Northern Light (Frosthaven Academy: Northern #2)

Chapter 1

Chapter one

Ivy dropped her tray onto the table hard enough to rattle my spoon.

“You look like shit.”

I blinked.

The cafeteria snapped back into focus in pieces—stone walls, long tables scarred by years of careless knives, the smell of soup and coffee. Sound followed a heartbeat later: laughter, chairs scraping, someone shouting, “Throw me an apple!”

A dozen conversations faltered and resumed around us.

“Good afternoon,” I said. My voice sounded thin. Like it had been used somewhere else and returned slightly frayed.

“It is not a good afternoon,” Ivy said. “It’s a you disappeared and came back wrong afternoon. Different category.”

She leaned back in her chair, eyes flicking past me—over my shoulder, across the room—tracking movement.

“Also,” she added, quieter, “everyone is staring.”

I gripped my spoon like it might keep me tethered. The soup in my bowl had gone lukewarm, a thin film forming on the surface—food meant to be fuel, not comfort.

“I don’t see them,” I said.

Ivy’s mouth twitched. “Your eyes might not. The rest of you does.”

I forced myself to look up. Not at faces. Just bodies.

There was space around our table that hadn’t been there before. A careful radius people pretended wasn’t intentional.

A group of girls near the windows went silent when I glanced their way. A boy at the end of the closest table stared openly until Ivy turned her head and he remembered manners existed.

I couldn’t even blame them.

I’d been gone.

Long enough for people to notice. Long enough for absence to turn into speculation. Frosthaven didn’t forget when you disappeared. It just waited to see what you came back as.

I’d come back thinner, quieter, moving like the ground might give way under my feet. Then I’d vanished again—into a building most students weren’t allowed to enter.

People noticed patterns. People filled in blanks.

Rumors didn’t need much encouragement.

“You’re shaking,” Ivy said.

“I’m not.”

“You are.” She took my wrist without asking. Her grip was warm, practical, steady. “Lumi.”

The contact sent a strange tightness through my chest. Not fear. Just overload. Too much sensation in a body that had learned to go very still.

I eased my hand free. “I’m fine.”

Ivy narrowed her eyes. “Hmmmm. Don’t believe you.”

Across the cafeteria, near the doors, James stood with his back to the wall like it belonged to him.

He was pretending to scroll through his phone. He wasn’t fooling anyone. Not me, and definitely not the people who kept glancing at him and then choosing different exits like they’d suddenly remembered somewhere else they needed to be.

Ivy saw it too. “He’s hovering.”

“He’s not doing anything,” I said.

“That’s the menacing part.”

James looked up at that moment, like he’d felt the weight of the word. His attention locked on me—not possessive. Not territorial.

Steady.

Like if I tipped over, he’d catch me before I hit the floor.

It should have made me feel safe.

Mostly, it made me feel visible.

She speared a piece of melon and chewed like it had personally offended her. “Professor Tomlinson assigned a paper while you were gone.”

“I know.”

“Twelve pages.”

“Transformation narratives in folklore,” I recited. “Due in two weeks.”

She stared. “You memorized the prompt.”

“Habit.”

“Uh-huh.” Her gaze softened for a fraction of a second. “You were up late again.”

It wasn’t a question.

I didn’t answer.

Ivy set her fork down carefully. When she spoke again, her voice was lower. Controlled.

“I’m not asking for details,” she said. “I know you can’t or won’t tell me. I’m not trying to be a problem.”

Her fingers tapped once against her tray. A nervous habit she would deny if confronted.

“But I need one thing from you.”

I nodded.

“You went up that mountain because you believed someone needed help,” she said. “Not because you wanted to. Not because you’re reckless. Because you couldn’t not go.”

The room faded around the edges. Cold wind. White stone. The certainty that if I turned back, something would be lost forever.

“Yes,” I said.

Ivy exhaled, slow and relieved. “Okay,” she said. “That makes sense.”

She didn’t ask who. Didn’t ask how I’d known.

She let the impossible stay impossible.

“There’s a party this weekend,” she said, pivoting with the kind of abruptness that was either mercy or strategy. “South tower. Lila Vance is hosting.”

I grimaced. “I don’t—”

“I know. But you should go.” She leaned forward. “The fastest way to kill a rumor is to be boring in public. Show up. Stand there. Drink something that looks fruity. Let people see you’re still you.”

She wasn’t wrong.

“I’ll think about it,” I said.

