Chapter 10
Chapter ten
Rae's house smelled like cinnamon.
I stood on the porch for a full minute before knocking, letting the warmth bleeding through the windows remind me what normal felt like. Inside, I could hear Alexandra's voice—the determined babbling of a toddler who had opinions about everything and the lung capacity to share them.
The door swung open before I could knock.
"Lumi!" Rae pulled me into a hug before I could brace for it. She smelled like vanilla and something herbal—one of her teas, probably. "I was hoping you'd come by. Alexandra's been asking for you."
"She's two. I’m not sure she even remembers me."
"Oh yes she does! She points at photos and screams, LULU."
I let myself be pulled inside, and the tension I'd been carrying in my shoulders eased slightly.
The house was warm, cluttered in the way that meant people actually lived here—toys scattered across the living room floor, a half-folded basket of laundry on the couch, dishes drying in a rack by the sink.
Normal. Safe. Everything Frosthaven wasn't.
Alexandra came barreling around the corner like a tiny freight train, arms outstretched, already talking at a volume that suggested she'd inherited someone's commanding presence.
"Lulu! Lulu up!"
I caught her before she could crash into my knees and swung her onto my hip. She grabbed a fistful of my hair immediately, examining it with the intense focus of a scientist studying a new specimen.
"Hey, gremlin."
"Not gremlin," she said firmly. "Andra."
"My mistake. Hey, Andra."
She nodded, satisfied that I'd been corrected, and went back to inspecting my hair. Rae watched us with a soft smile.
"She's very particular about names right now."
"I noticed."
We settled in the living room—me on the couch with Alexandra in my lap, Rae curled into an armchair with her tea.
The afternoon light slanted through the windows, golden and gentle.
For a few minutes, we just existed together.
Rae asked about classes. I gave vague answers.
Alexandra showed me her stuffed wolf, which she'd named "Woof" with devastating simplicity.
It was nice. It was exactly what I'd needed.
Which meant, of course, that I had to ruin it.
"Can I ask you something?"
Rae's eyes sharpened slightly, though her posture stayed relaxed. "Always."
“Was Twilson always such—” I covered Alexandra’s ear, “—an ass?”
She didn't flinch. Didn't even look surprised. Just took a slow sip of her tea and said, "Yes."
"That's it? Just yes?"
"What else do you want me to say?" She set down her cup. "Twilson's been running Frosthaven for decades. He's good at his job, if you define 'his job' as maintaining order and cataloging anomalies. He's less good when something doesn't fit his categories."
The words landed with weight. I thought about the cafeteria. The whispers. The pointed comments about fairness and favoritism.
"He went after you too," I said. Not a question.
"He went after me differently." Rae's voice was calm—not bitter, not traumatized.
Just matter-of-fact. "I was a bigger threat to his worldview.
Hybrid abilities, multiple bonds, the whole unprecedented package.
He reported me to the council. Had me monitored, investigated, contained.
" She smiled, but it had an edge. "The old council, I mean. Before we replaced them."
She shrugged like it was nothing. "Twilson lost his institutional backing, but he didn't lose his instincts. He still watches. Still categorizes. Still gets prickly when someone refuses to fit his boxes."
Alexandra squirmed in my lap, bored with the adult conversation. I handed her Woof and she immediately began an elaborate game that seemed to involve the stuffed wolf climbing my arm like a mountain.
"What did he do to you specifically?" I asked. "Back then?"
Rae was quiet for a moment. "PE," she said finally. "I got attacked during a training exercise. Self-defense situation, except I didn't just defend myself—I healed myself. Without meaning to. Without knowing I could."
My chest tightened. "That's how they found out about your abilities."
"That's how everyone found out." She met my eyes.
"The thing about Twilson is that he's not evil.
He just believes very deeply in systems, and when something threatens those systems, he responds with everything he has.
It's not personal. Well, if it is personal, unfortunately that is probably because you are related to me. "
"It feels very personal."
"It always does." She reached across the space between us and squeezed my hand. "But here's what I learned, Lumi: his power only extends as far as you let it. He can watch you and report you and make your life difficult, but he can't define you. Not unless you let him."
I wanted to believe that. Wanted to feel the certainty in her voice as my own.
But Rae had won her battle. She'd overthrown councils and found her mates and built this warm, chaotic life full of family.
I hadn't won anything yet.
The front door banged open with the subtlety of a small explosion.
"Honey, I'm home!" Ash's voice preceded him into the living room, all theatrical cheer. "And I brought— oh, hey, little arsonist. Didn't know you were visiting."
I raised an eyebrow. "Little arsonist?"
