Death isn't an option

Chapter Ten

Myth and folklore is the worst possible class to be walking into when your life has turned into a horror story.

The lecture hall hums with the usual low-grade student noise—laptop keys, whispered gossip, the crinkle of snack wrappers. The fluorescent lights buzz faintly. It should all feel normal.

It doesn’t.

I’m running on three hours of sleep and caffeine that tastes like burnt tar. Every time my heart beats, the scar under my sternum throbs along with it, a dull, insistent ache. The wards around my door and window hummed at me all night. I half expected to open my eyes and see Ridge House’s carved ceilings or Knox sitting by my bed again.

Instead I got my shitty dorm popcorn ceiling and an encrypted phone glinting on my nightstand.

I slip into a seat near the middle. Myth and Folklore: Constructs of the Supernatural. Once upon a time that was just a fun elective to pad my humanities credits.

Now it feels like a syllabus of red flags.

Elara is already at the front, setting a fat white candle on the edge of the desk. She’s in black slacks and a soft-looking sweater, hair braided over one shoulder. She looks like every “cool professor” stereotype—approachable, clever, safe.

I know better now.

“Good morning,” she says. “Today we’re looking at cross-cultural narratives of wolf-gods, oaths, and fate-bound witches.”

Of course we are.

Students settle. Screens tilt open. Someone in the back mutters, “Sick,” like this is just another day of fun monsters.

“The wolf is one of the oldest figures in our shared mythic vocabulary,” Elara continues. “Feared, revered, worshipped, scapegoated. In some traditions, wolves are messengers of a god or goddess; in others, they are the god.”

My skin crawls.

I glance down at my notebook and see that I’ve drawn a jagged line over and over instead of actual notes. It looks like a cardiogram. Or a crack.

“Likewise,” she says, “we have recurring motifs of humans touched by that power—hunters, warriors, witches—marked in ways that set them apart from their communities.”

Marked.

My hand goes to my chest before I can stop it. The scar is just a raised line under my shirt, but it feels like a brand.

“Those marks can be literal—scars, symbols, changes in the eyes—or more abstract. A sense of being between worlds. Of having seen something others haven’t, and can’t.”

My pulse spikes. The monitor in my brain that’s now tuned to all things wrong starts blaring.

She moves as she talks, slow and deliberate, picking up the candle and setting it on a small ceramic plate. She strikes a match. The flame catches with a soft fwoom and steadies.

“This candle is just beeswax and cotton and fire. But for our purposes, we’ll treat it as a stand-in for a locus of power. Something we can observe.”

My gaze drifts away from the flame, out the tall windows that line one wall.

On the quad below, students cross in loose streams. Backpacks, headphones, the usual. And there, leaning against a lamppost with his phone to his ear, is Knox.

Dark jacket, dark jeans, sunglasses pushed up into his hair. He looks like every campus fantasy: older man, dressed like he doesn’t belong here, radiating money and quiet danger.

He’s positioned with a clear line of sight to the building’s doors.

Heat flushes my neck. I snap my gaze back to the front.

The candle flame leans. Just a little. Just enough that if I hadn’t been staring right at it, I would have missed it.

My heart trips.

Draft, I tell myself. AC. Or maybe someone opened a door.

No one has. The air feels still.

Elara’s eyes flick up, sweeping the room. For one quick second they land on me, then on the candle, then back.

“If we look at European traditions, we see a pattern of packs and covens bound by oaths—not just to each other, but to something beyond them. A goddess of the hunt. A moon deity. A spirit of the woods. Those touched by these powers often describe… sensitivity.”

The word lands differently now.

“Getting headaches at thresholds. Feeling watched. Knowing when someone lies.” Her smile is small, almost apologetic. “These are not just story devices. They’re human attempts to give language to experiences at the edge of our understanding.”

My scar throbs hard enough to make me press my hand against it. I shift in my seat, hoping no one notices.

I risk one more glance out the window.

Knox hasn’t moved far. He’s turned slightly, one shoulder braced against the lamppost. Phone still at his ear, but his head is angled toward the building now, as if he can see through concrete and glass.

I pretend I can’t feel my body recognizing his presence. That faint looseness in my muscles that only shows up when I know he’s within range. The quick, hot flutter low in my belly that I hate.

The candle flickers higher.

Elara taps the base of it lightly with one knuckle. The flame calms. Odd.

I try to take notes. My handwriting comes out jittery, letters cramped.

Wolves. Oaths. Marked witches. Between worlds.

She talks about a story from somewhere in Eastern Europe—a witch who dies three times and comes back each time with a new scar and a new piece of the god’s power. By the end, the witch is more portal than person.

The room feels too close.

I sit through the rest of class by sheer stubbornness, dragging my thoughts back every time they threaten to slide toward the gray shore or the feel of fur under my hands. By the time Elara closes her laptop, I’m vibrating under my skin.

“That’s all for today,” she says. “Next time we’ll look at bargains and their loopholes. Please read the assigned chapters from Kline and Rajan.”

Chairs scrape. Students start shoving laptops into bags.

