Chapter 74: Stay With Me

The extraction horn sounded again, one long blast that seemed to come from every direction at once. This time a voice followed it through the academy communication devices strapped to the students’ wrists. "All students, return to the marked extraction routes immediately," it said. "The Lunar Trial is suspended."

The crackle in the speakers was clear, and Roxanne noticed it with a small jolt. The communication system was working again, which meant that whatever had happened earlier had apparently been contained.

Everyone began moving at once. Lucien had the students sorted into groups within minutes, calling names and pointing directions in a level voice that steadied the whole clearing. Roxanne didn’t wait to be assigned anywhere. She went straight to the younger students clustered near the edge of the trees, pale and shaking, and took two of them by the arm and got them walking, talking to them in a low, steady voice about nothing in particular until their breathing evened out.

Kai caught up with her a little way down the trail. He didn’t ask about the claw marks, though she could feel the question sitting between them. "Are you hurt?" he asked instead.

She told him she wasn’t, and he studied her face in the gray light.

"You’re sure?" he asked.

"I’m sure," she said, and then she turned it around.

"Are you?" Kai gave her a small nod. It was a quiet moment, and they both seemed to realize that they were checking on each other now without being asked.

Their route back was blocked by a fallen tree that had torn away half of the trail, and a voice through the wrist devices told them to take an alternate path. The alternate path crossed a steep rocky section slick with dew, and several students struggled on the first ledge.

Roxanne helped a girl across, guiding her hands to the safest holds and murmuring where to place each foot. Kai stayed behind her the whole time, close enough to catch her if she slipped and far enough that he never touched her. When she reached the far side, she turned around.

"You can stop hovering," she said, and Kai frowned as if the word offended him. "I’m not hovering."

"You’re three steps behind me," she said, and he raised an eyebrow. "That’s not hovering." She smiled despite herself and started walking again, and she could hear him following at exactly the same distance.

They stopped to rest at midmorning beside a stream, and most of the students dropped onto the ground and closed their eyes.

Roshan came and sat beside Roxanne with his elbows on his knees. He asked quietly whether her senses had reacted when she touched the marker. She looked at him, braced for an accusation, but his expression held only curiosity. "For a second, everything felt too loud," she admitted.

Roshan nodded as though it confirmed something he’d already considered. He told her that if it happened again, she should focus on one sound or scent instead of fighting everything at once. "You don’t have to understand it yet," he said. "Just learn how to control it." He picked up a flat stone and skipped it across the water, and the subject was closed.

By afternoon the students reached a temporary camp where academy staff waited under canvas awnings with blankets and hot tea. Everyone was exhausted, and people slumped against packs and crates without a word, mud drying on their boots and leaves still caught in their hair. A few students were already asleep sitting up. Then Liam appeared out of nowhere with an armful of wrapped bundles. "Emergency supplies," he said, and he dropped one in Roxanne’s lap.

She looked inside and found sandwiches, fruit, and an entire bar of chocolate. "You stole these," she said. "Borrowed," Liam said, sitting down beside her with great dignity. "From where?" she asked. "That’s classified," he said, and she laughed until her shoulders shook, the first real laugh she’d managed since the horns had sounded. The brothers finally relaxed around her, Lucien leaning back on his hands and Roshan smiling into his tea. It reminded her that they weren’t only royal Lycans anymore, and that somewhere along the way they had become her people.

The instructor addressed everyone shortly after. The Lunar Trial simulation was officially suspended, he said, and no student would be penalized for incomplete objectives. Nobody was told exactly what had caused the malfunction. The official explanation was a security irregularity within the training grounds, and he didn’t take questions. The students began speculating in low voices before he had even left the awning, trading theories about equipment failures and rogue instructors.

Roxanne stayed silent. She knew what she had seen, the wolf and the marker and the figure between the trees, but she also knew she didn’t have enough information to say any of it out loud. Speculating without proof would only make her sound like everyone else.

That evening she sat with the brothers on the grass outside the dormitories, and for once there was no training and no competition and no academy drama. There were just the five of them, wrapped in blankets and eating the last of Liam’s stolen chocolate. Lucien asked what the hardest part had been. Roxanne expected him to mean the trial itself, but she realized from his face that he meant everything, the horns and the wolf and the dark. She answered honestly. "Not knowing what was happening," she said.

Roshan understood, and he nodded without speaking. Liam distracted her with a ridiculous story from their childhood, in which he had tried to ride a wild boar for a bet and ended up stuck in a bramble bush for six hours. Kai sat beside her and said very little, but he kept refilling her cup whenever it ran low, as though it were an accident. After a while their shoulders touched, and Roxanne didn’t move away.

When she finally stood up to leave, Kai spoke quietly. "Tomorrow?" he asked. She looked at him and asked what he meant. "Training," he said. She smiled. "You thought I’d stop?" she asked. He shook his head, and his eyes drifted toward the dark academy grounds beyond the lawn. "I just wanted to know you’d still be here," he said.

Roxanne walked away toward the dormitory with the cold night air on her face. Behind her, the four brothers remained together on the grass. For the first time since the horns, the Lunar Trial wasn’t the thing she was thinking about. She was thinking about tomorrow’s training, and about the way Kai had asked whether she would still be there, and how easily she had wanted to say yes.