Chapter 14—The Invitation

Elara's POV

Kael found me near the main corridor after second period.

I had been walking to my locker with Freya when he fell into step beside me with the particular ease of someone who had never once worried about whether his company was welcome, and Freya took one look at his approach and very graciously announced she had forgotten something in the classroom and disappeared before I could stop her.

I made a mental note to have words with her about that later, then turned to face Kael with the expression of someone who was perfectly fine and had not just been abandoned by her best friend.

"Training," Kael said, by way of opening, because apparently full sentences were optional this morning.

"Good morning to you too," I said, reaching my locker and spinning the combination.

"I want you to come to a session with the school pack," he said, leaning against the locker beside mine with his arms crossed and his eyes patient. "Friday after last class. Training field."

I looked at him. "The academy is not preparing for war, Kael."

"No," he agreed easily, tilting his head slightly, "but your wolf is still new and you are still learning what it can do, and training is how you figure that out before it matters in a situation where you actually need it."

I turned back to my locker and thought about that for a moment because it was actually a reasonable point and I did not particularly want to give him the satisfaction of agreeing with it too quickly.

"I train on my own," I said.

"You walk the perimeter of the school grounds in the early morning," he said, "which I have noticed and which is good but is not the same thing as actually working with your wolf under real conditions with someone who can push back."

I looked at him again, slightly unsettled by the fact that he had noticed that detail, and he looked back at me with the patient expression of someone who was not in a hurry and knew he was right and was comfortable waiting for me to catch up to that conclusion on my own.

"It is not about strength," he said, and his voice had dropped slightly from its usual confidence into something that sounded more genuine than I was used to from him.

"Every wolf goes through it after their first shift, figuring out how the instincts work, how fast you actually are, what your limits feel like from the inside versus what they look like from the outside. Doing that alone takes twice as long and you end up learning half as much."

I pulled my books from the locker and considered him. He was not performing this the way he performed most things, the easy charm was still there but underneath it was something more straightforward and without the undercurrent of competition that usually coloured his interactions with me. He was not trying to impress me right now. He was just making a point he believed in, and the difference was noticeable.

"One session," I said finally.

"Friday," he said. "Training field. Last bell."

"One session," I repeated, firmly, so we were both clear on the terms.

"One session," he agreed, and pushed off the wall with that unhurried ease of his and started walking, already moving on to the next thing in his day like the conversation had been resolved and filed away and that was that.

I watched him go for a moment, adjusting my bag on my shoulder, and told myself that agreeing to one session was purely practical and had nothing to do with the apology or the necklace or the version of him that had shown up today without the performance, and I almost believed that too.

Then I turned to head toward class and felt it, that specific awareness at the back of my neck that I had started to associate with one particular person over the last week, the kind that arrived before I had even looked up to confirm it.

I turned slowly.

Across the courtyard, leaning against the far wall with his bag over one shoulder and his eyes already on me, was Ravin, and he had clearly been standing there long enough to have watched the entire conversation with Kael because the expression on his face, calm and unreadable as always, had something underneath it that was new, something I could not immediately name but that I felt across the distance between us even before I fully registered what I was looking at.

He did not wave. He did not smile or nod or do any of the things people did when they caught someone's eye across an open space.

He just looked at me with that steady unhurried attention of his, holding the gaze for one long moment, and then he straightened from the wall and turned and walked toward the main building, disappearing through the doors without looking back.

I stood there for a moment longer than I needed to, the courtyard noise continuing around me like nothing had happened, students crossing between buildings, conversations overlapping, the ordinary sound of a school day moving forward, and I was standing in the middle of all of it with a feeling I could not quite sort out sitting somewhere between my ribs.

I did not know how long he had been standing there.

I did not know how much of the conversation he had seen or what he had thought watching Kael lean against my locker and talk to me with that quiet sincerity he did not usually show anyone, and something about not knowing bothered me in a way that was disproportionate to the situation and which I was choosing not to examine too closely right now.

I turned and walked to class and told myself it was fine and that whatever expression had been on Ravin's face meant nothing and that I was not going to spend the rest of the morning thinking about it.

I spent the rest of the morning thinking about it.