Seth

I noticed it first on a Wednesday that felt like it couldn’t decide between rain and moonlight.

My snowflake sat hunched over a fortress of textbooks at the long table in our private library, hair slipping over one shoulder, mouth pursed as she chewed on the end of a quill like it had personally offended her GPA. The wards set into the carved beams—old fae work braided with wolf sigils—usually purred in the background like content cats. Tonight they were… alert. Silver veining along the rafters brightened and dimmed, brightened and dimmed, tracking her pulse like she was a storm the room had to learn.

She didn’t notice. Or pretended not to. She was memorizing comparative treaty clauses between Lycan’Dra and Drakonis like her life depended on it. Which, to be fair, in her head it did. “Scholarship kid” was the story she told herself when she thought no one was listening, and my chest did that tight, annoyed thing every time it crossed her face. She’d rather swallow glass than let us pay for anything. She worked, studied, fought for every graded mark like she could wrestle the world into respecting her.

That determination is one of the reasons I call her snowflake. Not because she’s delicate. Because she’s singular. Unique. Try to hold her wrong and she’ll burn you colder than ice.

“Breathe,” I murmured, sliding a mug of moonroot tea next to her elbow.

She didn’t look up. “I am.”

“Liar,” I said, grinning, then softened it by brushing my knuckles down her shoulder. Sparks skittered, honest little traitors running under my skin. The bond hummed—there and not, louder some days, quiet others—but tonight it had teeth. The air thickened with it. Even the runes took notice, a slow, curious flare.

Two days. That’s all we had until she turned eighteen.

Two days until her first shift.

Two days until we found out if the bond that already dragged our wolves to their knees would brand itself into bone.

I should’ve been exhilarated.

Instead, I was counting the ways the room reacted when she exhaled too hard.

Callum’s page didn’t turn. He’d been staring at the same line long enough to imprint it onto his skull playing statue because that’s what leaders do when they’re thinking too much. Jax lounged by the window with the curtains half-drawn, pretending to watch the courtyard while Blaze pressed against his skin hard enough to silver the edges of his eyes. Rory sprawled on the rug like a man with no worries, tossing a coin and catching it, letting it dance over knuckles. But his tells were showing: the coin kept ghosting, missing a beat, like his rhythm had been reset.

We’d spent the last four days trying to give her room and still keep her wrapped in us. Breakfasts where Callum made sure her juice was cold and her plate hot; lunches in the Academy courtyard where I played interference with the curious and the cruel; evenings when Rory stole her smiles, bringing back impossible sweets from the Night Market and lying with a straight face about how he won them from a mer-merchant who had “tragically fallen in love” with him. Nights where Blaze watched her sleep from the chair like a sinner praying for patience.

Good days. The kind of days I didn’t think existed for us.

And underneath those days—beneath the jokes, the studying, the handholds and forehead kisses—the pressure built.

Her dominance crept up like the tide.

It wasn’t dramatic at first. A she-wolf in the corridor would pause and bare her throat without realizing. A fae archivist would blink, dazed, and forget the cutting comment he’d been sharpening. A low-ranked patrolman would step around her without conscious thought, giving her the inner path in a hall as if it were instinct. I told myself I was reading too much into it.

Then the wards started listening to her and not us.

“Another treaty clause?” I asked, tracing the diagram she’d drawn—lunar sigils interlocked with spiral fae glyphs, the Accord’s “consent lattice” illustrated in her neat, sharp hand.

She nodded, still reading. “Professor Eliane’s exam covers the Illyrian Addenda.”

“You’ve done three past papers.”

“And I’ll do three more.” She finally lifted her head. There was steel and midnight in her eyes. “I’m not failing anything because people think I got soft after—” She gestured vaguely at all of us. “This.”

You could put a crown in her hair and she’d still check her notes before she let anyone announce her.

“Snowflake,” I said, slower now, because I’m not stupid and my timing is perfect when it matters, “have you noticed anything… different this week?”

She squinted. “About what?”

“About you.”

Callum glanced up. Jax stopped pretending to watch birds. Rory’s coin vanished.

She studied my face like she could pry the answer out of my cheekbones. “If this is your way of calling me moody, I swear—”

“Dominance,” I said, quiet. “It’s rising.”

Her laugh was immediate, defensive. “I haven’t even shifted yet.”

