Silent Sentinel

Rhett:

Isadora has been in bed all day. I sat by her side as long as I would stand, but seeing her small, fragile body so weak and fragile make me want to tear the castle apart brick by brick until I found the cause of her sudden collapse. The sun had finally set when I slipped out of the room under the guise of needed to hunt. I just needed to run, chase, blow off some of this pent up rage.

The sky tastes like iron tonight.

I can smell the storm before I see it—ozone, damp stone, the sour tang of something foreign riding the wind. Ashwyck’s wards hum low around the perimeter, a vibration in my bones that should be steady and sure. Instead it falters, a heartbeat skipping.

I roll my shoulders, every nerve sparking. The moon is nothing but a thin, dirty coin behind the clouds. Good. Darkness suits me.

I prowl.

Boots silent on wet grass, I move along the outer ring of the courtyard and let the wolf rise just enough to sharpen the world. Scents snap into focus: moss and old marble, candle smoke from the north tower, the faint sweetness of Isadora’s trail even though she’s nowhere near. My chest tightens at that—her scent is always the first thing I notice, always the one that threatens to undo me.

For fuck's sake, focus, Rhett.

There. A ripple in the air, like a breath drawn where no lungs exist. The wards shiver again.

Something’s testing them.

My vision edges silver as the wolf presses closer to the surface. Let me out, it growls, low and hungry. I grit my teeth until my jaw aches. I can’t give in. Not yet. Not now.

I follow the disturbance along the crumbling garden wall, past statues slick with dew. The roses here bloom black under moonlight, petals heavy with rain. They whisper as I pass, or maybe that’s just the magic twisting the air.

The scent hits me like a blade.

Not human. Not fae. Not any magical creature, not really. It is pungent, metallic and wrong. It crawls across my skin, raising every hair, an invitation and a threat.

I bare my teeth.

The courtyard beyond lies in a wash of grey, stone paths gleaming wet, the fountain dry as a bone. Empty. But the feeling—the presence—is here.

I step forward, slow. Listen. The wards thrum harder, desperate.

“Show yourself,” I say, voice rough enough to scrape the dark.

Silence answers. And then—a laugh. Soft, brittle. It skitters along the arches like a spider.

My pulse spikes. The wolf inside me lunges. I let a fraction of it bleed through, claws pricking beneath my nails, eyes burning gold. The world sharpens into hunter’s clarity: every drip of water, every flicker of shadow a map to prey.

The laugh comes again, closer this time.

I pivot, breath a low snarl. “Coward.”

A shape slides between columns—tall, smoke-thin, there and gone. No heartbeat. No scent. Only that electric wrongness.

The wards flare white for an instant. Then nothing.

I stalk the trail, but the shape melts into darkness. Gone.

The wolf howls in my head, furious at the denial. My own blood answers, hot and reckless. It takes everything I have to stay human, to keep from tearing through the hedges and stone like an animal. I press my palms to the cold fountain rim and bow my head.

Isadora.

The thought slams into me like a fist. If the wards are weakening, if something breached them tonight, she’s the first target. She’s always the first.

I’m moving before I realize it, a blur through the arcades, rain beginning to fall in soft, needling sheets. The scent of her draws me like a lodestar—wild honey threaded with dark roses, the one thing that steadies the storm in me even as it stokes it.

The great doors of the east wing loom ahead. I shove them open, wood groaning. The corridor inside is candlelit and silent. Students sleep behind heavy doors, unaware of the crack in their shield.

I track her scent up the staircase, heart drumming like war. My claws recede but the wolf still rides close, restless.

Her door.

I pause, listening. Her heartbeat is slow, even. She’s asleep. For now.

Relief and fury war inside me. I should knock, wake her, tell her what I found. But if she sees me like this—eyes glowing, breath sharp with violence—what will she think? I am supposed to protect her, not frighten her.

A floorboard creaks down the hall.

I whip around, lips peeled back, ready to strike. Just a draft. Nothing more.

But the foreign magic still lingers, faint and taunting, like a promise whispered against my neck.

I stay there for a long time, a silent sentinel outside her door, rain dripping from my hair, the storm inside me louder than the one on the roof.

If the predator returns, it will have to get through me first.