Chapter 54 – Azaria
AZARIA
Two days after Kalias officially joined the squad, I sparred with him. This was tradition—I fought every new recruit myself. Established hierarchy. Showed them what they were working with. With Kalias, I knew I’d lose. Shifter strength, shifter speed—I wasn’t stupid. But I still had to try.
The training ring hummed with energy, the squad gathered along the edges like spectators at a tournament.
Kael lounged against the railing, mist curling lazily around his fingers.
Reyna leaned beside him, arms crossed, a smirk already playing on her lips.
Even Dain had paused mid-sip of his tea to watch.
I stood across from Kalias in the center of the ring, rolling my shoulders, shaking out my hands. “No shifting,” I said, circling him slowly. “No weapons. Just hand-to-hand.”
He inclined his head, utterly calm. “As you wish, Captain.”
I moved first—feint left, strike right, aiming for his ribs. He sidestepped like I was moving through water, my fist cutting empty air. I adjusted, spun low, and swept at his legs. He stepped over the strike without even looking down. Then his fist drove into my gut.
The world stopped.
I hit the ground so hard I tasted copper. My lungs forgot how to work. The stone floor was cold against my cheek, and somewhere far away, Kael’s voice drifted down through the ringing in my ears.
“Well. That was fast.”
I wheezed, tried to breathe, and failed. Stars danced at the edges of my vision.
Completely annihilated in less than thirty seconds, I thought to myself.
Seven seconds, to be exact, Dain’s voice mused in my mind.
I sighed, or tried to. Dropping thoughts into other people’s minds was Darann’s trick, but since Dain had taught himself, he’d been using it on me constantly.
You counted. How nice, I thought back.
A big, warm hand settled on my stomach. Kalias looked down at me, and before I could process what was happening, his magic seeped into me. It was potent. So potent it made my head spin. My vision blurred.
“K-Kalias…”
He withdrew his hand immediately. “Sorry. I did not mean to overwhelm you,” he said with that wispy accent of his.
I breathed. The pain was gone. “That was your magic?”
“Yes,” he said simply.
“It felt different from the usual healing magic I’m used to.”
“I draw my magic directly from nature. We are not in the forest, so I asked the earth to ease your pain, and it responded.”
“That’s...” beautiful. “Thank you.”
Kalias crouched beside me, calm as ever, not even winded. “Do you yield, Captain?”
I glared up at him, still gasping. “Yes.”
His mouth twitched. Amusement, maybe, or pity. Hard to tell when the room was spinning.
He offered a hand. I took it; let him haul me upright. My stomach no longer screamed—his magic had seen to that—but my pride was another matter.
“You pulled that punch,” I muttered.
“Yes.”
“If you hadn’t?”
“You would not be standing.”
Fair enough.
Reyna’s voice cut across the ring. “Welcome to the squad, Kalias. Try not to kill our Captain on day one.”
Zeph grinned. “Or do. I wouldn’t mind the promotion.”
I flipped him off without looking and walked toward the edge of the ring. Dain caught my arm, his expression carefully neutral.
“You all right?” he asked quietly.
“Peachy. Just got my arse handed to me by someone who wasn’t even trying.”
“He’s not human, Az.”
“You don’t say.”
Across the ring, Kalias stood perfectly still, watching us with those pale, unreadable eyes. Waiting.
“All right,” I called, louder now. “Someone else wants to try their luck?”
The silence that followed was answer enough.
The first week was an exercise in adjustment—his and ours.
The portrait artist muttered about “impossible bone structure” while Kalias sat perfectly still for the official squad records.
I arranged uniforms and casual wear from the palace tailors, and sent word to Captain Serah’s sentries about any belongings they might have confiscated when they’d brought him in.
Whatever scrap of home he’d carried across the Dawn Sea, I didn’t want him to lose it.
His quarters were standard: a sitting room, a kitchen, a bath, bedroom. Nothing lavish. When I showed him, he stood in the doorway for a long moment, fingers brushing the back of the sofa, the edge of the table, before saying quietly, “It is more than adequate. Thank you.”
“You’re part of my squad now,” I told him. “You get what everyone else gets.“
The palace took longer to adjust. The first time I walked Kalias through the main corridors in wolf form, a young maid rounded the corner carrying linens and shrieked so loudly the sheets went airborne.
Two guards arrived moments later, hands on hilts.
The wolf huffed—low and unimpressed—and padded past them without a second glance.
