ARIA VALEN POV
The dream always comes back like a wound that forgot how to scar. I'm standing at the center of a circle of faces, my pack, while a laugh cleaves the air, I shift, at last, and the world opens like a throat. Then a hand, his hand, pushes me away and the sound of it breaking is the kind of silence that hollows you out.
I wake with that silence still in my mouth. The sheets smell faintly of iron and old linen, my fingers go straight to the moon-shaped mark on my shoulder before my brain can remember it's supposed to be a scar. Muscle remembers what thought denies, the ache is a herald, full moon next week, and whatever part of me that's not entirely human is moving under the surface.
Someone's been in my room.
At first I think it's the dream lingering, then the window frame catches at my sleeve when I stand, the latch is scratched, splinters are gone from the wood as though a desperate animal has tried it. On the worn rug by the foot of my bed, there's a smear of something dark and rust-red, half-wiped away, my breath comes sharp, this is no prank, this is a message.
Pinned to the pillow with a straight pin is a scrap of paper, my name, no, the name they used to use for me, Valen is smeared across it in a hurried hand, below it, someone has written, neat and cruel.
Dead girls don't shift, apparently you forgot.
Every rational part of me tells me to leave, go now, erase footprints, bury myself under a thousand roads. The other part, the part that survived cold and knives and exile, peels the paper from the pin and curls the edge under my thumb. The wolf in my chest stirs like it recognizes an old collar being offered.
I slip the scrap into my pocket, I make myself do the small, sensible things: wash my face, braid my hair, fold the blanket neatly. Routine stabilizes the edges, I dress in the school blazer and trousers like armor and tell myself no one will read the bruise under my sleeve because no one will look that closely. Hope and fear both wear the same face today.
Lycanridge's dining hall is already a river of bodies and noise when I step inside. Different packs, different colors, all merged into one glowing mass of privilege and hunger. I move as a shadow moves, trying to be nothing more than a traveler on a busy street. It's easier to disappear among other lives.
He finds me.
It happens at the far corner table, where the light thins and the couches hold people like they hold stories. I've just taken my first bite of bread when a presence slides into the seat opposite me, and I know, without looking up, that it's the kind of presence that would be easy to rust if trust weren't a dangerous thing.
He's quiet, not the brash sort that cuts across rooms, but a careful kind of man. Storm-gray hair that refuses to be tamed and eyes that carry the steady look of someone who's cataloged losses and learned to move them gently. He studies the bread on my plate as if measuring how much I can carry.
"You're new," he says simply.
"First day." I keep my voice level and give him nothing more than what the day allows.
"Elias Crowe, Room 13B." He pushes a folded slate across the table toward me, not intrusive, just present. "Dorm neighbor."
I murmur my name, Aria Valen because the new papers at registration asked for truth enough to grant me admission but not so much truth that I must wear it like an open wound. The name tastes old and fresh all at once.
We don't get another minute before the commotion starts. A shout, distant but sharp, the hum of a dozen conversations snagged and broken. People stand, chairs scrape, someone drops their mug and the clatter dances through the hall, heads turn toward the entrance and I already know, before I see, that the circle of stares will include the face I've tried not to think about.
Kael Draven moves through the doorway like a rumor made flesh. He walks with the kind of effortless command that makes people rearrange themselves without thinking. He's been the heir since he learned to howl, he's been the one destiny drilled into the bone of our pack since we were children and, of course, in the split of a heartbeat, I know he sees me.
His eyes lock on mine and something in me answers before my skull can tell my heart to stop. The bond tugs like an old rope being pulled from a drawer. It's not the gentle pull of fate, this is sharper, a lightning memory that hurts like an actual wound. The wolf stirs, claws pricking at the back of my mind, for a breath, I feel the animal wanting to lunge forward, wanting to tear the space between us open and claim what was once given and then taken.
Kael's jaw tightens, a cup tips on the table beside him, it's not his hand that moves but the ripple of the room, as if a low chord of tension vibrates through the air. People stare, a few of the table's occupants let out low noises, admiration, curiosity, something like fear, for a moment it's as if the world has reduced to the simple geometry of two bodies standing across a room.
I stand because the heat of it makes me want to. My fingers curl into the hem of my blazer, I will not give him the moment of watching me flinch, I will not hand him that power again, not in this room, not under these lights.
Before I can take a step away, Calen, a second-year who likes to swagger and makes a sport of mocking those he thinks beneath him, steps around my table and cocks a grin. "Well, well," he says loud enough that the sound carries, "if it isn't Moonshade's lost little moon, heard you were dead, guess someone's a stubborn ghost."
Laughter, a thin rain. My muscles tighten, the wolf roars, it's a sound I have learned to keep folded inside.
Elias's hand touches my wrist, It's a small, grounding presence. "Ignore him," he mutters.
I turn to Calen because I can't stand to let fools lie unchecked, my voice is cool. "I wasn't dead."
He laughs as though my answer is the punchline. Then, with the swift, petty viciousness of someone who likes to make myths crack, he reaches for my shoulder. He wants to press my scar into the air like a badge, he wants to humiliate the girl they once wrote off.
His fingers never make it to the skin.
Something, my wolf, the thing under the scar, moves in a line of motion so quick it breaks the sound of the room. A slip of silver wind, a flash across the table, and Calen jerks back as if stung, the people nearest him stumble away, and for the first time that week someone yelps in genuine alarm.
Master Thorn, a large man who prefers his students to learn by bruises, steps between us, eyes sharp. "No blood," he intones, voice resonant. "This is a school, not a slaughter pit."
Calen recovers his grin, forcing it bright. "She's lucky it's the rules."
But in the flicker of Kael's gaze, directed at me, there is no triumph, there is an unreadable weight, like regret folded into steel, he turns, moves away with a practiced ease that hides nothing and everything and as he departs, three things happen too quickly to be a coincidence: a figure on the balcony above the dining hall melts into shadow, a scrap of paper flutters from a pocket and lands on the floor at my feet, and the ward stones that ring the hall give off a soft, warning hum.
I pick up the paper with fingers that suddenly feel clumsy. Someone has scribbled a single word, all caps, with a hand that's shaking or proud, REMEMBER. No more, no less.
There's a look three tables over, an old man with eyes like flint who watches me with urgency. His mouth moves, I can't make out the words, but his hands rasp against his robe like someone about to call out a warning.
Elias leans close. "We should go," he says, "Now."
Some alarms are small, a frayed edge of caution that tugs at the sleeve. Others are the kind that demand movement, I tuck the paper into my pocket next to the pin and the other note. This is getting personal.
As we cross the courtyard, the air tastes metallic. The wards around Lycanridge are supposed to be the best, secret wards, old and patient. Yet at the corner of my vision, a figure in a dark hood pauses and looks toward us, I'm sure at once that the person doesn't belong in the crowd. They're not an official, they don't carry themselves like a student, they have the stillness of someone who waits for movement to make their decision.
They lower their hood as if to check a roster, their hand brushes over a list posted by the registrar's door like an animal testing water. Then they slip away, like smoke through the seams of the buildings.
When I finally reach my dorm, I lock the door and press my back to the wood. The scrap of paper in my pocket burns cold through the fabric. "Dead girls don't shift," it says. "Remember."
I whisper back into the dark, to a past that still binds me and a future that wants to unbind, "I remember, I remember everything."
The push of it, the presence of Kael, the watching man, the note, feels less like a threat and more like a rope tugging me toward something I thought I'd left behind. I have returned to the world with claws sheathed and resolved sharpened. If someone is trying to remind me who I was, I will remind them who I am.
The moon will rise, I will be ready.