Chapter 12

ELVIRA'S POV

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Daphne woke up the entire dorm by standing in the middle of the living room on Saturday morning. She announced, at a volume that students outside our dorm could hear her, that today is the day I eat my first Wolford kill with them all.

"It's the rule for new dorm mates," she says when I groan into my pillow that early morning. "It is a non-negotiable roommate law for us. I didn't make the rules, Elvi… I’m just enforcing them viciously."

"Daphne, you made those rules yourselves," I replied to her while smiling

"It doesn't make the law any less real."

We're going to be on the treeline by ten for the hunting. All four of us signed in at the little building by the boundary of the school and the forest. Lexa was still complaining that it was too early for anything that requires shoes with laces to be worn by her to the forest. The forest smells different this morning than it did when I came here with Eliano during the week. It was cooler and wetter. Everything was still holding onto the previous night's damp and dew. The birds haven't fully committed to being loud yet.

"So, what's the actual plan?" I asked. "Do we all just descend on one poor deer like a pack of lunatics?"

"We're a pack," Anika says. "That's genuinely how we will do it right now."

Daphne's already gone low, scanning the underbrush with her head tilted in a way that looks almost like a wolf. She says her cat “Katty” taught her how to do that. Katty could actually speak in full sentences to her, and she would understand clearly.

We found animal tracks near a stream. It was fresh and recent, and Lexa got genuinely excited about it. She crouched down to press her fingers into the mud like she could read the animal footprints.

"It is a Roe deer," she says. "It’s recent, probably around here."

"How recent are the tracks?"

"Recent enough that if we're quiet, we can catch them as soon as possible."

We split into pairs without really discussing why we did it. Anika grabs my sleeve and pulls me low, walking me through hand signals she and the girls apparently invented years ago before I joined them. To her, two fingers mean wait. A closed fist means go ahead. A flat palm means something's wrong, and I pray to every god available right now that I never have to see that one used by her.

"What if I mess up the signal?" I whispered.

"I know you won't."

"You don't know that for sure."

"Elvi.. You're a werewolf. It's instinct with extra careful steps, and you will be fine." She squeezes my hand once and lets it go. "Trust your body. It knows what to do even when your brain's busy panicking over other things."

I wanted to argue with her, but I didn't get the chance.

We caught the deer in a clearing probably twenty minutes later, after we split into pairs. There were three deer with their heads down, one of them close enough to the treeline that my whole body goes still on instinct before my brain's caught up with why.

Anika gives the signal. I moved.

It was faster and messier than the hunt with Eliano during the week. When the hunt was over, I was on my knees in the wet grass, breathing hard like I ran a sprint. My heart was going faster than normal. Daphne was shouting loud enough to startle every bird within a mile.

"First blood of the hunt!" she yelled, which is objectively a strange thing to yell, and also exactly the kind of thing Daphne yells at.

The four of us ate together in a rough circle. Lexa kept narrating everything like a nature documentary in the worst posh accent I've ever heard her speak. I was laughing hard enough that I nearly choked, and for a second I forgot to feel like the new girl at all. I just felt like one of them.

Afterward, we wash up at the stream and lay back in the grass to dry off in the last of the morning sun. My arm's stretched out beside me, with my sleeve pushed up without thinking about it. I caught Anika glancing at my wrist.

"Your tattoo is still pink," she says.

"Yes, it is still pink."

"It'll turn soon."

"I know that."

"Are you nervous?"

I looked at the mark instead of answering Anika right away. It doesn't look any different than it did a week ago. It is still the same shape and the same pale color. I still feel the same faint numbness under my fingertip whenever I press the tattoo. But something about lying here in the sun with it exposed makes it feel closer than it did this morning, like a countdown I can't actually hear ticking.

"A little nervous, I must confess," I admitted. "What if it's one of them. I meant the Three. Or what if it's all three of them."

Anika propped herself up on one elbow, squinting at me. "Would that be so bad?"

"I don't even know them."

"You will get to know with time."

We walked back toward the school in the early afternoon; our uniforms were swapped for the workout clothes we hunted in. Our hair was still damp, and I felt looser than I have in a long time.

I didn't notice Gideon until we were almost close to the treeline.

Gideon was leaning against the boundary post like he had been waiting there for a while. His arms were crossed, his dark hair still damp from his own hunt. He went somewhere on the other side of the property line for his hunt. He straightened up the second he saw me. Something in my chest does that same stupid lurch it always does when one of them looks at me.

"I guess you had a good hunt?" he asks, with his eyes flicking briefly to the girls before settling back on me.

"Yes, I had a really good hunt, actually."

"You've got blood on your jaw."

I swiped at it, and he almost smiled while I was cleaning the blood up. Almost there.

"You still left a little," he says, and he didn't tell me where.

I scrub harder, with my cheeks burning. He watches me do it with an expression I can't fully read, it somewhere between amused and something warmer he's trying hard not to show it to me. Behind me, Daphne makes a noise like a kettle starting to boil, and Lexa grabs her arm before she can say whatever was about to come out of her mouth.

"We'll catch up with you at the dorm," Anika says, entirely too pleased with herself, and steers the other two off toward the building before I can protest.

"They're your friends, right?" Gideon says once they are out of earshot.

"Painfully, they are," I replied him smiling

He pushes off the post and falls into step beside me, close enough that our shoulders nearly brush with each other. Neither of us mentions it. I'm not sure either of us could explain it if we tried.

"How was your hunt?" I asked, mostly to fill the silence before it got too loud in my own head.

"It was quiet and boring, compared to the fun you had with your friends." He nods back toward the treeline. "You looked happy."

"I’m."

"Good," he says, as the word costs him something to admit out loud, and he doesn't explain further. We walk the rest of the way to the boundary line without talking.