Howl I Met Him: Werewolf Trials

Chapter 2

Kade's hand closed around hers and the world tilted sideways.

They ran. Not toward the main hall like every instinct screamed at Reyna to do, but away from it, toward the tree line, Kade's grip iron tight and his stride eating up ground twice as fast as hers.

She had to half stumble to keep pace, her boots skidding on wet grass, and somewhere in the back of her mind a small, furious voice noted that his hand was warm. Warm and rough and exactly the size to swallow hers whole.

[Focus, Reyna. Possible apocalypse happening. Not the time to notice hand stuff.]

"Where are we going?" she gasped.

"Away from the east wing." He didn't slow down. "That's the only plan I've got right now."

"That's not a plan, that's a direction."

"It's the direction that keeps you alive. Take it."

They broke out of the trees into a stretch of open lawn, and only then did he let go, rounding on her with his chest heaving and his eyes doing a fast, frantic sweep over her like he expected to find her missing a limb.

"You're fine," he said, more to himself than to her.

"I'm fine." She pressed a hand to her ribs, catching her breath. "Are you going to tell me what that was?"

"I don't know."

"You said it's never done that before."

"It hasn't." His jaw worked. Up close, in the low grey light, she could see the version of him that didn't get the courtyard treatment, no easy sneer, no audience to perform for, just a guy who looked, for one unguarded second, actually scared. His dark hair had fallen loose across his forehead, and there was a thin white scar along his jaw that she hadn't noticed from ten feet away, the kind you only got from something with claws. "Two hundred years and it's never made a sound like that. Not once."

"Until I showed up."

"I didn't say that."

"You didn't have to."

Kade exhaled through his nose, dragging a hand down his face, and when he looked at her again some of the panic had burned off into something steadier, something almost apologetic. "I'm not trying to make you feel like a monster, Reyna. I'm trying to keep you breathing long enough to figure out why the ground under the east wing decided tonight was the night to wake up."

"Comforting."

"I never said I was good at comfort."

"Understatement of the century."

That got the corner of his mouth to move, actually move, the ghost of a smile she was starting to suspect he rationed out on purpose. It didn't last. Voices carried across the lawn, a cluster of students spilling out of the main hall drawn by the noise, and Kade's whole posture changed in an instant, shoulders squaring, jaw setting, the alpha's son sliding back over his face like a mask clicking into place.

"Don't talk about this," he said, low and fast. "Not to anyone. Not even your friend."

"Fen."

"Whoever. If word gets out you might be the reason the seal's acting up, you will have a target on your back before curfew." His eyes held hers, hard and urgent. "I mean it. Please."

The please undid her more than the warning did.

"Fine," she said. "But you owe me actual answers. Tonight wasn't a conversation, it was a fire drill."

"Tomorrow. I'll find you."

"You don't even know my schedule."

"I'll find you," he said again, like that settled it, and then he was walking backward toward the crowd gathering at the tree line, already reassembling the bored, untouchable expression he'd worn across the courtyard that morning, like the last twenty minutes hadn't happened at all.

Reyna stood there a second longer than she should have, watching him go, and hated how long her eyes lingered on the set of his shoulders before she made herself turn around.

Fen found her in the crowd two minutes later, out of breath and wild eyed. "Please tell me that scream had nothing to do with you and secret chapel boy."

"It had nothing to do with me and secret chapel boy."

"Liar."

"Working on it."

"You reek of adrenaline, Red, I can smell it from here, and also you have leaves in your hair, which, side note, kind of a look for you." He plucked one out before she could stop him, twirling it between his fingers. "So. Spill. What did Broody McMystery say?"

"Not here."

"There's an entire courtyard of witnesses currently losing their minds over a noise that sounded like the earth itself filing a complaint, and you want to whisper about it in a closet?"

"Yes."

Fen grinned, delighted. "Say less."

***

The closet turned out to be a supply room off the east corridor, cramped and smelling like dust and old parchment, and Reyna gave Fen the short version, the seal, the tremor, Kade's warning to keep quiet, leaving out the parts that made her chest do something complicated. Fen listened with his arms crossed and his usual grin slowly fading into something more serious, which on him looked almost unnatural, like a costume that didn't fit.

"So the working theory is you're a walking key to an ancient evil," he said finally.

"That's the working theory, yeah."

"Cool. Cool cool cool. Very normal Tuesday."

"I told you, none of this is normal."

"I know, I know, I'm processing through humor, it's a coping mechanism, my therapist and I are working on it." He rubbed his jaw. "Okay but real talk. You trust him?"

"Kade?"

"No, the other broody stranger who cornered you in a courtyard today. Yes, Kade."

Reyna hesitated a beat too long, and Fen's eyebrows shot up.

"Oh my god."

"Shut up."

"You *like* him."

"I don't know him."

"That has never once stopped anybody from liking somebody, Reyna, that's not how crushes work, crushes are not a peer reviewed process."

"I don't have a crush." The words came out faster than she meant them to, which was its own kind of confession. "I have a guy who knows something about the thing that might be trying to kill me, and I need information, and he's the only one offering it."

"Sure. Information. Is that what we're calling those eyes."

"Fen."

"I'm just saying, if information came wrapped in a six foot tall alpha's son who looks at you like you're the last piece of a puzzle he's been missing his whole life, I would also call it information, very earnestly, with a straight face."

[He's not wrong and that is deeply annoying.]

The door swung open before she could answer, and a girl leaned into the frame like she owned the hinges, all sharp cheekbones and sharper eyes, dark hair pulled back so tight it looked like it hurt.

"There you are." The girl's gaze flicked over Reyna once, head to boots, cataloguing and dismissing in the same breath. "You're the new one. The red moon girl."

"I have a name," Reyna said, for the second time that day.

"I'm sure you do." The girl didn't offer one back. "I saw Kade talking to you earlier. Then I heard the whole campus lose its mind twenty minutes later, and now here you are, hiding in a closet with leaves in your hair." A slow, unimpressed smile. "Busy first day."

"Do you need something?"

"Just a friendly warning." The girl pushed off the frame, close enough now that Reyna could smell something like crushed pine and winter air, could see the faint gold ring around otherwise dark eyes, the kind of pretty that came with teeth behind it. "Kade doesn't do damsels. Whatever you think just happened between you two, it's not the start of anything. It's him doing his job." Her eyes dropped, deliberate, to where Reyna's hand still remembered the shape of his around it. "I'd hate for you to get confused."

"I'm not confused about anything."

"Good." The girl's smile didn't reach her eyes. "Keep it that way, Red Moon."

She was gone before Reyna could find an answer sharp enough to throw back, the door swinging shut behind her, and the supply room felt smaller than it had a minute ago.

Fen let out a low whistle into the silence. "Well. That was a whole lot of jealous packed into one very small doorway."

"That wasn't jealousy, that was a warning."

"Reyna. My love. My friend. That was jealousy wearing a warning as a coat." He leaned back against a shelf, arms crossed, grin creeping back in full force. "You've been here six hours and you've already got a mystery, a curse, a hot alpha bodyguard, and an enemy. This is genuinely the best day of my entire life and I didn't even do anything."

Reyna didn't answer. She was still staring at the closed door, at the space where the girl had stood, turning over one detail that hadn't stopped scratching at the back of her mind since the words left that perfectly glossed mouth.

*He doesn't do damsels. It's him doing his job.*

If that were true, she thought, then somebody needed to explain why Kade's hand had shaken, just slightly, right before he let go of hers.