THE MOON HIDES MY HEART

Chapter 2: First Blood

The wolf lunged.

I closed my eyes.

I didn't scream. I didn't run. I just stood there, waiting for teeth to tear through my throat, waiting for the end to come fast.

But it didn't.

Instead, I heard a sharp whistle. The wolf stopped mid-air, its massive body freezing inches from my face. I could feel its breath on my skin. Hot. Rank. Hungry.

"Down, Fenrir."

The wolf whined and backed away, tail tucked between its legs. I opened my eyes and saw a tall man in a black coat standing at the edge of the courtyard. Silver hair. Yellow eyes. A scar running from his eyebrow to his jaw.

"That's enough hazing for one night," he said. "The human is under my protection until orientation."

The wolf—Fenrir—whined again and disappeared into the shadows.

The man walked toward me. His footsteps made no sound on the snow.

"You're either very brave or very stupid," he said. "Most humans wet themselves when Fenrir shows his teeth."

"I'm from Istanbul," I said, my voice steadier than I felt. "We don't scare easily."

He smiled. It wasn't a kind smile. "We'll see about that. Follow me. Orientation starts in ten minutes."

He led me through a maze of hallways lit by floating candles. The walls were made of black stone, covered in tapestries depicting wolves hunting under full moons. Every few feet, we passed a student.

And every single one of them stopped to stare at me.

They sniffed the air as I walked by. I heard whispers in languages I didn't recognize. German. Russian. Something that sounded like Norwegian.

"Human."

"Smell her. So soft."

"Prey."

I kept my eyes forward and my face blank. But my heart was racing so fast I thought it might burst.

Tell no one what you truly are.

Right. Because apparently, being human was already bad enough.

The orientation room was a massive hall with a ceiling so high I couldn't see the top. Rows of wooden benches faced a stone platform where a woman in white robes stood waiting. Her hair was the color of ash. Her eyes were completely black.

No. Not black. The pupils were just so dilated they swallowed the color.

"The Balancer," the woman said as I walked in. Her voice echoed off the walls. "We thought your kind had gone extinct."

"I don't know what that means," I said.

She smiled. "You will."

She gestured to an empty bench near the front. I sat down. Within seconds, the hall began to fill with students. Dozens of them. Then hundreds.

They all looked at me.

Some with curiosity. Some with disgust. Some with something darker, something that made my skin crawl.

And then he walked in.

Nikolai Volkov.

The boy from the entrance. White-blond hair. Ice-blue eyes. He moved like he owned the room, because he probably did. Every head turned as he passed. Every girl's eyes followed him.

He sat down on the bench directly behind me.

I felt his gaze on the back of my neck like a physical weight.

"You survived," he said quietly. "Impressive."

"Don't sound so disappointed."

He leaned forward. His breath was warm against my ear. "I'm not disappointed. I'm curious. Humans don't survive Fenrir. Unless they're not entirely human."

I turned my head and looked him in the eyes. "Maybe I'm just lucky."

"Luck doesn't exist here." He sat back. "Only teeth and blood."

The woman in white raised her hands. The room went silent.

"Welcome to Nordlicht Academy," she said. "I am Headmaster Aldric Vane."

Headmaster. I'd expected a man. But there was something ancient in her voice, something that had seen centuries.

"You have been chosen because you are the strongest, the fastest, the most powerful of your bloodlines. Here, you will learn to control your beasts. To master your transformations. To become the alphas your packs need."

Her black eyes found me in the crowd.

"And this year, we have something unprecedented. A human student."

The whispers exploded. I heard the word again and again.

Human. Human. Human.

"Her name is Elif Demir. She comes from Turkey, from a line of Balancers thought lost to history. You will treat her with respect. You will not harm her. And you will remember that her presence here is a gift, not a weakness."

A boy in the back laughed. "A gift? She's food."

The headmaster's eyes snapped to him. The temperature in the room dropped ten degrees.

"Would you like to test that theory, Mr. Jäger?"

The boy went pale. "No, Headmaster."

"I thought not."

Orientation lasted another hour. Rules. Schedules. Warnings about the forest. Warnings about the full moon. Warnings about each other.

I barely listened.

I was too busy watching the students watch me.

The girl sitting two rows to my left kept sniffing in my direction. Her nose twitched every few seconds. She had long red hair and freckles, and she looked at me like I was a steak dinner.

