The wolf came back before the drills.
She always came back, and she did not mention the door.
She slept under the bed that night with her eyes shut and her body untaut, and in the morning Yara walked the floor in her own shape with her red eyes open and said nothing about what she had felt leave him.
That was worse than if she'd said it.
Yara holding a thing was Yara deciding when to spend it.
Soren let her hold it. He had his own version of the same measure sitting a fraction light in his chest, and neither of them needed it counted out loud.
◆◆◆◆
The problem with being the boy who saved the academy was that everyone now knew which table was his.
The rumor had done its work.
Vasquez's name was weather by now, drifting through the halls with no source anyone could point to, and somewhere under that the actual fame had set hard, the kind where strangers learned your schedule.
Class A girls had stopped coming as a group after the pack made the room cold for them.
