Chapter 6 #2
She nods and goes back to her reading. I'm grateful she doesn't push it, doesn't make it into something it's not. We eat in comfortable silence for a while and then she says, "Oh, you're not going to believe what happened in Shifter Biology yesterday."
"What?"
"Some first-year asked Ms. Rivera if wolves could get hiccups." She's grinning now. "Like, genuinely wanted to know. And Rivera just stood there processing the question and then she smiled. Like a real smile. I didn't know her face could do that."
"Can they get hiccups?"
"Nobody knows! That's what made it perfect!" Lily's laughing. I'm laughing too. For a moment we're just two normal girls having lunch and talking about something stupid.
Then I see Sera Whitlock walking past our table with three other senior girls, and the moment breaks.
Sera doesn't stop but she slows down just enough to make it intent, and one of the girls with her says something I can't quite hear and they all laugh. Sera's eyes cut to me for just a second and then away again, dismissive.
I look back at my food and Lily reaches across the table and squeezes my hand once before letting go.
"Ignore them," she says quietly.
"I'm trying."
I don't remember the walk from the dining hall to Biology.
I just know that one moment I'm staring at the remains of a meal I barely touched, and the next I'm watching Rivera draw pack hierarchy diagrams on the board, the dull ache in my cracked ribs pulsing in time with the scrape of her chalk.
I press my palm against my ribs under the table and try to focus, but the pull from the corridor is still sitting in my chest, quieter now but present, like a note held too long after the instrument stops.
I've been registering it all morning without meaning to.
The way it arrives before I see him. The way it fades but never fully goes.
The way it's different from ordinary awareness of another person, more physical, more involuntary, more like something happening to me than something I'm doing.
"Miss Bardot." Rivera's voice. I look up. "Can you tell me the primary difference between inherited alpha status and earned alpha status?"
I stand. "Inherited status comes from bloodline, ma'am. It's passed down through family lines regardless of individual capability. Earned status comes from challenge and combat, proving dominance within the pack structure."
"Correct. And which system is more common in modern Council-sanctioned packs?"
"Inherited, ma'am. The Council prefers bloodline succession because it's more stable and predictable."
"Good." She nods and moves on.
After class she stops me at the door. "Nova, can I have a moment?"
The room empties around us.
"I heard about the chapel," she says quietly. "I can't do anything official about it but if you need someone to talk to, my office is open. Third floor, west wing."
"Thank you, ma'am."
"I mean it." She touches my shoulder briefly. "You're doing well in this class. Don't let them take that from you."
She leaves. I stand in the empty room for a moment with that small warmth before the weight of the rest of the day presses back in.
My legs are shaking by the time I reach the training hall.
Because I haven't shifted yet I'm forced to sit out the drills, which means my only job is to sink onto the cold metal of the observation bench and try to keep my eyes open while the rest of the room spars.
I've been on it every session since I arrived, watching the others move, taking notes on footwork and transitions and the way their wolves carry themselves differently than their human forms, faster, more economical, less self-conscious.
Today the main ring has Knox Wilson paired against a fourth-year who has won every drill I've seen him in. The fourth-year is good. Moves with easy confidence. When Professor Cross signals the start I lean forward slightly because I want to see how this goes.
What follows is efficient and brutal and over fast. Knox doesn't fight the way anyone else in that room fights.
He doesn't establish tempo or probe for weakness.
He just responds, differently every time, no pattern you can read, and when the fourth-year finally shows hesitation in his face Knox is already moving into the gap it created.
Clean takedown. The fourth-year hits the mat.
Cross blows her whistle. "Reset."
The third exchange is when everything changes.
The fourth-year drives low, textbook form. Knox lets him start it and I can see from the bench that it's intent, the slight adjustment of weight that invites the move. The fourth-year commits. Knox accepts the grab and then something in him changes.
I watch it happen. Something leaves his face entirely. Knox's hands find the fourth-year's arm in a hold with a purpose that has nothing to do with the drill. Cross is out of her chair, shouting. Knox doesn't stop.
He doesn't stop.
Two students near the ring are moving. The fourth-year makes a sound I feel in my back teeth. Knox still doesn't release until Cross's hand lands on his shoulder and then he steps back in a single motion and the fourth-year is on the mat.
The crack. I heard it before Cross touched him. That dense, heavy sound of bone giving way.
Knox stands in the cleared space looking at his hands. No expression. No recoil. He looks at his hands the way you check an instrument, and then his eyes come up and find mine across the hall with a precision that suggests they already knew where to look.
I don't look away.
The injured fourth-year is being helped off the mat. Students have drawn back in a wide arc. Knox and I are looking at each other across the cleared space and I'm aware my pulse has gone somewhere it shouldn't be.
I know exactly what that fourth-year is feeling right now. I should be looking at him with something like recognition. Instead I'm looking at Knox Wilson.
Then Cross turns. "Wilson. Outside. Now."
He turns and walks out and the room exhales.
I sit there breathing through my nose, thinking about the sound of that break and about Knox's eyes finding mine after. Thinking about the fact that I'm still sitting here and not running.
That afternoon Sera finds me in the corridor after the drill session, alone this time, no friends as backup, just that cold fixed smile.
"That was quite a show," she says conversationally. "Knox breaking that boy's arm. You were watching pretty intently."
I keep walking.
"I wonder what he saw when he looked at you after. Because he did look at you. Everyone noticed. Knox Wilson doesn't look at anyone."
"Is there a point to this?"
"Just curious." She stops walking but I keep going. "Be careful, Nova. You're collecting a lot of dangerous attention and I don't think you understand what that means yet."
I don't turn around. I just keep walking and I try to ignore the fact that she's right.
By the time evening comes the pull has settled into a constant background ache, familiar enough now that I barely notice it anymore.
I knock on his office door and he calls me in.
The office is smaller than I expected, three walls of books, a desk, a window showing the darkened grounds. He's already there with a folder open.
"Sit," he says.
I sit in the chair across from his desk.
"We're starting with bloodline law," he says. "Pre-Council era. The Harford Territories and the collapse of the old pack system."
He teaches with precision, no warmth, no encouragement. I take notes and ask questions and he answers them in that measured register. Forty minutes in he leans forward to look at something I wrote.
"You're not writing what I'm saying. You're paraphrasing."
"It helps me retain it better, sir."
"It introduces potential inaccuracy."
"My paraphrases are accurate, sir."
He looks at what I've written. His jaw tightens briefly and then smooths. "Continue."
The rest of the session runs the same way. At eight-thirty I close my notebook and stand.
"Same time tomorrow," he says without looking up.
"Yes, sir."
I'm at the door when he says: "Miss Bardot."
I turn.
"The arm. How bad is the cut?"
"It's healing, sir. Slower than it should but it's healing."
He holds my gaze for a moment. Something in his expression does something he doesn't fully control, a tightening around the eyes that comes and goes before I can name it.
"Dismissed."
That night I can't sleep. I lie in bed and the pull from the corridor is still there, quieter now but not gone, like a hum just below hearing that you only notice when everything else is silent.
The cut on my arm pulses. My ribs ache. The training hall ceiling I keep replaying in my mind has Knox's eyes in it, pale and direct and pointed at me like something decided.
I lie there until Lily's breathing evens out across the room.
Then I stare at the ceiling some more. The pull won't let me settle, that low persistent ache under my ribs that I don't understand and can't make stop and can't ignore.
I catalogue it like a symptom, pressing at its edges in my mind, trying to understand what it is.
I still don't understand it when the sky starts going grey at the window.