Chapter 7

Charlotte pov

Selene cornered me during combat training with three of her friends already shifted, circling before I even registered what was happening.

"Should have listened," she snarled, wolf form rippling gold and cruel in the afternoon light.

"Listened to what?" I said, backing toward the fence. "You've never actually told me anything. Just growled a lot."

She didn't answer with words. She answered by lunging.

I got one solid hit in before she knocked me flat, claws raking down my arm hard enough that I tasted copper in the back of my throat.

Then a gray blur slammed into her from the side.

Ronan.

He didn't just stop her, he dominated her, pinning her to the dirt with a force that made the other students scatter backward. When he finally shifted back and lifted me off the ground, his hands were shaking.

"You're bleeding," he muttered, voice rough.

"I noticed."

"Can you walk?"

"I can try."

He carried me to the infirmary without another word, and somewhere between the training yard and the front doors, I felt it, a second pull, low and undeniable, threading through my chest right alongside the one Kaiden had already lit.

Ronan felt it too. I watched it hit him, watched his whole face go pale.

"No," he breathed, setting me down like I'd suddenly turned to something dangerous. "Not you too."

"What is that supposed to mean?" I asked, but he was already backing toward the door.

He didn't explain what that meant. He didn't stay long enough for me to ask. He left the infirmary before the nurse had even finished wrapping my arm, and I lay there afterward staring at the ceiling, trying to work out why a boy who'd just saved my life looked more frightened than I'd been during the attack itself.

The nurse gave me something for the pain and instructed me to rest. I didn't rest. I kept thinking about the way the bond had felt, warmer than Kaiden's, quieter, like something settling into place instead of snapping.

By the time Coach Draven checked on me that evening, gruff as always but standing in the doorway a beat too long, word had already spread through the whole academy. Selene had attacked me. Ronan had stopped her. And whatever that meant for the two of them, nobody was pretending it was nothing anymore.

"You alright, Hale?" Coach asked, and for once there was nothing barked about it.

"I've had better weeks," I admitted.

"You'll have worse ones before this is over," he said, not unkindly. "Get some sleep."