“June?” Elara calls over the low roar. “Could you stay a moment? I’d like to talk about your last paper.”

My stomach drops.

Of course she wants to talk now. Today. The day my entire nervous system is one exposed wire.

I could say I have somewhere to be. Therapy. Work. Anything.

Outside the window, Knox straightens a little, like he knows my name was just used.

I sigh and nod. “Sure.”

The room empties faster than I want it to. The door swings shut behind the last student with a soft, final thud.

Elara doesn’t full-on close it. She leaves it cracked a few inches. It feels less like an escape route and more like plausible deniability.

“Have a seat,” she says.

I drop into the front-row chair nearest the desk. My backpack thumps against my foot. I keep my hands in my lap so I don’t start shredding the strap.

Elara doesn’t sit right away. She adjusts a stack of papers, moves her laptop to the side. The candle sits between us on its little plate, burned down just a bit from earlier. The wick glows steady.

“How are you feeling, June?” she asks.

I blink. “About the paper?”

She lifts one shoulder. “We can start there, if you like. But I meant more… generally.”

There it is. The weight behind the question.

“I missed a class,” I say. “I’m a little behind. I’ll catch up.”

She studies me. Her eyes are warm, but there’s something sharp behind them now.

“I saw the campus notice about a student attacked near the woods. I put the name together when you were absent and then returned with new… shadows.”

My chest tightens. “I’m fine.”

“Fine,” she repeats lightly. “Such a useful word. It covers everything from ‘I slept badly’ to ‘I saw something that cracked reality in half’.”

The scar burns.

“I’m just tired,” I say. “It was a… an animal thing. The woods. Wrong place, wrong time.”

As the lie slips out, a spike of heat lances from my sternum through my ribs. It feels like someone stuck a hot needle into the scar and twisted.

I flinch.

Elara’s gaze snaps to my hand where it has landed over my chest.

“Did you get hurt there?” she asks softly.

I force my fingers to loosen. “It’s nothing. Bruising.” I try to steady my voice. “You know how rumors are. Everybody hears ‘attack’ and turns it into an episode of some survival show.”

“Mmm.” She picks up a pen and twirls it between her fingers, eyes still on me. “Strange rumors, though. I’ve heard three different versions already. Coyotes. A loose dog. Something bigger.”

“People love drama.”

“And yet you don’t.” Her mouth curves. “You love control.”

The word lands too close. I keep my face neutral.

On the desk, beside the candle, lies a small notepad. A circular design spirals across the top page—half-finished, thin lines looping in on themselves. It looks like a wheel. Or a knot. Or a target.

Elara nudges it closer to me. “What does this make you think of?” she asks. “Any particular symbol or myth?”

I glance down out of habit.

The lines are delicate, ink slightly iridescent under the fluorescent light. Without thinking, I reach out and touch the corner of the paper, just to steady it.

The candle flame sways toward me like it’s been pulled by a magnet.

It shouldn’t. There’s no breeze. No movement.

The hair on my arms lifts.

The ink in the spiral brightens, just at the edges nearest my fingers, like someone has turned up the contrast.

My skin tingles up from my fingertips to my wrist. Not painful—more like the fizz when your foot falls asleep, but sharper, cleaner.

I yank my hand back.

The flame snaps upright. The ink dims to normal.

We stare at each other over the little circle of wax and wick.

“That was not a draft,” Elara says.

“Old buildings have weird ventilation,” I say automatically.

“In my experience,” she says, “air currents do not selectively respond to one student’s aura.”

“Aura?” I repeat. “That’s a little… much.”

“You tell me.” She taps the notepad. “Have you been feeling… off, since the woods?”

I think of wolves and gods and my heart stopping twice. Of wards humming through my doorframe. Of Knox’s hand on my scar. Off doesn’t begin to cover it.

“I almost got mauled,” I say. “Off comes with the territory.”

“Yes,” she says. “And yet there’s a charge around you that doesn’t come from trauma alone.”

She leans forward, elbows on the desk, hands steepled.

“You sit in my class like a fault line,” she says quietly. “All this power moving under the surface, waiting. The candle feels it. The ink feels it. I would be a poor scholar of the supernatural if I pretended not to.”

A chill runs down my spine. “Are you saying I did that on purpose? Because I promise you, I have no idea what I’m doing.”

“I’m not accusing you of control,” she says. “I’m pointing out sensitivity.”

That word again.

“Some people,” she continues, “are like sponges. They soak up whatever currents move around them. Others are more like lightning rods. The power prefers them. Takes the path of least resistance.” Her gaze drops briefly to my chest. “And some are marked. They die and come back carrying a piece of somewhere else.”

My breath stutters.

“How do you—” I start.

She lifts a hand. “I don’t know details. I know what it feels like when someone has brushed the Veil recently. It clings. You smell of it.”

I want to laugh. It sticks in my throat.

“You’re the wolves’ problem,” she says. “That much is obvious from the way their people trail you. But they are not the only game in town.”

Something in me tightens. “I’m not anything,” I say. “I’m passing through. I just want to finish my degree without being eaten or drafted into somebody’s cult.”

