Chapter5
1279 Words
Three days after the corridor encounter, Roman Vael is sitting next to me in AP English.
The desk to my left, which was empty yesterday is now occupied by a boy in black who opens a copy of Their Eyes Were Watching God to page one and begins to read without acknowledging that I exist.
I look at him.
He turns a page.
I look at Mr. Pearce at the front of the room. Then at Roman. I look at my own copy of the book.
After approximately ninety seconds of this, without looking up from the page, he says: “I transferred in.”
“No you didn’t.”
A pause. “No.”
“You chose this seat deliberately.”
“Yes.”
“Because of me.”
“Yes.”
Mr. Pearce is talking about Hurston’s use of the horizon as motif. I am sitting next to a Vael wolf who has apparently enrolled himself in my AP English class for surveillance purposes. These two things coexist in the same moment with no apparent difficulty.
I open my book and say, quietly: “You have until the end of class to decide whether you’re going to explain yourself or whether I’m going to report an unfamiliar wolf in my territory to the closest affiliated pack, which in this case is going to be Ashvale, which I understand is complicated for you.”
He is quiet for a moment.
“Fair.”
At the end of class, while the room empties, he remains seated. I remain seated. Mr. Pearce gathers his things and leaves.
We are alone in the classroom.
Roman closes his book. He looks at me. He does the thing he did in the hallway — the extended eye contact that is technically dominance behavior but does not, in his case, feel like dominance behavior.
“I need you to understand that what I’m going to offer you is not charity, not manipulation, and not a debt.”
“What are you offering?”
“Protection. Real protection. I have resources and a network and a reason to keep you safe that has nothing to do with wanting something from you.”
“What’s the reason?”
“My pack has known about Aurum Primalis carriers for thirty years. We’ve been watching for the next emergence since the last one was killed.”
I look at his face and try to decide whether he thinks this is supposed to scare me or inform me. I take it as informing me.
“What does it mean? The blood type?”
“It means you carry something in your blood that the pack world has been at war over for three centuries. It means there’s a faction — multiple factions — who want you alive for what they can extract from you and dead for what you could do if you understood it fully.” He pauses. “It means you are not safe as an unaffiliated wolf in this city and you have been walking around for three weeks acting like you are.”
“I’ve been walking around being careful.” I sound defensive.
“Careful is not the same as safe. Careful means you’ve noticed the threats. Safe means the threats can’t reach you. You are currently careful and unsafe.”
I look at him and I think about the redacted records. I think about my eyes in the bathroom mirror at 3am.
“What do you get out of this?”
“Right now? Nothing. In the long term — if you survive to develop what you are, if you come into full Aurum Primalis activation, you will reorder the pack world. I want my pack to be on the correct side of that reorder.”
“That’s honest.”
“I don’t see the point in lying.”
I look at him for a long time. He looks back. The empty classroom is very quiet.
“I’m not accepting protection I don’t control.”
“Define your terms.”
“You tell me everything you know. All of it, as you know it — not curated, not filtered for what you think I can handle. You don’t act without my knowledge. You don’t make decisions about my safety on my behalf without my consent.”
“Some decisions about your safety will need to be immediate.”
“Then you make them and you tell me after. Immediately.”
“Agreed.”
“And you still haven’t told me how you knew where I live.”
“I had your address before the Verification.”
I go still.
He continues “I’ve known about you for eight months. The Hollow posted your bloodline analysis on a closed forum in February. I took the post down within twenty minutes but I kept the data.” He holds my gaze. “I should have found you then. I didn’t move fast enough. That’s on me.”
I sit with this. Eight months. Someone on a closed forum. He took it down and kept the data and then waited. I look at his face and what I find is: a person who is telling me a thing that makes him look bad because he has decided that being honest with me matters more than looking good. I have not encountered this level of honesty in a while.
“Why didn’t you move fast enough.”
Long pause.
“Because I thought the Ashvale bond would protect you. I thought the Verification would register and you’d be bonded to the heir and that’s the most protection an unmated wolf can have. I thought—” He stops. “I thought you’d be covered.”
He thought Caden would cover me.
It slowly dawns on me that maybe Caden thought the rejection would cover me.
Two people made decisions about my safety without consulting me, and here I am, three weeks into a new life, eyes going gold in the bathroom mirror at 3am, and both of them thought they were doing the right thing.
“Everyone needs to stop making decisions on my behalf.”
“Yes.”
I stand up. I pick up my bag.
“I’ll think about the offer. Don’t follow me home today.”
“I know where you live.”
“That’s why I said don’t.”
I walk out.
I am halfway down the hallway before I realize my hands are shaking — not fear, not cold, something else, something that takes me until I’m outside in the autumn air to identify.
Anger. Clean, focused anger, the kind that spurs you into action.
Someone put my blood type on a pack forum eight months ago.
Someone has been watching me since before the Verification.
I need to know what I am before someone else decides for me.
I pull out my phone. I pull up the number Mrs. Chen gave me three weeks ago — Jasper Holt. I stare at it for a moment.
I text: Are you free after school? I need to find someone who knows about bloodline anomalies.
His response comes in forty-five seconds: I know a guy. Also hi. You texted me.
I type back: Don’t make it weird.
He sends back a single emoji. It is, inexplicably, a small golden star.
I put my phone in my pocket. I keep walking.
My eyes are not glowing. My hands have stopped shaking.
I have a plan and a network of one and a Vael wolf who is either an asset or a problem and probably both.
This is, in fact, enough to work with for now.
- Writer