By the end of the week, Tywin’s notices had circulated through every wing.
The servants stopped screaming. The guards stopped reaching for weapons.
They just averted their eyes and pretended not to see him, which was fine by me.
The shift-back etiquette took slightly longer to establish.
One evening, a shimmer of light rippled near the common room doorway, and Kalias appeared.
Very naked. Kael choked on his tea. Reyna didn’t look up from her book.
“For fuck’s sake, Kalias. Trousers.” He blinked down at himself, utterly unbothered, and explained something about pocket realms and the magic here working differently.
After that, he managed to return with at least trousers intact. Small mercies.
That same week, most of the squad gathered for dinner in the common room, which was chaos as usual—plates balanced on knees and armrests, voices overlapping, Zeph arguing with Lyra about something ridiculous from where they sat cross-legged on the floor.
Kalias had taken the armchair by the window, quiet as always.
The questions started almost immediately.
“So,” Kael began, leaning forward with that dangerous gleam in his eye. “Kalias. Shifter continent. What’s it actually like? Do you live in caves? Hunt with your teeth? Howl at the moon?”
Kalias’s expression didn’t change, but I caught a faint pause before he answered. “No caves. And we do not howl at the moon.”
“Liar,” Zeph muttered. “I bet you howl.”
“Only when provoked.”
That got a laugh.
Reyna leaned back, the firelight catching in her dark hair. “Seriously though. What’s your home like? Aelvaaran, right? That’s what you called it?”
Kalias was quiet for a moment, his gaze distant. When he spoke, his voice carried a weight I hadn’t heard before.
“Aelvaaran is not like Kareth,” he said slowly.
“There are no cities like this. No marble halls or stone palaces, not in the way you build them. We live with the land, not apart from it. Our homes are shaped into the great forests and carved into the mountains—tree-bound estates, cliff dwellings, halls grown from living wood and root as much as stone. Wild, perhaps, by your standards, but no less made for living. No less a home. And in the sacred groves, the old magic still hums beneath it all.”
Lirael’s eyes widened. “That sounds beautiful.”
“It is.” His mouth curved faintly. “And brutal. The land does not forgive weakness. The beasts there are wild—true wild, not tamed or bound. Serpents in the southern woods large enough to swallow horses. Great cats that hunt in packs. And in the north, where my people live, the mountains are steep and unforgiving, our estates built into the rock. The climate is mild enough, not so different from Tempest. But the land itself is dangerous if you forget to respect it.”
“Your people,” Thorne said thoughtfully. “The wolf clans?”
Kalias nodded. “The Silverblood line rules the northern peaks. My father, Neralis Fenwynd, is Alpha of our kind. Our estate is carved into the Selyran Mountains themselves: stone halls and courtyards open to the sky, heated by geothermal springs. It is different from your palaces, but no less grand.”
Silence settled over the room. I’d known Kalias carried himself with authority, but hearing it spoken aloud—Alpha, estate, Silverblood line—made something click into place. An Alpha wasn’t just a leader. It was power, legacy, bloodline. More authority than most human kings.
“So you’re basically wolf royalty,” Kael said, grinning. “And you’re slumming it with us?”
Kalias’s eyes flicked to him, unreadable. “I am here because I choose to be.”
The weight of those words shut Kael up fast.
I leaned forward slightly. “Your father sent you to find someone. That’s why you’re here.”
“Yes.” Kalias’s gaze found mine, steady. “He believes the one spoken of in the prophecy is somewhere in the east. I came to find them.”
“And if you do?” Dain asked quietly.
Kalias didn’t answer right away. Finally, he said, “Then I bring them home.”
The conversation shifted after that, voices loosening, Kael shuffling cards, Reyna poking at the fire. But I tucked that detail away. An Alpha’s son, searching for someone lost. A prophecy older than memory.
It would matter. Eventually.
As the days passed, Kalias the man trained with us, ate with us, even let Kael and Zeph teach him their ridiculous card games, though he declared them unworthy of his time after losing three rounds in a row. He rarely spoke unless spoken to, but he observed everything.
Kalias the wolf was another story.
He shadowed me everywhere. Not always, but most of the time.
Silent paws on stone floors, that massive silver form trailing just behind my left shoulder.
He never bared teeth. Never crowded. Just lingered.
I’d asked him once—why me, why always—and he’d only tilted that great head, unblinking, as if the answer was obvious and I was the fool for asking.
Eventually, I stopped questioning it.