The boy in the back who had called me "food" was built like a wrestler. His eyes kept flickering gold, his canines extending and retracting like he was tasting something in the air.

And Nikolai.

Nikolai never took his eyes off me.

When orientation ended, a boy with sandy brown hair and kind green eyes approached me. He was tall but not intimidating. Warm. Like a fireplace in winter.

"Hey," he said. "I'm Lukas. Lukas Brandauer."

"Elif."

"I know." He smiled. It reached his eyes. "Don't let them get to you. The first-year humans always have a rough start."

"First-year humans? How many have there been?"

His smile faltered. "You're the first. In fifty years."

Great. No pressure.

"Come on," he said. "I'll show you to your dormitory. The East Wing is this way."

We walked through the hallways together. Lukas talked the whole time, pointing out classrooms, the dining hall, the library, the training grounds. His voice was easy. Comfortable.

"Your roommate—"

"I don't have one."

He raised an eyebrow. "Really? The East Wing singles are reserved for—"

"For what?"

He hesitated. "For students who are considered… dangerous."

We reached my room. A simple door made of dark oak, with my name engraved on a brass plate.

Elif Demir — East Wing, Room 7

"Well," Lukas said, "I'm in Room 12 if you need anything. And I mean anything. The wolves here can be… intense."

"I noticed."

He smiled again. "You'll be fine. You've got guts. That counts for more than strength around here."

He walked away. I watched him go, then opened my door.

The room was small but warm. A single bed with white sheets. A desk. A wardrobe. A window that faced the frozen forest.

And on the pillow, a single black feather.

I picked it up. It was warm. Like someone had just been holding it.

Welcome to Nordlicht, a voice whispered in my ear.

I spun around.

No one was there.

The next morning, I made my first mistake.

I went to breakfast.

The dining hall was cavernous, filled with long wooden tables and hundreds of students. The moment I walked in, the noise stopped. Every head turned. Every nose twitched.

And then the whispers started.

"Human."

"Smell her."

"So soft. So breakable."

I grabbed a tray and sat down at an empty table in the corner. I thought if I kept to myself, they'd leave me alone.

I was wrong.

A shadow fell over my table. I looked up and saw the red-haired girl from orientation. Up close, her eyes were the color of rust.

"You're in my seat," she said.

"There are fifty empty seats," I said.

"This one is mine. Move."

I didn't move.

The girl's lip curled. Her canines extended, sharp and white. "I said move, human."

"Freya." Lukas's voice came from behind her. "Leave her alone."

The girl—Freya—glared at him. "Stay out of this, Brandauer. The human needs to learn her place."

"And her place is at this table, if she wants."

Freya's eyes flickered between me and Lukas. Then she smiled. It wasn't a nice smile.

"Fine. But she can't hide behind you forever."

She walked away. Lukas sat down across from me.

"You shouldn't have done that," I said.

"Done what?"

"Stood up for me. Now she's going to make your life hard too."

He shrugged. "My life is already hard. At least now it's interesting."

The first class of the day was Lycan History. The classroom was in the oldest part of the academy, where the walls were covered in ancient runes and the air smelled like old paper and older secrets.

I sat in the back, hoping to disappear.

But the teacher—a bald man with a wolf's head tattooed on his throat—called my name before the lecture even started.

"Miss Demir. Since you are our first human student in fifty years, perhaps you can tell the class what you know about the Balancers."

Silence.

"I don't know anything," I said honestly.

The teacher's eyes narrowed. "Nothing? Your mother didn't teach you?"

"My mother is dead."

The words came out harder than I intended. The room went quiet.

The teacher opened his mouth to respond, but someone else spoke first.

"Her mother was Sibel Demir."

Nikolai. He was sitting three rows ahead, not even looking at me. But his voice carried.

"She was the last recorded Balancer. She disappeared twenty years ago. Married a human. Had a daughter. Died of cancer." He finally turned his head. His ice-blue eyes met mine. "Convenient timing, don't you think?"

"What are you implying?" I asked.

"Nothing." He turned back around. "Yet."

After class, I tried to leave.

But Freya was waiting for me in the hallway.

"Where do you think you're going, human?"

"Around you."

I stepped to the left. She stepped with me. I stepped to the right. She mirrored me.

