Chapter 4 #2
He bounded into the classroom like an overgrown Labrador, all energy and delight, and immediately began pulling out supplies—bandages, splints, thermal blankets, and what looked like actual medical equipment.
"Wilderness First Aid," he announced, "is not about being a hero.
It's about keeping people alive until the heroes arrive.
" He grinned. "Though occasionally, you will be the hero.
Let's start with the fun stuff: hypothermia.
I know many of you covered this during our orientation classes, but it is worth hearing again because–hello Alaska! "
He walked us through the stages with the kind of vivid detail that made the back row wince. Mild hypothermia: shivering, clumsiness, confusion. Moderate: violent shivering, slurred speech, loss of coordination. Severe: shivering stops, pupils dilate, pulse slows.
"The body is trying to protect the core," Boone explained.
"It pulls blood away from the extremities.
Your fingers and toes become sacrifices to keep your heart beating.
" He held up a photo of frostbitten hands—blackened, blistered.
"Once tissue freezes, you're in triage territory. Prevention is everything."
I thought of Denali. Negative forty with windchill. Avalanche zones. Whiteout conditions.
Boone had us practice hypothermia wraps on each other—the burrito method, he called it, layering insulation and vapor barriers while minimizing movement. My partner was a nervous student who kept apologizing every time he touched me.
"Tighter on the core," I told him. "Loose around the extremities—you don't want to restrict blood flow."
He blinked at me. "Have you done this before?"
"I grew up in a cold climate." That answered a lot of questions without actually answering them.
By the end of class, I was revising my mental checklist: vapor barriers, chemical heat packs, emergency bivvy, insulated ground pad. I'd need to improve my medical kit with Mr Boone’s suggestions. He had good tips.
Mythology with Professor Vince Tomlinson was the last class of the day, and by the time I sank into my seat, I was running on fumes. The universe, apparently amused, had scheduled Ivy—my roommate—and the cowboy—my unwanted mate—into the same hour long class.
Vince surveyed the room as students filtered in, and when his gaze swept past me, it caught—just for a heartbeat. I looked down at my notebook, and he kept scanning like nothing had happened.
Good. We'd had an unspoken agreement since I'd enrolled: in here, I was just another student. Not Rae the Medicine Woman’s sister, not someone who'd sat at his dinner table and watched him argue with his mate about whose turn it was to change Alexandra's diaper.
Just Lumi Orlav, freshman, seat seven row four.
The alternative was questions. How do you know Professor Tomlinson? Do you know the Medicine Woman? How? And then the looks—the recalibrations, the assumptions about favoritism or connections. I'd worked too hard to get here on my own terms to become "the girl who knows people."
Vince—Professor Tomlinson, I corrected myself—was a contrast to Boone's energy. Calm, measured, with the kind of quiet intensity that made you lean forward to catch his words. He wrote on the board: MYTHS AS SOCIAL TECHNOLOGY.
"Mythology," he said, "is not a collection of old stories.
It is a survival mechanism. Stories teach us who we are, what dangers exist, how to navigate the social world.
" He paused, and I could swear his eyes flickered toward me again.
"Tonight, I want you to think about a myth from your home region.
Your culture. Your family. We'll share them next week—not as entertainment, but as technology.
What does the story do? What behavior does it encourage or forbid? What identity does it reinforce?"
My thoughts went immediately to Darian—Gregor's old friend, now Cora’s mate, who'd visited often and told stories by the fire late into the night. One story in particular.
There was a woman who walked between worlds. Not wolf, not human, not pack or village but both and neither. She could find the ferals—the ones lost to the wild—and she didn't run from them. She accepted them.
I remembered asking what happened to her. Darian had smiled, firelight flickering across his lined face.
Depends on who's telling. Some say the packs hunted her—couldn't abide something that didn't fit their categories. Some say she died saving a feral who couldn't be saved. Some say she survived. Had children. That her bloodline might still exist, somewhere.
I'd asked if it was true. He'd said, All myths are true. That's what makes them interesting.
Tomlinson dismissed us, and I took my time gathering my things, letting the other students file out first. He was erasing the board when I passed his desk, and without looking up, he said quietly, "Rae says you're settling in."
"Trying to."
"Thursday office hours. If you need anything." Still not looking. Still maintaining the fiction.
"Thanks, Professor."
I slipped out before anyone noticed the exchange, turning the memory of Darian's story over in my mind. A woman who found ferals and accepted them. A lineage that might still exist.
After dinner, I changed into running gear and headed for the trail behind the dormitories. The evening had gone fully dark, the path ahead broken into pools of light by the sidewalk lamps, my breath fogging with each exhale.
