Howl I Met Him: Werewolf Trials

The gates of Ashfall Academy didn't creak. They groaned, like something old and tired of holding itself together, and Reyna decided right then that she hated them. "Okay, that's not ominous at all," Fen said beside her, craning his neck up at the iron spikes curling over the entrance. "Very welcoming. Very 'come on in, we definitely don't sacrifice freshmen here.'" "You've been here five seconds and you're already planning your escape route." "I planned it in the car. This is just confirmation." Reyna huffed a laugh despite herself. Fen had that effect, he always had, ever since they were kids throwing rocks at the creek behind her mother's house. He looked the part now too, easy grin, hands shoved in his pockets like he owned the place, like nothing in the world could rattle him. She envied that. Her own hands were curled so tight around her bag strap her knuckles had gone white. "You good?" Fen bumped her shoulder with his. "Fine." "Liar." "I'm allowed to be a little freaked out, Fen. I got a letter telling me to show up at a school I've never heard of because of something that happened the night I was born. That's a normal amount of freaked out." "Sure, sure. Very normal. Very chill." He tilted his head, studying her with the exaggerated squint he used right before he said something annoying. "You know what would help? If you stopped walking like you're bracing for someone to jump out of a bush." "There could be someone in the bush." "There's always someone in the bush, Red. That's just campus life." She shot him a look. "Don't call me that." "Red Moon Reyna. It's got a ring to it." "It's got a ring to it because you won't stop saying it." "I contain multitudes." She would have argued more, except that was when she saw him. He was standing near the courtyard fountain with two other guys, all three of them broad-shouldered in that way that made Reyna instinctively catalog exits, but it was him her eyes kept snagging on. Dark hair, dark jacket, arms crossed like he was bored of holding up the whole building by sheer presence alone. He wasn't even doing anything. He was just standing there. And somehow the entire courtyard seemed to organize itself around him anyway, other students angling their paths a little wider, a little more careful. "Ooh," Fen said, following her gaze. "Someone's staring." "I'm not staring." "You're staring so hard I can hear it." "Shut up." "Reyna's staring at the broody one, everybody look-" "I will end you." "Cannot end what's already perfect." The guy's head turned. Just slightly. Like he'd heard something across thirty feet of courtyard, which was impossible, except apparently it wasn't, because his eyes landed straight on her and did not move. Reyna's stomach dropped in a way that had nothing to do with nerves about the school. He didn't smile. He didn't wave. He just looked at her the way you'd look at a puzzle piece that had rolled under the couch and turned up somewhere it had no business being, and something about that stare made the back of her neck prickle hot. "He's coming over," Fen whispered gleefully. "Oh, this is the best day of my life." "Please stop talking." "I'm going to need popcorn for this." The guy crossed the courtyard in maybe six strides, which should not have been possible from that distance in that short a time, and stopped close enough that Reyna had to tip her head back to hold his eye. "You're the new one." It wasn't a question. "I have a name." "I know you do." A beat. "I'm asking if you're the one everyone's talking about." "Depends what they're saying." "That you were born during the red moon eclipse. That the seal reacted when your mother crossed the wards eighteen years ago and hasn't been quiet since." His jaw ticked, like the words cost him something to say out loud. "That kind of talk." Reyna's mouth went dry. She'd heard versions of this before, whispered by relatives who thought she was asleep, hinted at in the letter that dragged her here, but never said flat out, never by a stranger standing three feet away like he had every right to know. "And if I am?" "Then you need to stay away from the east wing." His eyes flicked to something behind her shoulder, just for a second, and when they came back they'd gone harder. "Whatever you do. Stay away from there." "Kade." One of the guys behind him said it low, warning, like a leash pulling taut. "Not here." Kade ignored him completely. "Did you hear me?" "I heard you." Reyna lifted her chin. "I'm still going to ask why." Something flickered across his face, surprise maybe, or the beginning of something that wasn't quite a smile. "Course you are." "You gonna answer?" "Not out here." He glanced around the courtyard, at the students who'd very much noticed the alpha's son standing nose to nose with the new girl, and something in his shoulders pulled tighter. "Meet me after orientation. Old chapel, west side." "Why should I trust you?" "You shouldn't." He said it so simply it almost startled her. "But you're going to go looking for it yourself either way, aren't you. I can see it already." His eyes dropped, just briefly, to the way her hand had curled into a fist at her side without her noticing. "Might as well have someone there who knows what they're doing when you find it." He didn't wait for her answer. He turned and walked back to his friends like the conversation had never happened, and Reyna stood there with her heart doing something complicated in her chest. "Okay," Fen said into the silence, "I need everything. Right now. Start from the top." "I don't even know his name." "Kade. Alpha's kid. Cornerstone of about four different rumor mills already, and you've been on this campus for," he checked an invisible watch, "six minutes." "Great. Fantastic start." "I think it's a wonderful start." Fen slung his arm over her shoulders, steering her toward the main hall before she could argue. "Broody alpha boy warns you off the forbidden east wing on sight, invites you to a secret chapel meeting, and refuses to explain why. That's not a red flag, Red, that's a whole parade." "He's hiding something." "Everyone here is hiding something. Did you see the gates? Groaning gates do not belong to people with nothing to hide." Reyna didn't answer. Her mind had already snagged on something else Kade said, quiet and easy to miss under the warning: *the seal hasn't been quiet since.* Since her mother crossed the wards. Since the night she was born under a moon the color of blood. She'd come here looking for answers about a destiny nobody would explain to her. She hadn't expected the answers to come wrapped around a boy who looked at her like she was a problem he already knew he couldn't leave alone. --- The old chapel sat past the tree line, half swallowed by ivy, windows blown out long enough ago that moss had claimed the sills. Reyna almost turned back twice on the walk over. Fen had wanted to come. She'd told him no, mostly because if this went badly she didn't want him going badly with her. Kade was already there when she arrived, leaning against a broken pew like he had nowhere else in the world to be. "You came." He didn't sound surprised. "You knew I would." "I hoped." The corner of his mouth almost moved. "Different thing." She crossed her arms, stopping a few feet from him, close enough to talk, far enough to run if she needed to. "So talk. What's under the east wing?" Kade's expression shut like a door. "Something that shouldn't exist. Something my father's whole council has spent two hundred years making sure stays exactly where it is." He pushed off the pew, closing half the distance between them, and lowered his voice like the walls might be listening. "And something that's been getting stronger every single day since you walked through that gate." Reyna's heart slammed once, hard. "That's not possible." "Tell that to the seal." His eyes searched her face, and for one second the sharp edges of him softened into something that looked almost like worry. "I need you to understand what that means, Reyna. If it's really you causing this, if the bloodline talk is true, then there are people who already know it. People who've been waiting eighteen years for a girl born under a red moon to walk in and finish what got started that night." "Finish what?" Kade opened his mouth to answer. The ground shuddered under both their feet, once, deep and wrong, like something enormous had just turned over in its sleep. Every candle in the chapel guttered out at the exact same moment, and from somewhere past the tree line, past the east wing, past every warning he'd tried to give her, a sound rose up that was not quite a howl and not quite a scream. Kade's face went white. "It's never done that before." "Kade." Reyna's voice came out smaller than she wanted it to. "What is that?" He grabbed her hand, and for once there was nothing teasing in it, nothing soft, just pure instinct pulling her toward the door. "Run."