Oh no.
I bit my lip. Was he about to wolf out? Should I move to another train car?
The others around us had gone quiet. Conversations died mid-sentence. Everyone was watching.
Without thinking, I reached across the table and threaded my fingers into his hands, now roughwith transforming bone and fur. His eyes snapped to mine, glowing a wild, feral yellow.
There was death in them. Hunger. Pain. A lifetime of something I didn’t yet understand.
“I’m okay now,” I whispered. “I’m full. I’m safe. This chocolate cake is really good.” I took a bite, forcing a happy sigh. “Mmm.”
His eyes tracked the motion, the sound. Slowly, the fur receded. His shoulders uncoiled. The glow in his gaze dimmed back to a golden flicker.
I took another bite, then looked down, realizing we were still holding hands. Embarrassed, I pulled away, heat creeping up my neck.
When I met his gaze again, it was Kaelric’s human eyes staring back, green and stormy, chest rising and falling like he’d just run for miles.
“You okay?” I asked, my voice small. Around us, the cabin slowly returned to normal, clinking cutlery, low laughter, whispers.
He cleared his throat and picked up the abandoned meat. “I’m fine. But Creator help the person who tries to withhold food from you in front of me.”
I blinked. “Kaelric… are you saying you care what happens to me?” I clutched my chest dramatically, fluttering my lashes. “How scandalous.”
His gaze drifted to the window, to the blur of treesbeyond. “Which was not part of the plan,” he said quietly.
He was a man of secrets and storms. And something else.
Something I was starting to like more than I should.
That night, sleep didn’t come easily. My thoughts kept circling Kaelric, his eyes glowing with that wild light, his body on the verge of shifting just because he’d learned I went without food for three days. Fasting was normal in my community, sure, but three days wasn’t for discipline. Three days meant there wasn’t enough to go around. It meant my mother and I quietly went hungry so the littles could eat.
Eventually, the gentle rocking of the train lulled me under, but only for a few hours. I woke with a start at the soft click of the door closing and Kaelric slipping out.
My eyes darted to the bathroom in our car. He hadn’t gone in there. Instead, he used the main door.
Curiosity prickled at the back of my neck. I rubbed the sleep from my eyes and swung down from the top bunk, making sure Valkaryn was secured at my waist. My feet touched the cool floor silently asI padded to the door and eased it open just enough to slip into the hallway.
I spotted him just in time, his tall frame disappearing around the bend. He didn’t look back, didn’t pause.
I followed, hugging the shadows, until I saw him duck into another private car.
My heart picked up. What was he doing? Was he going to silence an initiate before the trials began? Or was this a midnight rendezvous with some secret wolfkin lover? I crept closer, stopping just short of the open door.
Kaelric’s voice broke the stillness: “You know what you have to do?”
I froze.
“Even if I get a traitor mark for it,” a woman replied, and a chill swept down my arms.
Why would she get a traitor mark? Unless she was planning on betraying her initiate. Just like Kaelric did, even if it was to save that innocent girl five years ago. I knew I shouldn’t have trusted a traitor wolf!
“We have to do whatever it takes for Kaelric to get that sword from the girl,” a male voice added.
“Agreed,” Kaelric said. “Whatever it takes.”
The words shattered something inside of me. I stood there in the corridor, stunned and hollowed out. I had let myself trust him. Worse, I’d started to feelthings for him, things I hadn’t meant to. But with those four words, a steel cage snapped into place around my heart.
I turned and fled, each step like thunder beneath me. He wanted Valkaryn; that was all this was, all I ever was to him. He’d never have her. Even if I won the trials, I would never let him take her from me.
