Chapter 6—The Garden

Elara's POV

I told Freya before first period even started.

I had not planned to. I had actually planned to say nothing, to walk into school, sit through my classes and handle the whole thing quietly the way I handled most things. That plan lasted approximately four minutes into breakfast before Freya looked at me and said, "What happened," and I told her everything.

"He asked you to meet him," she said, setting her cup down slowly. "Specifically. At a specific location. After class."

"The garden near the east oak," I said.

Freya stared at me.

"Stop looking at me like that," I said.

"I am trying to process this responsibly she said."

Nyx had not said anything yet. She was looking at me with that steady expression she used when she was deciding how much of what she was thinking to share out loud.

"It is not a big deal," I said, mostly to myself. "He just wants to talk. He said he wants to know more about the school."

"He could have asked anyone in this school about the school," Freya said. "He asked you. To a specific garden. After last class."

"It is not a date," I said.

"I did not say it was a date," Freya said.

"You were thinking it."

She smiled. "I was thinking it."

By second period the three of them knew, because Freya had told Nyx who had told Leo in the space of a corridor walk, and Leo had spent the entire journey to class alternating between telling me to relax and doing the opposite of helping me relax.

"Just be yourself," he said.

"I am always myself,"

"Then be yourself but maybe slightly more relaxed than you currently are."

"Leo."

"I'm helping."

"You are not helping," I said, and walked into class ahead of him.

The day moved slowly the way days did when you were waiting for something at the end of them. I sat through three classes and retained almost nothing, my mind drifting to the east garden and the old oak and the fact that I had agreed to meet a boy I had spoken to exactly once and did not know anything about.

A boy who looked at me like he was trying to figure something out. A boy who made me feel, without doing anything in particular, like I was being seen rather than looked at.

I was nervous and I was annoyed at myself for being nervous.

After the second to last class Freya appeared beside me in the corridor and steered me toward the bathroom without asking if I wanted to go.

"Your hair," she said simply, already reaching for it.

"It is fine," I said.

"It is not bad. It could be better." She pulled it back from my face, gathered it and pinned it neatly with the clips she had apparently been carrying in her pocket specifically for this purpose. "There."

I looked in the mirror. "We are in school, Freya. It is just hair."

"Hair matters," she said firmly, and that was the end of that conversation.

Last class ended and I gathered my bag slowly, checking the time twice, telling myself I was not nervous the whole way down the east corridor and not convincing myself once.

I was almost at the garden when Kael stepped into my path.

He was coming from the direction of the training field, still in his sports kit, and he stopped when he saw me with the easy confidence of someone who had never once considered that his timing might be inconvenient.

"Elara." He fell into step beside me. "I've been looking for you. About the training offer, I was thinking we could start this week, maybe Thursday after"

"I can't talk right now," I said, keeping my pace.

He slowed slightly. "You can't talk?"

"I'm on my way somewhere, Kael. We can talk tomorrow."

Something shifted in his expression, the easy confidence cooling into something with a sharper edge underneath it. "On your way somewhere," he repeated. "Since when do you have somewhere to be after class."

I stopped walking and looked at him. "That's not really your business."

He laughed, short and humorless. "You didn't even have a wolf two months ago. Now you've got somewhere to be and you can't spare five minutes." His eyes moved over me once, the way they did when he was making a point rather than actually looking. "Who knew getting your wolf would make you this hard to reach."

The words landed the way he meant them to. I turned and started walking.

His hand closed around my wrist.

Not hard. But firm enough that I stopped.

"Don't walk away from me," he said, quiet and certain, like it was simply a fact he was stating.

I turned slowly and looked at his hand on my wrist and then up at his face and I was about to say something that I would probably not regret when a voice came from behind me.

"Is there a problem."

Not a question. A statement delivered in a tone that was completely level and somehow more effective than if he had shouted it.

Kael's eyes moved past me and something shifted in them, subtle but real. His hand dropped from my wrist.

Ravin was standing a few feet away with his hands in his pockets, his expression calm, his eyes on Kael with the particular quality of attention that did not need any performance behind it.

Kael looked at him for a moment. "No problem," he said easily. "Just talking." He glanced back at me once, something unreadable in it, then turned and walked back the way he had come without another word.

The corridor was quiet.

Ravin looked at me. "Did he cause you trouble."

"No," I said, because saying yes felt like more of a conversation than I was ready to have right now. "I'm fine."

He studied my face for a moment like he was deciding whether to believe that, then stepped closer and reached up and tucked a loose strand of hair back from my face, his fingers brushing my cheek as he did it, and then his palm rested there, warm and steady, just for a second.

He did not say anything.

Neither did I.