Chapter 4
Kyron
We’re barely past the tree line when I see her.
I’ve been on point for maybe three minutes, leading them down the back path behind the residential buildings. It’s the route we think Nova took when she ran — edges, gaps between buildings, the places people don’t look. It seems like the kind of path we need right now.
My arms ache. The burns are raw, red from my wrists all the way up my arms, and every time I adjust the pack strap the friction sends a jolt up to my shoulder.
Behind me, Locke’s breathing is heavier than usual from Nova’s weight. He hasn’t asked anyone else to carry her and no one’s offered because we all know how that would go. Vaelor’s footsteps are heavy and Rane still hasn’t said a word.
The bond hums in my chest and I don’t think about it. I don’t think about her in my bed, the way she said my name, the thing that locked into place that night that I haven’t told anyone about.
We come around the back of the storage building and someone steps out from behind the corner and I have the knife half out of my belt before I hear the voice.
“Kyron, stop. It’s me.”
Zoe.
I pull back hard enough to lose my balance for a second. The knife vanishes and my pulse is hammering because she was right there, three feet away, and I didn’t see her until she was already in front of me. That doesn’t happen to me.
“Jesus, Zoe.” It comes out rough. Behind me the group tightens, Locke shifting Nova’s weight, everyone going still at once.
She’s not looking at me. She’s looking past me at Locke, at what he’s carrying.
“Where is she, is she—” Zoe pushes past me and her hands go to Nova’s face, her neck, checking her pulse.
“What happened.” Not a question. Her voice has dropped into something controlled and scared.
None of us say anything for a second. I look at Locke. Locke looks at me. How do you explain something you don’t have words for?
“Tell me,” Zoe says, and her voice is sharp now. “She’s my friend. Fucking tell me.”
“We don’t know,” I say. “She went up in flames. Actual goddamn flames, Zoe, the whole lake was boiling and she was screaming and then she was just—gone. And then there was—”
“There was what?”
“A phoenix.”
Zoe’s eyes go wide. She grabs Nova’s wrist and turns it, staring at the mark. Gold and red, pulsing under her skin like something alive.
“What the hell,” she whispers. She runs her thumb along the edge of the mark without quite touching it. “I’ve never seen—”
“Neither have any of us.”
Zoe’s still holding Nova’s wrist, staring at it like she’s reading something the rest of us can’t. When she finally looks up, her face has changed.
“She shifted,” Zoe says. “That’s what happened.
But I’ve never heard of anyone shifting into—” She stops.
Starts again. “Every House has shifter types. Dream is swans, doves. Shadow is panthers, creatures like that. When your second mark finalizes, the shift comes, and your cluster helps you through it. That’s how it works. ”
“But a phoenix—”
“Isn’t any House. It’s something the system says is extinct. Dead bloodlines, evolutionary dead ends.” She pauses. “Except she just became one, so either the system’s wrong or it’s been lying, and I don’t love either option.”
She looks at the rest of us. At the packs. At the direction we’re heading.
“You’re leaving,” she says.
“Someone was watching at the lake,” Rane says. “They saw all of it.”
Zoe’s eyes close. When she opens them, whatever was left of her composure is gone.
“I know,” she says. “That’s why I came to find her.
People have been asking about Nova. Not casually — pointed questions.
Where she goes, who she’s with, what her schedule looks like.
” Her jaw tightens. “The Academy liaison pulled me aside a few hours ago. The questions weren’t hers, they were too specific, too fast. Someone was feeding her a list. They asked me to report if Nova was behaving unusually. Those exact words.”
I look at Nova — unconscious, pale, the mark pulsing on her wrist. She weighs nothing. She survived everything. And she has no idea what she’s become.
“You can’t come with us,” I say. Not a question.
Zoe shakes her head. “If I vanish the same night she does, they’ll connect it in an hour.
I can’t leave my guys, and our group would be too noticeable.
I can do more from inside. Cover your tracks.
Misdirect. Buy you time.” She swallows hard.
“But I know someone. My aunt. She lives about four miles past the east gate. Small house, keeps to herself, doesn’t ask questions. ”
“Can we trust her?”
“She’s family.” Zoe says it simply, like that ends the discussion.
She touches Nova’s forehead one more time, quick and gentle, the kind of goodbye you give someone who can’t hear you.
“Take care of her,” she says. To all of us. “Whatever she is, she’s still Nova.”
Then she’s gone. Back around the building, moving fast. I didn’t hear her coming and I don’t hear her leave.
