The Ward Between Worlds

LUNA POV

I sit on the porch steps while Orion loads my bags into the trunk of a car I don't recognize.

It's black, sleek, and completely out of place against the gravel driveway I've known my entire life.

My mark still burns faintly on my forehead. Not enough to hurt, but enough that I can't forget it's there. Every few seconds, it pulses with a low heat beneath my skin.

I catch my reflection in the dark car window.

I flinch.

I still don't recognize the girl looking back at me.

Nana Mae lowers herself onto the step beside me, close enough that our shoulders touch.

For a while, neither of us speaks.

The night is warm and thick with cicadas. The same sound I've heard every summer for as long as I can remember.

It shouldn't be comforting right now.

It is.

I focus on it because I need something normal to hold on to. If I let myself think about everything that's happened tonight, I don't think I'll be able to get up again.

“What were you planning?” Nana asks eventually.

Her voice is quiet.

“Before all this. What was the plan?”

“The Olympics.”

I answer so quickly there's no point pretending I had to think about it.

“I was three seconds off the qualifying standard. Three seconds, Mae.”

“That's close.”

“That's gone.”

My throat tightens.

“I can't compete now. Wolf strength, that's cheating, right? I built that speed myself. Every morning run. Every rep. Every second I shaved off my time. That was mine. Nobody gave it to me.”

I stop.

I don't know how to finish.

Nana takes my hand in both of hers.

She has held my hand this way since I was little, back when her hands seemed huge compared to mine. They're rough now from gardening and years of washing dishes, and that familiar texture almost breaks me.

“The speed isn't gone, baby.”

Her voice is gentle, but there's no hesitation in it.

“Just the competition. You're still fast. You're still you.”

“I don't know who that is anymore.”

The words scrape out of me before I can stop them.

“Two days ago, I knew exactly who I was. I was Luna Willow. I ran track. I had a boyfriend who stole my fries and drew me in his notebook. I was going to UT on a scholarship.”

I stare at our hands.

“Now I don't even know what I am.”

“You're still all of that.”

She squeezes my hand.

“A mark on your forehead doesn't erase seventeen years of you, Luna. Whatever you're about to become, you're becoming it as yourself. Don't you forget that. Not up at that Academy. Not anywhere.”

I don't know what to say.

So I lean my head against her shoulder.

We sit there together while the cicadas keep singing.

I breathe in the smell of her lavender lotion and the faint trace of woodsmoke that always seems to cling to her cardigans. I try to memorize it.

That thought makes my chest hurt.

What if I forget?

What if I go away and everything familiar starts feeling unfamiliar?

Nana eventually reaches into her apron pocket and pulls out an envelope.

It's worn around the edges, soft from being handled too many times.

“This is from your parents.”

She places it in my hands carefully.

“Your mama wrote it a long time ago, in case this day came. Don't open it until you're ready. You'll know when that is.”

I stare at the envelope.

My name is written across the front in handwriting I don't recognize.

My fingers trace the looping letters.

For a second, I picture my mother sitting somewhere years ago, writing this while she was young and scared and hoping she'd never have to give it to me.

“Okay.”

I tuck it carefully into my bag.

It's the most fragile thing I own.

Jace is waiting beside his truck at the end of the driveway.

His arms are crossed, and his jaw is tight in that way it gets when he's trying very hard not to fall apart in front of someone.

I walk toward him on unsteady legs.

The second I'm close enough, he pulls me into his arms.

He smells like cedar soap.

The same cedar soap he's used since freshman year.

That stupidly normal detail makes my eyes sting.

“I'll find you.”

He says it before I can get a word out.

His hands come up to my face, his thumbs brushing beneath my eyes.

“Whatever this is. Wherever they're taking you. I'll find you, Luna. I'm not just letting you go.”

“Jace.”

“I mean it.”

His voice shakes, but he keeps going.

“You don't get to just disappear out of my life because some guy with weird eyes showed up and said you have to leave.”

His eyes hold mine.

“I love you. That doesn't stop because you've got some mark on your face now.”

My throat closes.

I don't have an answer good enough for that.

So I kiss him.

Slowly at first.

Then harder.

Desperate.

I'm trying to hold on to this moment because some part of me already knows it's the last normal one I'm going to get.

Jace kisses me back just as desperately.

One hand slides into my hair, careful around the mark at my hairline. His other arm wraps around my waist and pulls me closer, as if holding me tightly enough could keep me here.

For a few seconds, I let myself pretend it might work.

It doesn't.

When we finally pull apart, neither of us says anything.

There isn't anything left to say that wouldn't make this worse.

Jace presses one last kiss to my forehead, right beside the mark.

It's so gentle it barely hurts.

I walk toward the car without looking back.

I can't.

If I look at Jace standing in the driveway, at Nana Mae still on the porch with her hand pressed over her mouth, I know I won't get in.

So I don't look.

I get into the car.

Orion starts the engine.

We pull away.

Little River disappears behind us, swallowed by the dark.

I press my palm against the cool window and watch the porch light shrink in the distance.

Smaller.