Elara’s smile is brief and sad. “Everyone who touches the other side says that at first.”

The scar throbs again, as if agreeing.

I grip the edge of my chair. “If you know so much,” I say, “do you know what I am?”

Her head tips, considering. “I know what you’re not,” she says. “You’re not just a human who got unlucky near a bad patch of woods. You’re not a wolf. You’re not an ordinary empath. What you are is… bright. Too bright. As if something laid claim to you and didn’t quite close the circuit.”

Nyra’s voice echoes in my head. You are mine.

I swallow.

“I can’t do anything,” I insist. “I don’t throw fire. I don’t levitate things. I get headaches when people lie around me and candles decide to flirt. That’s not—”

“Normal,” she finishes. “No. It’s not.”

She reaches into the pocket of her cardigan and pulls out a small card. She sets it on the desk between us, beside the candle and the spiral.

“I run an independent study every few years,” she says. “Unofficial. Off-syllabus. We look at myth, and then at practice. At the ways people like you can move through this world without breaking themselves—or everyone around them.”

The card is simple. Her name, a personal email, a tiny symbol in the corner that matches part of the spiral on the pad.

“I don’t do cults,” I say.

“This isn’t a cult,” she answers. “It’s a flashlight in a dark tunnel. You can keep stumbling without it if you like. Many do.”

I stare at the card. It feels heavier than it should.

“I already have wolves breathing down my neck,” I say. “I don’t need witches on top of that.”

“You already have magic breathing down your neck,” she says. “The wolves are just the ones barking. The question is whether you want to understand your own role in that chorus.”

My fingers itch.

I don’t want another faction claiming me. Another set of rules. Another person looking at my scar like it’s a map.

I also don’t want to keep walking blind while everything in me screams that there’s a pattern I’m not seeing.

“I’m not… ready,” I say finally.

“I didn’t ask you to be.” Her voice is gentle. “I’m only telling you you’re not alone in this. Call or don’t.” She nudges the card a little closer. “But don’t pretend nothing has changed. You’ll hurt yourself, pretending.”

The truth of that lands harder than anything else she’s said.

My hand moves on its own. I pick up the card between two fingers. The edges are crisp. The small symbol in the corner seems to shimmer for a second, then settle.

My scar pulses in time with my heartbeat.

“I have another class,” I say.

She nods. “You do. Go be a student for an hour. It’s still allowed.”

Her tone is light, but her eyes are serious.

I stand. The room tilts for half a second—flash of gray shore, giant wolf silhouette, candle flame leaning.

I blink it away.

As I walk out, the candle flickers again, following me for as long as I’m in its line of sight.

The coffee shop across from the humanities building smells like espresso and sugar and burnt bagels. The hiss of the steamer and the buzz of conversation wrap around me, trying their best to be comforting.

I clutch my drink in both hands, fingers numb against the cardboard sleeve, and take the corner table by the window. My laptop sits open in front of me, a blank document glowing accusingly.

I haven’t typed a word.

Elara’s card lies beside the trackpad, flipped so the print faces down. The back is plain white. That doesn’t stop it from feeling like it’s broadcasting.

Outside, students drift past in clumps and singles. A pair of girls take selfies with their iced lattes. Someone zips by on a scooter. It all looks so normal it might as well be happening on TV.

At the edge of my vision, I clock movement that is anything but normal.

One of Knox’s “students” leans against a bike rack across the way. Hoodie, backpack, coffee. He scrolls idly on his phone, but his weight is balanced on the balls of his feet, ready. The wolf stillness is there in the set of his shoulders.

Farther back, half-obscured by a tree, stands Knox.

He’s talking to someone I don’t recognize, a man in a blazer with the tense posture of administration. Knox listens, head slightly bowed, then says something that makes the man nod quickly.

Even from here, I can see the power coiled in him. The way people defer without quite understanding why. The way he moves like everything in his line of sight is his concern, his responsibility—or his problem.

My phone buzzes.

Unknown number, but I know exactly who it is.

Keep to main paths this evening, the text reads. We’re tightening patrols along the woods. Call if you feel anything off.

I don’t reply. I lock the screen and set the phone face down beside Elara’s card.

Wolves. Wards. Witches. Gods.

I press my knuckles against my sternum. The scar presses back, warm and insistent, like a heartbeat that doesn’t belong entirely to me.

I could throw the card away. Pretend I never saw it. Stay in the narrow lane Knox has drawn for me and hope that’s enough.

I could call. Step sideways into another web. Add new lines to the already messy diagram of my life.

For now, I do neither.

I flip the card once, twice, fingertips tracing the small symbol in the corner. The paper hums faintly against my skin, or maybe that’s just my imagination.

“I’m just June,” I whisper. “Just a student. Just a girl who wants to get through midterms.”

The scar burns like it disagrees.

Outside, Knox glances toward the coffee shop window, as if he heard me from across the quad. Our eyes don’t quite meet through the glass, but my body reacts anyway—tightening, softening, too aware.

I slip Elara’s card into my pocket with shaking fingers.

I tell myself I won’t use it.

I don’t believe me.