"No." His hand covered mine. "You should trust him to know what he needs. And trust yourself to know when to push and when to step back."
I turned my hand over, laced my fingers through his.
"When did you get so wise, cowboy?"
"I've always been wise. You just weren't paying attention." He grinned, and some of the tension in my chest eased. "Come on, or Boone's going to mark us tardy."
Wilderness First Aid was a welcome distraction.
Mr. Boone bounced into the classroom with his usual enthusiasm, immediately pulling out supplies—bandages, splints, thermal blankets.
"Today," he announced, "we're covering wound assessment in extreme conditions. Because nothing says 'fun' like trying to stop bleeding when your fingers are too frozen to feel them."
James and I partnered up for the practical exercises. He held still while I practiced pressure bandages on his arm, then we switched.
"Tighter," I told him. "You won't hurt me."
"I know. I just—" He adjusted his grip, applied more pressure. "Better?"
"Better."
Boone wandered by, nodded approvingly, and moved on to help a pair who'd somehow managed to tangle themselves in gauze.
By the end of class, I felt steadier. More grounded. Physical problems with physical solutions—that was easier than the tangled mess of bonds and trauma waiting for me at the Healing Center.
Mythology was the last class of the day.
Ivy dropped into the chair on my other side. "Survived First Aid?"
"Barely. You?"
"Study group was brutal. I think my brain is leaking out my ears." She propped her chin on her hand. "Tell me Tomlinson's going easy on us today."
"When has Tomlinson ever gone easy on anyone?"
"A girl can dream."
Professor Tomlinson entered through the side door, carrying a stack of old books. His eyes swept the room—paused briefly on me—and moved on.
"Today we begin a new unit," he said. "Guardians and protectors in world mythology."
He opened one of the books, turned it to face the class. An illuminated manuscript page—wolves surrounding a central figure, their bodies forming a protective circle.
“Every culture has stories of beings whose purpose is protection,” Tomlinson continued. “The benandanti of Italy, who believed they left their bodies to fight evil spirits in their dreams. The úlfheðnar of Norse tradition—warriors who wore wolf skins and fought as something more than men.”
He paused. “And there are other traditions—often misunderstood—where shapeshifting is tied not to protection, but to taboo and fear. Those stories were warnings.”
His gaze sharpened. “What matters is that across cultures, people recognized the same truth: when someone can walk between forms, power follows. And power always frightens the people trying to control it.
He moved between the rows, letting students see the images in his books.
"What these stories share is a common thread: the guardian existsbetween. Between human and animal. Between the physical world and something older. They sacrifice a part of themselves—their safety, their normalcy, sometimes their humanity—in service of others."
His eyes swept the room. Paused on me for just a moment.
"The question we'll examine this unit is: what happens to the guardian when the threat is gone? When there's nothing left to protect against?" He closed the book. "Do they return to ordinary life? Can they? Or does the role consume them entirely?"
I thought about Stone. Not a guardian by choice, but trapped in that between space anyway. Wolf and man, feral and healing, caught in a form of protection that had nothing to do with service and everything to do with survival.