Smaller.

Then it's gone.

The radio stays off.

The silence inside the car is heavy enough that I can almost feel it sitting between us.

Barely a mile past the town line, I finally work up the nerve to ask the question that's been sitting in my chest since the diner parking lot.

“Jace has been having dreams too.”

Orion doesn't look at me.

“Wolves. Silver forests. Since we started dating.”

I watch his profile in the faint dashboard light.

“What does that mean?”

He doesn't answer immediately.

His hands stay steady on the wheel, eyes fixed on the road.

When he finally speaks, his voice is just as clipped and certain as it has been all night.

“Some humans dream of the wolf world. It's rare. Dangerous sometimes, depending on what's calling to them.”

He glances at me.

Just once.

“I don't know what it means for him specifically. I know it's real, and I know it matters. I'd rather tell you that than give you a guess and pretend it's an answer.”

I frown.

“That's not very helpful.”

“My only job right now is getting you through those gates alive.”

His gaze returns to the road.

“Everything else can wait until you are.”

“That's not an answer.”

“It's the honest one.”

There's no irritation in his voice. No attempt to shut me up.

That almost makes it worse.

“There's a great deal about this world I understand, Luna. Jace isn't one of those things. I'm not going to pretend otherwise just to make you feel better.”

I fold my arms.

“Fine. Then answer me this.”

He waits.

“What happens to me at this Academy?”

The road stretches ahead of us.

“Not the vague version. The real one.”

“You train.”

His answer is immediate.

“You learn control. You survive the change instead of fighting it.”

“And then?”

“Beyond that, I won't guess at what you'll become.”

He looks at me briefly.

“Nobody can. Not even you.”

That's it.

No dramatic explanation. No comforting speech.

Just another wall of information I don't know how to climb.

I'm too exhausted to keep pushing.

The mountains grow steeper as we drive. The road narrows, winding between trees that crowd close on both sides.

My eyes grow heavy.

More than once, I catch myself drifting.

Each time, I jerk awake.

I don't want to sleep.

Not yet.

I don't know why. Maybe because I only have a few hours left before everything changes, and I don't want to waste even one of them unconscious.

The mark stays quiet through most of the drive.

A low simmer of heat beneath my skin.

Waiting.

Then the air changes.

All at once.

Pressure presses against my skin, thick and electric, like the moment before a thunderstorm breaks.

The trees seem to close in around us.

Branches stretch over the road, nearly touching the car.

I look up.

The sky is covered in thick gray clouds.

But moonlight is shining through them anyway.

Silver light spills across the windshield, bright enough to make me squint.

That isn't possible.

My mark flares.

Heat shoots across my forehead, and I gasp.

This isn't exhaustion.

It isn't fear.

My skin knows before my brain does.

We're crossing a boundary.

“We're passing through the wards.”

Orion says it so calmly that I almost laugh.

Of course he knows.

I press my hand to the window.

Strange silver light ripples across the glass.

The mark pulses again.

My heartbeat kicks up.

Some instinct deep inside me recognizes whatever is on the other side.

Danger.

Or home.

I don't know which is worse.

“If it reacts like this to a boundary I can't even see,” I whisper, “what happens when I'm surrounded by hundreds of wolves?”

Orion doesn't answer.

Maybe he doesn't know.

Maybe he does.

Either way, I don't ask again.

The car rounds one final bend.

And then I see it.

Hollowcrest Academy.

It rises from the mountain valley below us, massive and ancient, its stone buildings clustered against the rock.

I stare through the windshield.

Ivy covers the walls, winding around carved symbols that glow faint silver in the darkness.

Towers stretch toward the cloud-covered sky.

There are people moving across the grounds.

Teenagers.

Some human.

Some definitely not.

Wolves move among them as casually as students walking between buildings.

My breath catches.

The Academy is enormous.

And old.

Old enough that I can't imagine a time when it wasn't here.

Orion turns toward an enormous iron gate.

It swings open on its own.

The second we cross through it, everything stops.

Every wolf on the grounds freezes.

Every head turns.

Toward the car.

Toward me.

My mark answers them.

It erupts with heat.

I press my palm against my forehead, sucking in a sharp breath.

Then I see it.

Marks are appearing across the wolves scattered over the lawn.

The same double-crescent-and-moon symbol Orion showed me in Nana Mae's kitchen.

Blue.

Crimson.

Violet.

Amber.

Silver-white.

Dozens of them flickering to life across the grounds.

My mark pulses again.

And the marks react.

One by one, they dim.

Not disappear.

Just shrink back.

Every glowing symbol becomes smaller and weaker beside the heat burning across my forehead.

I stare through the windshield.

Nobody moves.

Nobody speaks.

The entire Academy has gone silent.

Dozens of wolves are staring at me.

Waiting.

I sit frozen in my seat, my palm pressed against the glass and my mark throbbing beneath my other hand.

And finally, I understand what it has been trying to tell me all night.

I'm not walking into this world quietly.

Whatever I am, Hollowcrest already knows I'm here.

And every wolf standing on that lawn just felt it.