I stand there for a second too long before Locke says my name and pulls me back.
“East gate,” I say. “Stay close. Stay quiet.”
We move.
The campus is different at this hour. Late afternoon, most people in their rooms or the common areas. The paths should be empty, and mostly they are.
Then I see the first black vehicle parked outside the administrative building and my stomach drops.
Nightmare Order. The same unmarked cars from before, angular and dark, the kind that showed up in our classrooms with men who watched Nova like she was a specimen. There’s one outside admin, another near the quad entrance. A third idling on the main road that cuts through campus.
“Kyron.” Beckett’s voice, low. He’s seen them too.
“I see them.”
“That’s more than last time.”
He’s right. Before it was one or two, watching from the back of a lecture hall. This is something else entirely, and they’re looking for someone.
I adjust our route without stopping. Off the back path and into the narrow gap between the science building and the old library. It’s tight, barely wide enough for Vaelor’s shoulders, but it keeps us out of the sightline from the main road.
“Single file,” I say. “Vaelor, keep your head down. Locke, keep her close to your chest. If anyone sees us we’re heading to the east field for a study group.”
“With packs and sleeping bags,” Rane mutters.
“Camping trip.”
“In the middle of the term.”
“Rane.”
He shuts up.
We move through the gap. I check the cross path before we step out — clear.
The east side of campus is quieter, more spread out.
Faculty housing to the north, groundskeeper buildings to the south, and the boundary wall beyond that with the gate where students leave for weekend trips and sanctioned cross-House visits.
The gate is fifty yards away, still open because it’s daylight hours, but there are two men in black standing just inside it.
They’re not checking people. They’re just standing there with their hands at their sides, scanning everyone who passes without stopping anyone. Not yet.
“We walk through,” I say quietly. “Normal pace. Don’t cluster up. Spread out a little. Trey and Rane, go ahead of us. Beckett, fall behind. Vaelor and Locke, you’re in the middle with me.”
“They’ll see her,” Locke says. His voice is barely a sound.
“Her face is against your chest. Keep it that way. If they ask, she’s sick. Food poisoning. We’re taking her to a friend’s place off campus because the clinic is closed.”
“Is the clinic closed?”
“I don’t know. It doesn’t matter. They’re not going to ask.”
I don’t know if that’s true. But I say it like I do because that’s what the group needs from me. Certainty.
Trey and Rane move ahead. Casual. Rane even manages to say something to Trey that makes him shake his head, and from a distance they look like two guys heading out for the afternoon. Good.
Beckett drops back, pulls out his phone, and walks with his head down like he’s reading something. Not a single thing about him worth noticing.
Locke adjusts Nova against his chest. Her face presses into his shoulder. The mark on her wrist is hidden, barely. If someone grabbed her arm, they’d see it.
No one’s going to grab her arm.
Vaelor falls in on Locke’s left. I take the right. We walk.
Twenty yards. The men in black haven’t moved. One of them is looking in our direction but his gaze passes over us and keeps going. Scanning. Not targeting.
Ten yards. I can see their faces now — young, bored, probably Order recruits. Not senior staff. Not Laith’s people.
Trey and Rane pass through the gate without drawing a glance.
Five yards. Nova makes a sound — small, barely there, a murmur in her sleep or pain or something I can’t identify. But it’s audible and one of the men’s eyes flick toward Locke.
“She’s been throwing up since lunch,” Vaelor says without breaking stride. His voice is warm and easy and perfectly calibrated. Big guy, friendly face, concerned friend. “We’re taking her to her aunt’s place to sleep it off.”
The guard looks at Vaelor. Looks at Locke. Looks at the woman in his arms whose face is conveniently hidden.
“Clinic’s open till six,” he says.
“She won’t go,” Vaelor says. “You know how it is.”
The guard almost smiles. Waves us through.
We walk through the gate. I don’t let myself breathe until we’re twenty yards past it.
Beckett comes through behind us a minute later, phone still in hand, looking like every other student heading off campus for the afternoon.
Trey and Rane are waiting at the tree line. We regroup. Nobody speaks. We just look at each other for a second, and then I turn east and start walking.
Four miles to Zoe’s aunt. A place to stop that isn’t the middle of the woods.
My arms burn and the bond hums and behind me Nova breathes against Locke’s chest. I can hear it over everything else, even over my own pulse, even over the sound of six people trusting me to see what’s coming.
I missed Zoe at three feet and I almost put a knife in her.
I won’t miss the next one.