Moonlit Bite: Forbidden Howls

Chapter 4: Rumors and Reputation

By the second morning the story had grown. The version of events circulating through the senior class had taken the basic facts, which were already bad enough, and added enough embellishment to make it worse. The most popular variant had me attacking Marcus in a full uncontrolled shift, screaming, unable to pull myself back together. Another version had Lila crying on the field for an hour. A third, which was somehow both most and least accurate, simply said that Kai Stormfang had come apart and was still coming apart, and that the new transfer was somehow involved.

I heard most of it secondhand. Jax heard the rest and relayed it to me in a flat, factual tone while we sat on opposite sides of the room that morning getting ready for classes.

"There's also a video of the fight," he said. "Someone filmed it. It's been going around."

I pulled on my jacket and said nothing.

"It's not terrible," he added. "You look angry and controlled. Marcus looks worse."

"Does it matter?"

He looked at me. "Yes, actually. You care about how this pack sees you, even when you're pretending you don't. So yes, it matters."

He was right and I didn't want him to be right.

The video had come from Lila. I found that out by midday, not from the video itself but from the way she had sent it, selectively, to the people most likely to spread it with the worst possible framing. She hadn't posted it publicly, which would have been a pack violation, but she had distributed it in exactly the way designed to do the most damage while keeping her own hands technically clean.

Marcus was nowhere. He had apparently requested an emergency leave to visit family, which was academy code for removing yourself from a situation before it escalated further. At least he had the shame for that.

In combat training, Jax took down three seniors in a row without being asked to, without being particularly aggressive about it, just with the calm efficiency I was starting to recognise as his default mode. People were noticing him for the right reasons. New transfer, strong, composed, no visible drama.

And then there was me, who was apparently a cautionary tale in real time.

After training I went to shower and I stood under the water and I let myself think about the corridor moment with Jax. The feel of his hand on my jaw. The way my wolf had just stopped. Two years with Lila had never produced that. Training, shared meals, a thousand small familiar moments, and not once had my wolf simply stopped. It had always been something to manage, something to keep calibrated and in line. With Jax it had just gone quiet, like a system switching to standby because the problem had been resolved.

Which was terrifying in its own way.

When I came out, Jax was sitting on my bed, which he had not done before. He had a small cut on his chin from training that was already nearly healed. He was looking at something on his phone.

"Lila sent me a message," he said.

I stopped. "What."

He turned the phone to show me. The message was short. She knows who you are to him. Stay away or I make this a pack issue.

I read it twice. "She has no standing to make a pack issue out of this."

"She knows that. She's fishing." He put the phone down. "I wanted you to know."

"What did you send back?"

"Nothing." He looked at me, direct as always. "But I think she's going to push. She's hurt and she's angry and she's looking for something to hold onto."

I crossed the room and sat down on the desk chair across from him. The room felt smaller lately, in a way I had stopped fighting.

"I'm sorry," I said. "That you're getting pulled into my mess."

"I'm not in your mess." He said it simply. "I'm in my own situation that happens to be adjacent to yours."

"That's a generous way to put it."

"I'm a generous person." The corner of his mouth lifted, just slightly, and something unwound in my chest.

We stayed there in the quiet for a moment. The campus was loud outside, voices and footsteps and someone's music from three rooms down. In here it was just the two of us and the late afternoon light coming sideways through the blinds and his scent which had become, without my permission, something like familiar.

"Tell me something," he said.

"What."

"The vow you made. After the forest. No more feelings, all that." He watched me carefully. "Do you actually believe it or is it just something you said because you were in pain?"

I thought about lying. I thought about deflecting. Both options felt exhausting.

"I believed it when I said it," I said. "Now I'm less sure."

He nodded slowly. "Yeah."

"Is that a problem for you?"

"No." He leaned back slightly on his hands. "I'd rather know where you actually are than know where you said you were going to be."

I looked at him and felt the pull again, that bone-deep recognition that had been present since he walked into my room at three in the morning, and which no amount of reason had made any quieter.

"I don't know what this is," I said.

"Neither do I."

"It's the worst timing."

"Objectively, yes."

"And it's complicated. The alliance. My mother. Your father. All of it."

"I know." He held my gaze and his expression was patient and honest and something else underneath, something that had been there since the corridor and had not gone away. "All of that is true and I'm still sitting on your bed."

I stood up, crossed the two steps between us, and sat down next to him. Our shoulders touched.

Neither of us moved away.

Outside, the light dropped and the campus settled into evening noise, and we sat there in the ordinary complicated dark of it, not talking, not pretending, just being in the same space without anything to perform or prove.

His hand found mine and stayed there.

I thought about Mara's advice. Be careful.

I thought about what careful had gotten me for two years.

I held his hand.

That evening at the main hall, the headmaster stepped to the front of the room with the particular posture that meant an announcement nobody was going to like.

"The annual Shifting Ceremony will take place in two days," he said. "Every senior is required to participate, no exceptions. Shifts must be voluntary, controlled, and held for the full ceremonial period. Any senior failing to achieve full controlled shift will be required to complete remedial stability sessions before receiving their certification." He paused. "Additionally, any declaration of intent made during the ceremony is binding under pack law. Choose carefully."

The hall buzzed with noise. I looked sideways at Jax, who was watching the headmaster with an unreadable expression.

He looked over and caught me watching.

"Two days," he said quietly.

"Two days," I agreed.

I left the hall first and I was almost to the corridor when my phone buzzed. Unknown number.

The message was four words: I know about the bond.

I stopped walking.

I read it again. Looked up at the moving crowd around me. No face stood out, no one watching with particular intent.

I texted back: Who is this?

No reply came.

I kept walking, but the quiet that Jax's presence had built in me all afternoon cracked a little and let the cold back in.