"You know what you did." He dropped onto the couch beside me, close enough that Alexandra immediately abandoned her wolf-climbing game and lunged for him. He caught her with practiced ease. "Hey, monster. You terrorizing our guest?"
"Not guest," Alexandra informed him. "Lulu."
"Lulu. Right. My mistake." He shot me a grin, sharp and warm at the same time. "Speaking of past crimes, I was just telling Vince the other day about that time we blew up the— what was it? Storage shed?"
"Equipment locker," I said. "And you said it was fireproof."
"It was fire-resistant. Important distinction." He bounced Alexandra on his knee, and she shrieked with delight. "The point is, it was mostly fire-resistant. Like, seventy percent."
"Seventy percent is a failing grade."
"Seventy percent is a C-minus. Very respectable."
Rae was watching us with an expression I couldn't quite read—fond, maybe. Or sad. Something in between.
"That was a weird day," I said quietly.
The humor faded from Ash's face, replaced by something gentler. "Yeah. It was."
The day Rae met Gregor. The day she found out the man who'd raised me in the orphanage was her biological father. I remembered the tension in the air, thick enough to choke on. Remembered Ash pulling me aside, suggesting we "explore" his current experiment in the equipment storage area.
We'd blown up a locker full of training dummies. The fire suppression system had gone off. Everyone had come running.
And somehow, in the chaos, Rae and Gregor had found a moment to breathe. To look at each other without the weight of revelation crushing them.
"You did that on purpose," I said. "The explosion was a distraction."
Ash shrugged, but his eyes were serious. "Sometimes people need a crisis they can solve instead of one they can't."
Alexandra grabbed his nose. He pretended to be mortally wounded, and the moment passed.
Rae walked me to the door when I left, Ash and Alexandra's laughter still audible from the living room.
"Lumi." She caught my arm before I could step onto the porch. "One more thing."
I waited.
"You feeling pulled toward anyone?"
The question hit like a sucker punch. Casual. Light. Like she was asking about the weather.
"What do you mean?"
"You know what I mean." She wasn't accusing. Wasn't pushing. Just watching me with those steady eyes that had seen too much to be fooled by deflection. "Vince mentioned there's a cowboy circling your orbit."
Heat climbed up my neck. "He's not circling anything."
"Okay."
"He's just... there. In my classes. In my space. In my way."
"In your way." Rae repeated it slowly, like she was tasting the words. "That's an interesting way to describe someone."
"It's accurate."
"Is it?"
I didn't answer. Couldn't. The hum was there again, thrumming beneath my skin at the mere mention of James, and I hated how easily it surfaced.
Rae didn't push. That was the thing about her—she never pushed. She just looked at you with those knowing eyes and waited for you to catch up to what she already saw.
"He doesn't know anything," I said finally. "About... any of this. The world. What we are."
"Do you want him to?"
"I don't know what I want."
"That's okay." She squeezed my arm. "You don't have to know yet. Just... don't push something away just because it scares you. Sometimes the scary things are the ones worth keeping."
I thought about James. The way he'd held me. The way he'd left when I asked him to.
When you're ready. If you're ever ready. I'll be there.
"I have to go," I said.
Rae nodded. Didn't ask where. Didn't ask why.
She just hugged me again—longer this time, tighter—and let me go.
The walk back to my dorm took fifteen minutes.
I used every second of it to think.
Rae hadn't told me anything I didn't already know. Twilson was territorial. The academy was a system designed to categorize and control. My connections were liabilities as much as they were strengths.
But she'd confirmed something else too. Something I'd been trying not to examine too closely.
She'd seen the cowboy comment coming before I said it. She'd known, probably from the moment I walked in the door, that something had shifted. That I was carrying more than just Twilson's scrutiny.
Don't push something away just because it scares you.
Easy for her to say. She'd found her people. Built her life. She knew how the story ended because she'd already lived it.
I didn't know anything. I just had visions of a wolf on a mountain and a bond I couldn't explain and a headmaster who wanted to put me in a box I'd never fit.
Frosthaven looked different in the evening light. Softer. The harsh edges of institutional architecture blurred by shadow, the pathways empty and quiet. Almost peaceful.
Rae had survived it. Had burned down the systems that tried to contain her and built something new from the ashes.
Maybe I could do the same.
That night, I dreamed of fire.
Not the mountain—something older. Ash laughing as sparks flew. Alexandra's small hand in mine, leading me somewhere I couldn't see. Rae standing in the distance, watching, waiting.
And behind them all, the wolf.
Running.
Falling.
Calling me home.
I woke up with tears on my face and the taste of smoke in my mouth.