“I know,” I said. “That’s the part giving me grey hair.”

“You already had grey hair,” she muttered automatically, then blinked because she’d just teased me on instinct. She was letting us in by inches, and I cherished every one like a thief with stolen rubies.

Callum set his book down. “We’re not trying to scare you, little Luna. We’re telling you because we should have said it sooner.”

“Tell me what?”

Rory sat up. “That when you walk into a room, people with strong magic look up. Not because of us.” He angled his head. “Because of you.”

“How would I not notice that?” she demanded, but there was a falter in it. She was remembering. The way Tessa’s friends who once sneered now swallowed hard. The way a pair of dragonborn exchange students had fallen oddly silent when she passed. The way Professor Kaelen’s bond rune had pulsed brighter under her hand yesterday, as if the chalk itself liked her.

I watched the idea cross her face like a shadow.

“Look,” I said, palms up, the least threatening an Alpha can be. “It could be a lot of things. Your birthday. The bond resonance. The way the Academy’s wards amplify emotion inside the grounds. You know how the sigils here are tuned—to glow when dominance spikes, to cage volatility so no one dies over a bump in the hall.”

She nodded, jaw tight. We’d already told her the Academy’s “glowiness” was intentional—the ancient wardwrights had made it so magic was theatrically honest here to keep everyone safe. Sigils blazed when feelings ran hot so people thought twice. A true deterrent. And yet she still carried herself like a girl determined not to be seen unless she wanted to be.

“What’s bothering you?” she asked me, too sharp to miss the edge in my voice.

I thought about lying.

Didn’t.

“Ten-out-of-ten,” I said. “That resonance we felt from you in Shifting—when the wards logged your aura reacting to ours. Dean Alder told you it was ‘unprecedented,’?”

She rolled her eyes. “He also said that like it was a bedtime story he’d been waiting his whole life to tell.”

“He’s not wrong,” Rory murmured.

I rubbed the back of my neck. “We told him we’d keep an eye. He told us we should tell the Supreme Alphas if it spikes again.”

Her head snapped up. “The triplets? The Kings?”

“Tristan, Lucas, and Hayden,” Callum said, voice careful. “They oversee Lycandra on behalf of the Crown. They arbitrate when packs can’t. They keep the accords from fraying when worlds pull at them.”

“And you answer to them,” she said slowly.

“Only them and the Supremes,” Jax said. “Everyone else answers to us.”

She went quiet at that. Not afraid—processing. That mind of hers clicking through consequence after consequence, charting a map none of us could see.

“So you’re saying,” she said, too calm, “that I’m a walking ward-disruptor with a ten-out-of-ten bond resonance and rising dominance two days before my first shift and your solution is… what? A meeting with three supernaturals who can shatter a pack with a half a breath?”

My grin broke free. “Aw, look Cal,, she’s making jokes under pressure. I think I’m in love.”

“You’ve been in love,” Rory said absently.

I wanted to say: I call you snowflake because no matter how hot the room gets, you make everything clear. Instead I leaned down and pressed my mouth to the crown of her head. “We’re not dragging you anywhere you don’t agree to. We don’t do this without you.” A beat. “But yes. If it spikes again, we loop them in. Quietly.”

She stared at the table. “And if it doesn’t?”

“Then we hold your hand on your birthday, walk you into the night, and make sure your first shift is the gentlest history has ever seen.”

The quiet stretched, not uncomfortable. The lamplight haloed her. The wards dimmed a notch, as if they’d decided she wasn’t a storm after all.

“Okay,” she said at last, voice barely above a whisper. “Tell me if it gets worse. I… want to know. Even if I can’t feel all of it.”

I exhaled a breath I didn’t know I’d locked in a vault. “Deal.”

She went back to her notes. Or tried to. Every few minutes, the silver livewire of her aura brushed mine and Scar rolled with it like a hound in sunlight. I could feel the others doing the same dance; we were four men pretending to read while we learned a new gravity.

Hours later, I walked her to bed and sat on the floor with my back to the wall while she slept, listening to the wards learn her cadence. Scar tucked in on a low growl of contentment, and for the first time in a long time, I didn’t dream of blood. I dreamed of a snowflake falling into my palm and refusing to melt.

Two days. And whatever waited on the other side of dawn.