Moonlit Bite: Forbidden Howls

Chapter 3: Control and Temptation

Mr. Vale's classroom was at the end of the east corridor and it was always colder than the rest of the building, which I had never been able to explain. He was nineteen, which made him only a year older than most of us, but nobody made jokes about that. He had finished his own studies two years early and the academy had moved him into a teaching role because apparently that was what happened when you were built the way he was, all sharp intelligence and controlled authority that made the room feel smaller when he walked in.

He was also, as of this morning, clearly watching me.

I noticed it in the first ten minutes of class. The way his gaze came back to me a beat too long, not with interest but with the particular focus of someone who had clocked a problem and was deciding what to do about it.

At the end of the session he said it simply: "Stormfang. Stay."

The class filed out. Jax, who had been moved into Vale's literature period due to the schedule rearrangement, paused at the door and looked at me. I gave him a small nod. He left, but I heard him stop just outside in the corridor.

Vale sat on the edge of his desk and watched me stand there.

"The forest incident," he said.

"It's been handled."

"That's not what I heard." He picked up a pen and turned it between two fingers. "I heard it was very publicly unhandled, which is a different thing. A future alpha having a breakdown in front of the senior class during a blood moon is not a small incident. It creates instability. People look to you to set the tone."

"I wasn't having a breakdown. I caught my girlfriend cheating and I reacted."

"You shifted involuntarily."

I didn't answer that.

He studied me for a long moment. "You've been off balance since you got here this morning. I can smell it." He said it matter-of-factly, without cruelty. "Something changed last night after the incident."

"My mother got married. I have a new stepbrother. It was a busy night."

"Is that all?"

"Yes."

He looked at me the way adults look at you when they know you're lying and they're deciding whether to push on it. Then he uncrossed his arms and stood up. "I'm going to be direct with you, Kai. The Shifting Ceremony is in three days. Every senior is required to participate. The way you are presenting right now, your control is not where it needs to be. If you walk into that ceremony with your wolf this unsettled, you are going to have a serious problem."

"My control is fine."

"It isn't." He moved to the window and stood with his back to me for a moment. "I've seen this before. A big emotional event destabilises the bond between the person and the wolf, and then proximity to someone scent-compatible makes it worse. It's a feedback loop." He turned back. "Who is it?"

I stared at him.

"The compatible scent. I can smell it on you."

"That's none of your business."

"When it affects your stability, it becomes my business." His voice was calm but absolute. "I'm not asking for gossip. I'm asking because if this escalates before the ceremony, you need to have a handle on it."

The classroom was very quiet. Outside in the corridor I could hear nothing, which meant Jax had moved away or was very carefully not breathing.

"It's the new transfer," I said, because lying felt pointless. "Jax."

Vale's expression did not change. He just nodded slowly, like a piece of information slotting into place. "The Nightfang alpha's son."

"My mother's new stepson, yes."

"That complicates things."

"I'm aware."

He looked at me for another long moment. "The ceremony doesn't require you to declare anything you're not ready to declare. It requires you to shift fully and hold the shift with control. That's what you need to focus on. Everything else is a secondary problem." He picked up his pen again. "You're dismissed."

I walked out.

Jax was leaning against the wall ten feet down the corridor, arms crossed, looking at the floor. He straightened when he saw me.

"How bad?" he asked.

"Just a talking-to."

He fell into step beside me. We walked without talking for a moment.

"He's not wrong," Jax said finally. "Your control is off."

"I know."

"I can feel it. When you're close." He said it quietly, not making eye contact. "The pull. It's stronger when you're unsettled."

I stopped walking. So did he.

We were in a side corridor, narrow, no one else around. The light was dim and grey through the single high window. He was close enough that I could have reached out and touched him without moving my feet.

"This is a bad idea," I said.

"I know." He looked at me then, directly and with no attempt to soften it. "I know exactly what this is and what it's going to cost and I'm still standing here."

"Jax."

"I'm not asking you for anything," he said. "I'm just telling you I'm not pretending I don't feel it. That's all."

The honesty of it landed somewhere I wasn't ready for. After two years of Lila, after all the small lies that had accumulated into one enormous one, here was this person I had known for less than twenty-four hours being straightforwardly, uncomplicatedly honest about something that was probably the most complicated thing either of us would deal with all year.

My wolf stopped fighting me and just waited.

I reached out and took a slow fistful of his shirt and pulled him forward and kissed him.

It was not careful. It was not tentative. It was the kind of kiss that has been building without your permission, that arrives all at once and asks for nothing because it already has what it wants. He kissed back the same way. His hand came up to the side of my jaw and held there. The pull in my chest that had been gnawing at me since three in the morning went suddenly, completely quiet.

We broke apart. Both breathing harder than we had been.

He looked at me.

"Bad idea," I said again, but my voice had lost the conviction.

"Terrible idea," he agreed. He was still holding my jaw. His thumb moved once, slowly. "Still here, though."

I pressed my forehead against his for a moment, eyes closed, and let myself exist in the small dark space between one choice and the next.

Then my phone went off. Then his did. Then the bell rang and the corridor flooded with people and we stepped apart and whatever that moment had been, it was gone.

But it wasn't gone, and we both knew it.

I spent the rest of the day in that particular kind of distracted, hyper-aware state where the memory of someone's hands is louder than anything anyone is saying to you. Jax sat across the dining hall at dinner and I was aware of every time his eyes found mine and looked away.

After dinner, sitting on the low wall outside the west building, Mara sat down beside me with her hands around a coffee cup and looked at me for a long time before speaking.

"People are talking," she said.

"People always talk."

"About you and the new transfer. They say you two looked pretty close in the corridor today."

I looked at the sky. "We live in the same room, Mara."

"Is that all it is?"

I didn't answer.

She was quiet for a moment. "Lila is also talking. She's saying you had some kind of breakdown last night and it's connected to him and she's framing it like you fell apart because of the betrayal and now you're making questionable decisions."

"What Lila says isn't my problem anymore."

"It is if it's affecting how the pack sees you before the ceremony." She said it gently, with genuine concern underneath the directness. "Kai, you have to walk into that ceremony as a future alpha. That means people are going to be watching every choice you make between now and then."

I looked at her. "So what are you saying?"

She held her coffee with both hands and looked out across the grounds. "I'm saying be careful. That's all."

I sat with that for the rest of the evening. Be careful. It was good advice. It was sensible advice. It was the kind of advice that was completely impossible to follow when you were already three steps past the point where careful would have helped.