ELIAS CROWE POV
Night tastes like iron and rain around Lycanridge. It settles into your clothes, clings to the inside of your throat, and makes even quiet things sound loud, I like it. The dark keeps things honest, It makes it harder for people to pretend.
I met Aria in the east wing after drills. She was late, of course, the way she always is when she's been pushed too hard, the bruise on her shoulder still showed through her sleeve like a pale crescent. She tried to pull the fabric together so I wouldn't see, like hiding a small animal in your hands, I reached out and stopped her, not with words but with my fingers, she didn't pull away.
"You should rest," I said, because that's what you tell people when you care and you don't quite know how to show it.
She gave me that little half-smile that felt like a secret, one I could be trusted with. "I didn't come to rest."
We walked slowly, stepping past the torchlight and the echo of other students. People here pretend the world ends at protocol, but the world ends at different things for different people. For Aria, it ends when her scar wakes, for me, it ends inside the ring where I learn how to keep her safe.
We stopped in the practice courtyard, where the old runes are cut into stone and the moss keeps its face turned away from the wind. The moon was high and thin, not full, but the scar under her sleeve started to hum like a bell. I've seen that hum before, I've watched it in things hidden.
"It feels different tonight," I said.
She looked down at the scar and clenched her jaw. "It does." Then she looked up at me fast as a fox. "Elias, keep this between us, please."
"You know I will," I promised, I meant it, I would have sworn to the moon and then to the stones if she'd asked.
She peeled back her sleeve with a small, careful motion. The skin there was pale where the wound ran, a crescent that looked like a moon bite, tonight a faint silver light threaded along the line. It was slow at first, like a vein filling with water, then it pulsed, brightening to a glow that made the fine hairs on my arm stand up.
For a second I felt like I was seeing her anew, not only Aria of the alcove or Ava on a roster, but something older, a name the world tried to forget and kept pushing back into the dark. I swallowed that thought because the night here is for keeping, not shouting.
"Are you feeling this?" I asked, though I already knew the answer.
She nodded, her chin trembled, barely. "Rune thinks it resonates. Something tied to the Moonblood, he said if it brightens during the moon it could draw attention."
I leaned closer and pressed my forehead to hers, an old childhood trick to quiet the storm, her breath smelled like frost and ink. "Then we'll make sure the attention never finds you."
Her laugh was soft, half a shiver. "You make it sound so simple."
"I don't make anything simple," I said. "I just keep what I can from breaking."
We set up wards, not the kind you get on formal lists but the crafty, sticky runes you draw on the fly. You learn to write fast when you grow up with little notice. I traced a circle under her shoulder with a finger dipped in rune-ink, the line shivered and drank it in, like the stone does when you pour water on moss.
"It's better," I said when the glow dimmed to a dull silver. "Not gone, but quieter."
She pressed her sleeve back down, covering the scar like it was a raw thing you didn't want everyone to stare at. "Why do you do this for me?" Her voice was small, curious, not a challenge, not an accusation, just a question a weary person asks when someone keeps standing there.
"Because you don't ask for much," I answered. "Because you gave me your trust when you didn't have to, because I remember what empty places feel like."
She studied me for a long breath, then the corner of her mouth turned up. It's a dangerous smile because sometimes you think it means more than it does. "You're too sentimental," she said.
"Maybe." I grinned. "But it keeps me useful."
We sat in the courtyard until the runes cooled and the moon moved away from the sharp edge of the school tower. Students passed in small packs, their faces half-hidden, their gossip light and mean, we kept our backs to the wall and watched the night like two animals who had learned safe places.
Then we saw them, Kael and his retinue moving along the promenade. You can recognize Alpha movement from a distance, the way they take up space without asking permission, the quiet pull of the pack behind them, Kael's shoulders were broad in the lamplight, his jaw set in that old line that kept me from laughing at a joke others made, he looked… off. Taut in a way that says something private is eating at you.
He saw us.
He didn't glance, though. Not at first, his eyes scanned the courtyard, landing on us like a stone dropped in water. The ripple hit my ribs with a cold twist, he stepped forward, and the wolves that trail him stepped closer. Celene walked beside him, her hair like a blade and her smile quick to knife.
I had choices then, I could have stepped forward and confronted him, I could have locked horns in front of the passersby and bared everything. Or I could keep my hands light and steady and let whatever passed between them happen without trying to steer the world.
Kael approached as if the world had drawn a breath only for him. Aria shifted so slightly, almost by accident, that I felt the pull in the pit of my stomach. I'd seen men do soft things with their lips before, but not with the weight of the past between them. When he stopped, Kael's face was closed and raw, for a moment the moonlight caught his cheek and I saw the man he could have been, the one who would have stayed rather than run.
His voice was low, private. "Aria."
Her name like a bell and like a blade. When someone says your name, either the space between you changes, or it doesn't, he stepped close enough that I could see the flash along his knuckles where his training gloves had rubbed. He looked like a man leaving pieces of himself on the sand.
She didn't step back, I wanted to tell her to, tell her to move, to breathe, to claim space. But the truth was she held herself like a thing that had learned to take blows and still keep standing. "Kael," she said, steady.
His hand rose, and for a heartbeat I thought he would touch the scar, he didn't. He hovered, the air between them thin as glass.
And then, almost without warning, he leaned in.
It was meant to be a kiss, an apology. Something I can't name cleanly, for a second the world narrowed to just the three of us and the soft scrape of the night wind. My wolf in my chest snarled once. It wasn't a full roar, it was a warning. It wanted to leap and tear, to show him how wrong he'd been, I made a choice right then.
I stepped forward.
Not hard, not with claws extended, just close enough to put a hand on Aria's shoulder and another on Kael's arm. I felt the heat under both skins, I felt the old thing between them like static.
"Not here," I said, voice flat. I kept my hand gentle on Aria, It was a claim that said I was present and I would not let her be rearranged by memory.
Kael looked at me like I'd shoved salt into an open wound, for a second his eyes had fire in them, anger and something like hurt. He pulled back as if my presence was a leash. "Elias," he said, but It wasn't a greeting.
I met his eyes. "Back off."
Celene smiled then, too bright, too clean. "How quaint," she said. She put a cool hand on Kael's arm, smooth as lacquer. "You two look cozy."
Kael hardened, he turned away, and the retinue followed. The moon moved, the glow on Aria's shoulder dimmed until it was only a memory.
She stared at me when they were gone, her chest moving with a small, shaky breath. "You always do this," she said. Not a complaint, not quite a thank you either.
"Because it needs doing," I answered. "Because I won't watch that happen again." My voice softened. "Because I've seen you pick yourself up, and I don't hate you for it."
She laughed then, brief and bright, the sound of something breaking open and settling. "You talk like a hero," she teased weakly.
"Maybe," I said. "But I'm a stubborn one."
We walked back to the dorm together, her hand brushed mine with an accidental touch, and my fingers curled around the space between us like a net, lean, small, enough to hold.
Later, when the night had settled, I sat at my desk and wrote on a scrap of paper, no rune, no word, just words I wanted to remember, I will not let them take you, I folded the paper and tucked it into the book Rune had lent me about Moonblood sigils. It felt petty and huge at the same time.
Outside my window, the moon rolled its slow wheel. The scar on her shoulder was quiet now, a sleeping thing, I pressed my palm to the wood and closed my eyes. In the dark I could still feel the heat of where Kael had leaned toward her, and the steadiness of my own hand holding them both away.
I don't know if love is the right name for what sits in my chest, It's more like a promise. Like hunger wrapped in discipline, like the small steady fever that keeps you moving when everything else says stop.
Either way, I won't let her be someone else's answer, not again.