At the door, I paused.
"Rae."
She looked up.
"Thank you. For calling the Council yourself. For not letting him—"
"Don't thank me yet." Her voice was tired. "The Council might decide I was wrong to protect you. They might side with Twilson. They might order all five ferals put down and you exiled from shifter territory." She paused. "I've bought you time, Lumi. That's all. What you do with it is up to you."
I nodded. Didn't trust my voice.
James and I left.
We found an empty room on the second floor.
Small. Bare. A bed, a chair, a window looking out over the back of the building. But it had walls. A door that locked. A space where we could exist without being watched.
I sat on the edge of the bed. Let my head fall into my hands.
"Lumi." James sat beside me. His arm came around my shoulders. "Talk to me."
"I don't know what to say."
"Then don't say anything."
I leaned into him. Let his warmth seep into my bones. Through our bond, I felt his steady presence — battered, exhausted, scared, but unbroken.
Outside, the sun climbed higher. The alarm had finally stopped, but the silence it left behind was worse. Pregnant with everything that hadn't been said. Everything that was still coming.
I could feel them all. My mates. My pack.
James, warm and solid beside me.
Cal, grieving and protective in the east wing with his brothers.
Neal, exhausted and terrified somewhere in the building, trying to hold everything together with medical precision.
The alpha, raging in his isolation room, fighting bonds he hadn't chosen.
Chapter eleven
The whispers started before I even reached the dining hall.
I'd slept for fourteen hours — crashed in that small room on the second floor of the Healing Center with James beside me, both of us too exhausted to do anything but breathe. When I finally woke, the sun was setting again, and my stomach was eating itself.
The campus looked normal. Students walking between buildings, lights glowing in windows, the distant sound of someone practicing piano in one of the common rooms. But underneath the normalcy, something had shifted. I felt it in the way people moved — quicker, more alert. In the way conversations stopped when we passed.
They knew.
Not everything. Not the truth about shifters and ferals and bonds. But they knew something had happened. Somethinginvolving wolves and lockdowns and the girl who spent all her time at the Healing Center.
Me.
The dining hall was crowded when we arrived. Dinner rush — trays clattering, voices overlapping, the smell of something that might have been meatloaf filling the air. I grabbed a plate without looking at what I was putting on it. Just needed calories. Needed fuel.
James stayed close. His hand brushed the small of my back as we found a table near the wall, away from the main flow of traffic. Protective. Alert.
Through our bond, I felt his tension. The wolf close to the surface, hackles raised at every sideways glance.