I ran until my legs burned, then ran some more. Stairs next. By the time I finished, I was sweating and shaking and blissfully empty of thought.
The library was quiet when I arrived, smelling of old paper and wood polish.
I found a study carrel in a back corner and spread out my research: topographical maps of Denali, weather pattern analyses, accounts from climbers who'd attempted the West Buttress route.
I cross-referenced avalanche data with my vision—the ridge where I'd seen the wolf, the approximate location based on terrain features.
The timeline was tight. Summit season was short, conditions unpredictable. I had maybe a couple of weeks to be ready.
My phone buzzed. A text from Silas:
Library basement, reference stacks 7pm.
Our first weekly check-in. Rae had arranged it before I'd even finished unpacking—her mate helping her little sister navigate the thing they shared. Visions. The curse of seeing too much and understanding too little.
I stacked my maps and research into a careful pile, then hesitated. Silas was a seer. If anyone could read between the lines of what I was studying, it was him. I slid the Denali materials into my bag instead of leaving them on the table, buried under a textbook.
The basement was dimmer, quieter, filled with periodicals and archives that most students probably forgot existed. Silas was waiting near a table in the corner, surrounded by books that looked older than the building.
He looked up when I approached—pale gray eyes that had always unsettled me, even at Rae's dinner table. Easier to handle when Alexandra was climbing on him and he was pretending to be a horse.
"You're training hard," he said without preamble.
I sat across from him, keeping my bag close.
I shrugged, aiming for casual. "First week of classes. Just working off stress."
His gaze lingered a moment too long, and I wondered how much seers could actually sense from each other. Whether my visions left some kind of residue he could read.
"Have you seen anything lately?" he asked.
"Fragments," I said. Not a lie. "Nothing clear."
Silas studied me, and I held his gaze without flinching. I'd learned a long time ago that looking away was as good as a confession.
"Visions come as they want to," he said finally. He slid a book toward me—leather-bound, handwritten. "Sometimes they clarify. Sometimes slowly, sometimes all at once. When yours does, I hope you will tell me."
So you can tell Rae. So they can stop me.
"Of course," I said.
He didn't look convinced, but he let it go. "These sessions are about learning to navigate what you see. Control is the wrong word—you don't master the current. You learn to swim. But first, you have to understand the water."
I opened the book. The text was dense, annotated in several hands over what looked like centuries. Techniques for grounding after a vision. Methods for distinguishing true sight from anxiety dreams. Warnings about the cost of ignoring what you'd been shown.
The vision always finds a way to fulfill itself. The only question is whether you're prepared when it does.
My chest tightened.
We sat in comfortable silence after that, reading, and I let the quiet settle into my bones.
But I could feel him watching, patient and observant, and I knew this balance wouldn't hold forever. Eventually, I'd have to choose: tell them and be stopped, or keep lying to the closest thing I had to family.
Outside the small basement window, night blanketed the campus. And somewhere in my mind, a wolf howled—waiting, feral, alone.
I left the library an hour later, cutting across the quad toward the dormitory. The path was empty, lampposts casting pools of pale light, and I was halfway to the door when I felt it—that hum, rising unbidden.
James was sitting on a bench near the trailhead. He had a book open in his lap, though I doubted he could read in this light.
He looked up when I approached. Didn't say anything. Just shifted over, making room.
I should have kept walking. Every rational thought said to keep walking.
I sat down.
We stayed like that for a long moment, side by side in the darkness, and the hum thrummed steady beneath my skin—not demanding, not pulling, just there. A warmth I hadn't asked for.
"You were at the library," he said finally. "Saw you go in."
"And you decided to wait outside in the cold?"
"Figured you might want company on the walk back." He shrugged. "It's dark."
"I can take care of myself."
"I know." He said it simply, without challenge. "Doesn't mean you have to."
The words landed somewhere tender, somewhere I hadn't armored properly. I looked away, toward the mountains, where Denali waited.
"You're strange," I said.
"So I've been told." He stood, offering me a hand. "Come on. It's cold."
I didn't take his hand. But I walked with him, and he didn't seem to mind.
At the dormitory door, I paused. He was still there, patient.
"Why?" I asked.
"Why what?"
"Why wait?"
He considered the question like it mattered, like I mattered, and the hum swelled.
"Because you look like someone who's used to walking alone," he said. "And sometimes that's a choice. But sometimes it's just... habit."
He walked with me up the stairs and paused at the second floor, tipped his cap, a gesture so absurdly old-fashioned it almost made me smile, and walked off toward his own room.
I watched him go.
Later, lying in bed, I kept seeing his stupidly handsome face and didn’t fall asleep for a long time.