"You're in my way," I said.

"You're in this school." She pushed my shoulder. "That's the problem."

I didn't fall. But I stumbled. Just enough to feel humiliated.

"Stay away from Lukas," she said. "He's mine."

"I don't want Lukas."

"Good. Because if I see you near him again, I'll—"

"You'll what? Push me again? Scratch me with your little claws?" I looked her in the eyes. "I grew up in Istanbul. I've been followed home by men twice your size. I've been cornered in alleys. I've had my head held under water by bullies who thought my weight made me weak. You don't scare me, Freya. You're just another mean girl with sharper teeth."

Her face twisted. "You don't know what I am."

"I know exactly what you are. A wolf who's afraid of a human. That's pathetic."

I walked past her. My heart was pounding. My hands were shaking.

But I didn't look back.

The second class of the day was Physical Training.

It was held outdoors, in a clearing surrounded by frozen trees. Snow covered everything. The cold bit through my coat like tiny knives.

"Today," the instructor said, "we test your instincts."

He was a massive man with a scarred face and no left ear. His name was Master Torben, and he looked at us like we were raw meat.

"Pair up. Wolves with wolves."

"Wait," I said. "There's an odd number."

Torben's eyes found me. "So there is."

No one moved toward me. No one wanted to pair with the human.

"Miss Demir," Torben said. "You'll go against the wall."

"The wall?"

He pointed to a stone wall covered in claw marks. "You'll practice dodging. Since you can't fight back."

I bit my tongue and walked to the wall.

For twenty minutes, I stood there while wolves threw practice strikes at each other. Their speed was inhuman. Their strength was terrifying. One boy punched a training dummy so hard it exploded into splinters.

And then Freya stepped away from her partner.

"Master Torben," she said sweetly. "I think the human needs a real demonstration."

Torben raised an eyebrow. "The human is not to be harmed."

"I won't harm her. I'll just… show her what she's up against."

Before anyone could stop her, Freya lunged.

She didn't hit me.

She pushed me.

Hard.

My feet slipped on the ice. I fell backward, my arms flailing, and landed on a jagged rock hidden under the snow.

Pain exploded through my left palm.

I looked down.

Blood.

Bright red. Flowing from a deep cut across my skin.

The moment the blood hit the air, everything changed.

Freya's eyes went wide. Her pupils dilated. Her lips pulled back from her teeth.

Around me, the other students froze. Their noses twitched. Their eyes glowed gold, amber, red.

The scent of my blood was filling the clearing.

And every single wolf was staring at me like I was their last meal.

"Smells… sweet," someone whispered.

"Like honey."

"Like mine."

A boy stepped forward. I recognized him as the one who had called me "food" at orientation. His eyes were completely gold now. His canines had extended past his lower lip.

"Just one taste," he said. "She's bleeding anyway."

He dropped to his knees in front of me. I tried to scramble backward, but the rock was behind me. There was nowhere to go.

He grabbed my injured hand.

His tongue touched my palm.

And then everything stopped.

"Get your mouth off her."

The voice was quiet. Calm. And absolutely terrifying.

The boy froze. His tongue was still on my skin.

"I said off."

A hand grabbed the back of the boy's neck and yanked him away from me. He flew backward like he weighed nothing and crashed into a tree ten feet away.

I looked up.

Lukas Brandauer stood over me. His green eyes were glowing like emeralds. His jaw was tight. His hands were shaking.

But not with fear.

With rage.

"Listen to me, all of you." His voice carried across the clearing, low and deadly. "This human is under my protection. Anyone who touches her, anyone who looks at her like she's food, answers to me."

The boy by the tree got to his feet. "She's just a human, Brandauer. Why do you care?"

Lukas walked toward him. Each step was slow. Deliberate.

"Because," he said, "her blood just made my wolf want to tear your throat out for touching her. And my wolf doesn't lie."

He grabbed the boy's collar and lifted him off the ground.

"Breathe on her again," Lukas whispered, "and I'll show you what happens to wolves who touch what's mine."

He dropped the boy.

Then he turned and walked back to me.

He knelt down, pulled a cloth from his pocket, and wrapped it around my bleeding hand.

"You okay?" he asked quietly.

"You just threatened to kill someone for me," I said.

"Yeah." He smiled, but it didn't reach his eyes. "I guess I did."