OF WOLVES A

VALEN

id under my skin like a small animal. I bit back the sound that wanted to leave my throat and sat up. The dorm was quiet, the hallway outside hum

ipped out into the night. The campus at this hour felt honest, the wards we trained under hummed low, like the belly

no one came here often, tonight it was empty except for silver grass and a full moon haloed by thin clouds. I walked to the

olf s

huge in my mind, not in form. It nipped at my thoughts like a clever child

s own memory of fire and exile. It never spoke for me, not exactly, It spoke ar

ly and bega

ne as knitting thread. Sounds layered themselves, leaves trading whispers, insects beating small drums, the distant pulse of the wards, my skin co

ra

been away. The wolf in me tasted the air and found other things besides pine and damp, there was residue of human life, candles from a late-

ising. It was not an academy guard. It moved like someone who hid too well. For a heartbeat my w

ri

s, up to his usual trouble of being where he should not be when he had no business. He held a lantern in one hand and something else in the other, hi

," I managed, voice th

cusation, just a fact. He set the lantern down and stepped into the open

of suspicion. Guard him, i

owed you," he said simply. "I heard you leave, I didn't want you to be alone."

myself breathe. The moon made him look softer, less sharpened by duty, hi

rt," he added. "

Truth, the runes kept most

nt, the kind I don't like, you're powerful now, Ava, Ari

o me. Innately, I loved how he could

amused sound. Watch him, it said, he

I wanted him to, the wolf leaned forward as if to taste his courage, he closed his ow

e worst, but I know enough to keep coming back,

ejection had been a serrated knife, I thought of Celene's smirk and the council's cold

Elias?" I asked,

at my table, and I don't like empty seats." He lifted his hand, and finally, gently, he reached, his fingers

, his warmth bled through fur and hide and human skin. The wolf p

ast out," Elias said quietly.

y have been another life, Kael's

ne with blood to ans

at my side, steady. "We'll find who

n the sound of your rest, It was not gentle, but it wasn't cruel either, It w

unded like a laugh. "You talk

I'm not just offering words, I can track, I can learn r

en I thought of the night I had been dragged out beyond the ridge, of the cold and the crawl back to li

u tell anyone, if you speak of this to the council

, solemn as a pl

red my head and rested my forehead against his open pal

wrapped his cloak around me without a question, like the kind of fri

he cloth, the scar on my shoulder ached in the cool air, b

und us, walls, wards, secrets, but for the first time since I had returned, I felt se

silver. My wolf settled like an old animal at the foot of my bed,

ofter sleep, with the echo of his