"What are you to me?"
I held his gaze. "That's a longer conversation."
"I've got time."
"You've got hypothermia risk and acute exhaustion."
"Then talk fast." He reached for my hand, and the contact sent warmth flooding up my arm. "Please, Lumi. I need to understand what's happening to me."
I looked at him—this ridiculous, stubborn, impossibly brave man who'd followed me into the wilderness and shifted into a wolf to save us both. Who was looking at me now like I held all the answers to questions he'd been asking his whole life.
Maybe I did.
"Okay," I said. "Get in the sleeping bag. I'll tell you everything."
We arranged ourselves carefully—James on his uninjured side, me facing him, our bodies close enough to share heat but not quite touching. The tent felt smaller in the darkness, intimate in a way that made my pulse quicken.
"Where do you want me to start?" I asked.
"The beginning, I guess. What am I? What are shifters?"
I took a breath. Let it out slowly.
"Shifters are people who can change form. The gene's been around for centuries, maybe millennia. No one knows exactly where it came from. Some myths say it was a gift from the gods. Others say it was a curse. Most shifters don't care about the origin—they just live with what they are."
"And Frosthaven?"
"Frosthaven is a latent academy. It exists to find people like you—people who carry the shifter gene but haven't triggered yet. The academy identifies potential latents through genetic testing, family histories, certain markers that suggest the capability. Then it recruits them under the cover of an elite academy."
James was quiet, processing. "So everyone there..."
"Is either a shifter, a latent, or someone who knows about the supernatural world. The professors, the staff, most of the students. Some have already shifted. Others are like you were—carrying the potential, waiting for something to trigger it."
"Twilson?"
"Shifter. Old bloodline, old power. He doesn't like anomalies—people who don't fit his categories." I paused. "People like me."
"What are you?"
The question I'd been dreading. I considered how to answer—how much truth to offer, how much to hold back.
"I'm human, I think," I said finally. "Mostly. But I have... abilities. Visions. I see things that haven't happened yet, or things that are happening far away. No one knows exactly why."
"Visions." He said it slowly, like he was testing the word. "That's why you came up here. You saw something."
"Yes."
"What did you see?"
I closed my eyes. The image was there, as clear as it had been the first time—the ridge, the wind, the wolf howling in the white.
"A feral," I said. "On this mountain. Alone and dying."
"What's a feral?"
"A shifter who's lost themselves. Someone who shifted and couldn't find their way back—not to human form, or to human thought. They get stuck in the animal mind. Instinct takes over, and the person they were just... fades. It's rare, but it happens. Usually with traumatic first shifts, or people who shift alone without anyone to guide them back. Other traumatic events can lead a person to become feral."
James's hand found mine under the blanket. "That could have been me."
