Some say her bloodline might still exist.
I pressed my palms against the cold stone, grounding myself. I wasn't the woman from the myth. I wasn't part of some mystical lineage. I was just Lumi Orlav—orphan, outsider, girl with inconvenient visions and a mission she couldn't explain.
Except.
Except I could feel the wolf in my mind, howling. Except I was training for a mountain that would kill most people who triedit. Except every fiber of my being was screaminggo, find them, bring them back.
What if the story wasn't just a story?
What if Darian had known? What if he'd told me for a reason, planting a seed that would take years to grow?
I thought about calling Gregor. Asking him what Darian had really believed, whether there was more to the myth than fireside entertainment. But Gregor would ask why I wanted to know, and that would lead to questions I couldn't answer without revealing everything.
The vision. The wolf. Denali.
I was on my own with this. The same way I'd always been on my own—carrying weight that no one else could share.
The cold seeped through my jacket, and I let it. Let the chill anchor me to the present, to the reality of stone and sky and the distant sound of students laughing.
The woman in the story kept trying, even when it cost her everything.
Maybe that was the lesson.
Maybe that was the warning.
I wasn't sure yet which one I needed more.
When I finally made it back to the dorm, Ivy was waiting. She took one look at my face and wordlessly handed me a hot chocolate from the campus café.
"You looked like you needed it," she said.
I wrapped my hands around the cup, letting the warmth seep into my frozen fingers. "Thanks."
"Want to talk about it?"
"Not really."
"Okay." She settled onto her bed, pulling out her laptop. "Movie night? I found a streaming site with terrible horror films. The kind where you can see the zipper on the monster costume."
I almost smiled. "That sounds perfect."
We watched two movies back to back, neither of us commenting on the fact that I kept staring out the window instead of at the screen. Ivy fell asleep during the third, snoring softly, and I sat in the dark with my cold hot chocolate and my racing thoughts.
Tomorrow, I would train. The next day, I would research. In a few weeks, I would climb a mountain that wanted to kill me to save a wolf I'd never met.
Chapter six
The lunch line moved slowly.
I stood behind Ivy, tray in hand, watching the servers ladle soup into bowls with the mechanical efficiency of people who'd done this ten thousand times. The cafeteria hummed with noise—conversations layered over each other, chairs scraping, the clatter of silverware. Normal sounds.
The hum beneath my skin flared, and I knew without turning that James had joined the line somewhere behind me.
I didn't look. Looking was acknowledging, and acknowledging was... complicated.
"The tomato basil's actually good today," Ivy said, peering at the soup options. "I'm shocked. Genuinely shocked."
"I'll stick with salad."