“That’s all I want.” Ivy stood, tray in hand, her armor snapping back into place. “Class in fifteen. Don’t be late. Tomlinson is hunting weaknesses.”

She paused. Looked down at me with an expression I couldn’t quite name.

“Whatever happened,” she said quietly, “I’m glad you came back.”

Then she was gone, weaving through the tables, leaving me with cooling soup and the weight in my bones.

Eat. Stand. Smile. Be normal.

My body remembered none of those things.

A shadow fell across the table.

James slid into the seat beside me.

“Ready?” he asked softly.

I wasn’t. But I nodded anyway.

He didn’t touch me. Just sat close, a quiet line drawn without words.

“You didn’t have to come today,” he said.

“I know.”

“You’re allowed to take more time.”

I swallowed. Looked at my hands. “He’s calmer.”

James stilled.

“The bond,” I clarified. “It’s steadier. Quieter.” I hesitated. “He doesn’t feel lost anymore.”

James waited. He was good at that.

“I’ve been calling him North,” I said. “Because that’s where I found him. Farther north than anyone was supposed to go. And because I couldn’t keep thinking of him as the feral. It felt like giving up on him.”

James’s expression softened, just a fraction.

“He shifted back once,” I said. “And for a second, I thought we’d lose him.”

My fingers curled reflexively against my palm. “His heart rate spiked. His breathing went ragged. The bond—” I stopped. “It was too much for him. All of it at once.”

James didn’t interrupt.

“But he didn’t panic,” I continued. “Not the way I was afraid he would.” I closed my eyes. “He pressed his nose into my hand like he was anchoring himself. Like if he let go, he’d disappear.”

I hadn’t hummed on purpose. The sound had just slipped out of me. But North had gone still when he heard it. His breathing had slowed. His weight had settled.

“He stayed,” I said quietly. “Even when everything in him was telling him to run.”

Hope was a dangerous thing. I felt it anyway.

“I can leave him now,” I said. “Not because he’s okay. Because leaving won’t break him.”

“For a little while,” I added. “I can breathe.”

James studied my face for a long moment. Then he nodded once.

We stood together and walked out of the cafeteria.

The corridor outside felt narrower than it used to. Or maybe I was just more aware of the space between bodies—the way people shifted when we passed, the way conversations thinned and angled away.

James stayed close, not touching, but near enough that I could feel the heat coming off him. Like he was trying to lend me his steadiness without asking if I wanted it.

"You don't have to prove anything," he said.

"I'm not proving anything. I'm just showing up."

He stopped outside the lecture hall. Through the open door, I could see students settling into seats, notebooks out, laughing softly like they hadn't spent the last week turning me into a cautionary tale.

"I'll be right here," James said. We walked into class together, the familiarity settling my nerves more than I expected.

I found my usual seat and James sat down beside me.

Around me, conversations hummed at the particular frequency of people trying not to be overheard. I caught fragments. Mountain. Healing Center. Dangerous.

My name, twice.

I pulled out my notebook and opened it to a blank page. Wrote the date in the top corner, because that’s what normal students did, and I was committed to being normal—even if it killed me.

No one here knew I’d climbed Denali.No one knew I’d pulled a feral wolf back from the edge and bonded to him.No one knew James had followed me into the wild, fought a bear, and come back bound to me just as irrevocably.

I was just a student who’d been gone for a while and had returned. Just ignore the rumors. Nothing to see here.

A girl I vaguely recognized—dark hair, sharp jaw, always sat three rows ahead—glanced back at me. Her eyes widened slightly when she realized I was looking. She turned around so fast her ponytail whipped the shoulder of the guy next to her.

I pretended I hadn't seen.

Professor Vince Tomlinson entered through the side door at exactly two minutes before the hour. He was carrying a stack of papers that looked like it might contain our academic futures, and his expression suggested he was already disappointed in most of us.

"Good afternoon," he said, setting the papers down with a thud that silenced the room.

"For those of you who've forgotten, we're discussing transformation narratives this week.

Metamorphosis. Change. The stories humans have told themselves for millennia about becoming something other than what they were. "

He began pacing, the way he always did when he was warming up to something. His shoes clicked against the stone floor in a rhythm I'd once found soothing.

"Today's focus: the question of return." He paused at the window, silhouetted against grey light. "When a character transforms—whether into an animal, a monster, a god—what determines whether they can come back? And more importantly..." He turned to face us. "What does 'coming back' actually mean?"

My pen moved across the page. Notes. I was taking notes. This was fine.