line again, half convinced I’d misread it the first time.
If you’re reading this, someone finally found the truth about Moonshade Academy.
Xander reached for the journal immediately, already flipping toward the next page before Reed’s hand shot out and stopped him.
"It could be centuries old," Reed said. "Careful."
I turned the page myself instead, slow, my fingers barely touching the edges. The handwriting grew messier the further in we went, ink smudged in places like whoever wrote it had been in a hurry, or afraid.
Scattered phrases jumped out between the frantic lines. Three ancient bloodlines. A hidden heir. A forbidden bond. Something deliberately erased from Moonshade’s official history.
My stomach twisted hard at hidden heir.
I thought immediately of the whispers I’d overheard on the way to the observatory, the King and his missing daughter, and wondered, with a cold drop in my chest, whether this journal was somehow tangled up in the same secret I was so desperately trying to keep buried.
Reed’s eyes flicked toward me, just briefly. He didn’t say anything, but I felt the weight of that glance long after it passed.
Footsteps echoed suddenly on the staircase below.
"Someone’s coming," Xander whispered, already scrambling.
Reed snapped the journal shut and shoved it back beneath the floorboard while I stuffed the loose pages back into place, my heart slamming against my ribs. The door creaked open just as we straightened, and an older student poked her head in, eyeing us with open suspicion before muttering something about needing somewhere quiet and retreating back down the stairs.
Xander exhaled like he’d been holding his breath for a full minute. "That was close."
"You’re being dramatic," I said.
"You nearly stopped breathing."
"Enough," Reed said, already gathering the last of our things. "We’ve stayed long enough. Let’s go."
The walk down the hill was quiet, campus lights glittering below us in the dark. Xander drifted several steps ahead, humming something under his breath, leaving Reed and me to fall into step together without quite meaning to.
Neither of us spoke for a while. Then our hands brushed, just barely, and I pulled mine away before I could think about why.
"Why do you always do that?" Reed asked, quiet.
"Do what?"
"Pull back. Every time I get close, you retreat."
"I’m used to keeping distance from people," I said, which was true enough not to feel like a lie.
"Are you afraid of me?"
"No," I said, and meant it.
"Then what?"
I didn’t have an answer. I opened my mouth anyway, hoping something reasonable might come out, and nothing did.
Xander saved me from having to figure it out, spinning around to walk backward in front of us, grinning. "Are you two having a serious conversation without me?"
"Keep walking," I said.
"You’re both so awkward, it’s actually impressive."
"I will push you down this hill."
He laughed and took off running, and beside me, Reed actually laughed too. I looked at him, startled. I’d never heard that sound from him before, not once since I’d arrived at this school.
He caught me staring. Our eyes met, and something quiet passed between us, unhurried, unclaimed. I looked away first, suddenly aware of exactly how close we were walking.
Back at the apartment, Xander vanished into his room immediately, mumbling about exhaustion. I assumed the night was over until Reed carried the research material into the kitchen and set it down across the table.
"We should organize what we found before we sleep," he said.
I sat across from him, and for the first time since we’d become roommates, it was just the two of us, no Xander to fill the silence with noise.
Reed’s eyes caught on the bruising along my arm from combat class. "Still sore?"
"I’m fine."
He gave me a look that made it clear he didn’t believe that for a second.
"I’m used to pain," I said, which was true, though I hadn’t meant to say it quite so plainly.
"Why?"
I almost told him too much. The words sat right there, ready to spill out about a childhood spent scrubbing floors and dodging drunk men twice my size. Instead I said, "I’ve always had a weak body. I learned early that complaining doesn’t change anything."
He didn’t say anything for a moment. He didn’t pity me either, which mattered more than I expected it to.
"You keep calling yourself weak," he said finally.
"Because I am."
"Being unable to shift doesn’t make you weak."
"Then what does?"
"Giving up," he said, simply.
It was almost exactly what Lyra had told me after combat class, and hearing it a second time, from him, settled somewhere deep in my chest.
"You didn’t give up," he added.
I didn’t know how to respond to that. Nobody had ever said something like that to me, certainly not someone like him.
"...Thank you," I managed.
I reached for a book on the shelf above me a moment later, stretching without quite reaching it. Reed stood and reached over my head, retrieving it easily, and when he handed it down our fingers brushed again, longer this time. Neither of us moved right away. His eyes dropped briefly to where our hands met before he pulled back first.
I clutched the book to my chest, flustered, and searched for something to say that wasn’t about the way my pulse had just spiked.
"The journal," I said, seizing the first safe topic I could find. "Do you think hidden heir means anything specific?"
"It’s bothering me," Reed admitted. "Royal records are heavily protected. It’s possible our assignment is more complicated than either of us realized."
"Has anyone ever disappeared," I asked carefully, "because of their bloodline?"
Reed studied me for a long moment. "Why are you asking so many questions?"
My pulse spiked for an entirely different reason. "It’s an interesting topic," I said, keeping my voice light. "That’s all."
He clearly didn’t fully believe me. He didn’t push either, which I was grateful for, even as it made my skin prickle with the sense that he was quietly filing the moment away.
Xander wandered in a few minutes later, half-asleep in an old shirt, blinking at the mess of books still spread across the table. "Why are you two still working?"
"He’s incapable of relaxing," I said, nodding at Reed.
"Sounds right," Xander agreed, then paused, glancing between us with a slow, growing grin. "Wait. Why does it feel like something’s different in here?"
"Nothing’s different," I said, too fast.
"Go to bed," Reed told him.
Xander left laughing, clearly unconvinced, and I busied myself gathering papers so I wouldn’t have to look at Reed again that night.
Later, alone in my room with the door locked, I pulled my mother’s letter from the notebook and read it again, though I already knew every word by heart. Never let the royal blood discover what you are.
Hidden heir. Forbidden bond. Royal blood. The pieces circled each other in my mind, refusing to connect into anything I could actually understand.
And despite everything, my thoughts kept drifting back to Reed anyway. His quiet concern. The way he’d told me I hadn’t given up. The brief, unexpected warmth of his fingers against mine.
I have survived poverty and grief and an entire academy determined to judge me, I thought, almost annoyed with myself. Why is one quiet boy’s smile the thing I can’t stop thinking about?
I smiled despite myself, then wiped it away just as quickly.
I put the letter back in the drawer and climbed into bed, the apartment finally settling into silence around me.
Just as I closed my eyes, I heard it.
A low, deep growl.
I froze, eyes snapping toward the door. Nothing. No shadow, no movement.
The growl came again.
This time I understood it wasn’t coming from outside at all.
It was coming from inside my own chest.
I pressed a trembling hand flat against my heart, and for one brief, impossible second, something pulsed beneath my skin. Not pain. Something alive, coiled and waiting, frighteningly close to what I imagined a wolf might feel like.
Then it was gone.
I sat frozen in the dark long after, my heart hammering.
I had never shifted. I had never even heard my wolf, not once, not in seventeen years.
So what exactly had just growled inside me?