Chapter 65: They Noticed

Roxanne woke the next morning with sore muscles and a head full of static, as though she had spent a second night out in the woods. Isla took one look at her from across the room and pointed at the door. "Breakfast," she said. "You’re going, and you’re eating something real." Roxanne wanted to argue, but her stomach sided with Isla before she could.

The four brothers were already at their usual table when they arrived. Liam was midway through a complaint about not being allowed near the night exercise, waving a piece of toast to make his point. Roshan ignored him and asked how the course had gone, so Roxanne told them about the first-year in the restricted area and what it had cost her.

Kai nodded when she finished, and it was the kind of nod that meant he approved. "Eleven minutes late and you still stopped," he said. Roxanne frowned and set down her cup. "I never told you it was eleven minutes." He shrugged and went back to his eggs, saying the instructors had mentioned it, and she realized he had been paying closer attention than he let on.

That afternoon the Advanced Training instructor gathered the class to go over their night results. Most students got ordinary feedback, a note about pacing or a correction on route choice. When he reached Roxanne, he glanced at his sheet and said her sensory response had been unusually high, and a few heads turned her way.

"Does that mean I broke a rule?" she asked at once.

"No, it means your wolf reacted faster than expected," he said. "Did you have any dizziness, pain, or loss of control?" She told him she hadn’t, and he accepted that with a short nod. He didn’t tell her she was special or that anything was wrong. "Then learn how to control it," he said, and he moved on to the next student.

He built a new exercise for each of them around their weaknesses, and hers was sensory control. Roxanne stood in the middle of a cleared field while the instructor’s assistants introduced distractions, ringing bells, dragging scented cloths through the grass, and dropping stones in the distance. She had to name specific sounds and scents as they came. She struggled at first because she tried to catch everything at once, and the field turned into a blur of noise that made her stomach tighten. She kept her breathing steady, but it didn’t help until she changed her approach.

Then she remembered what Roshan had told her weeks ago. One scent, one sound, one thing at a time. She narrowed her focus to a single bell and followed it, then the smell of crushed mint, then the stones. The names came steadily after that, and when she finished the instructor made a mark on his sheet and said her improvement was clear.

After class, Kai was leaning on the fence near the practice ring. He asked whether she wanted to train, and Roxanne raised an eyebrow. "I thought you weren’t allowed to help me anymore," she said.

"I’m not helping," Kai said, with a perfectly straight face. Roxanne folded her arms.

"Then what are you doing?" she asked, and he said he was training. She let him win that one.

They sparred lightly at first. Then Kai pulled a strip of cloth from his bag and tied it over her eyes, telling her to rely on her senses instead of sight. She stood in the dark with her breathing even and listened, and she moved before his first strike arrived. She blocked the second, ducked the third, and turned to face him a full half second before he reached her. Her wolf stayed close and calm through the whole thing, which surprised her.

He stopped. "You heard me," he said.

"You stepped heavier," Roxanne said, pulling the cloth off. She was certain of it, and she said it without thinking.

"No," Kai said, and he looked at her carefully. "I didn’t."

That unsettled her more than she wanted to admit, because he knew his own movements and he wasn’t guessing. She didn’t have an answer for it. Kai didn’t push either, and after a moment he retied the blindfold and told her to go again.

Later that evening Roshan found her in the library stacks and asked how training had gone. She told him about hearing Kai step in a way Kai swore he hadn’t. Roshan was quiet for a while, turning a pen over in his fingers, and then he asked whether her senses had felt stronger to her lately.

Roxanne brushed it off and said it was probably just the night exercise and lack of sleep. Roshan didn’t argue, and he didn’t press her for anything more. "If it happens again, tell me," he said, and he went back to his book as though he had only asked her the time.

The Advanced Training students were given the next evening off, and Liam took it as a personal mission. He dragged half the group to the cafeteria, and Elias came along with a tray in his hands, sitting down across from Roxanne without a word. Liam looked back and forth between them with open suspicion, clearly trying to work out whether they got along, and he asked Elias three questions in a row about the maze challenge.

To settle it, he challenged Roxanne to a game he had invented, flicking coins across the table to land closest to the edge without falling off. Roxanne beat him four times in a row. Elias laughed out loud at the fourth, which made Liam’s mouth drop open. Isla had claimed the seat beside Roxanne and was passing her fries, watching the whole thing like it was a show.

"You two are cheating," Liam said, pointing at them both. "There’s no way that’s real."

"You just lost," Elias said, and Roxanne couldn’t stop grinning. For the first time in days, the atmosphere felt completely ordinary.

Near the end of the night the instructor walked in and pinned a new notice to the board by the door. The cafeteria went quiet as the students read it. It said: PHASE TWO — LUNAR TRIAL PREPARATION.

Whispers started immediately, because the Lunar Trials were considered the hardest assessment the academy had. The instructor waited until the noise died down before he spoke. "From tomorrow onward, training changes," he said. "You will not be preparing to pass a class." He looked across the selected students, one face at a time. "You will be preparing to survive the trial."

Roxanne stared at the words LUNAR TRIALS printed across the top of the notice. Behind her, Kai spoke quietly, close enough that only she could hear. "Ready?" he asked.

She looked at him and shook her head. "Not yet," she said, with a small smile, "but I will be."