His cheeks were burning. But behind the embarrassment and the fear and the confusion, the gravity of what had happened was kicking in.
Anders had transformed.
He had become an ice wolf—one of the few, one of the chosen.
His brain wrestled with the idea, trying to shake it off on the basis that Anders hadn’t been special a single day of his life, but it was impossible to deny.
“I’m Hayn Mekkinsen,” the leader said, pushing his square glasses up his nose. “Did you have parents back in the square that we need to find?”
Years of practice came together instinctively, and Anders opened his mouth to lie. The rules were simple. Never admit you were connected. Never give your real names. Never admit you didn’t have any parents. But how was he going to produce parents if he said yes? “I, uh . . .”
Then he realized that Hayn had made the words a question. Whether it was the ragged clothes he’d been wearing before his transformation—he realized with a pang he’d lost the whole morning’s loot when his jacket was ripped away from his body—or his too-skinny frame, or his slightly too-long hair that had turned messy and needed cutting, they suspected. There were enough children in Holbard on their own that Hayn was obviously familiar with the existence of street orphans.
“If not, you have family now,” Hayn continued. “We take care of our pack. You’ll be fed and clothed, housed and trained at Ulfar Academy.”
Anders breathed out slowly, though suddenly his lungs felt shallow. He could barely imagine one of those things—knowing where all his meals would come from, knowing he had a safe place to sleep, going to school—let alone all of them. “No parents, Herro Mekkinsen,” he admitted, feeling the thick wool of the cloak between his fingertips, absorbing its warmth, its luxury. The girl who owned it offered him a shy smile.
He couldn’t have smiled back if he wanted to. He drew a shaky breath, trying to think what he could say to get away from them.
“Don’t worry,” said Hayn, apparently recognizing his fear but misunderstanding the source. “If another dragon spy makes it into the city, we won’t miss our chance again. We were sent to find you, but others are still tracking her.”
Ice slid down Anders’s spine, like one of the spears the wolves had thrown at Rayna as she fled the square. These people might sound friendly, but they weren’t safe, not for him.
These people were hunting his sister, which meant they were hunting him too. They just didn’t know it yet. They’d thrown their ice spears at her, tried to kill her, and they might as well have thrown them at him.
“You were near her,” said the woman, frowning. “Did you know her?”
Anders shook his head stiffly. Rule number one. “No, Dama. We were both trying to get up to the dais, but the crowd was thick,” he said, his mouth dry, the words coming slowly. “I’ve seen her on the streets before, but I don’t know her.”
“We’ll find out who she is,” Hayn said. “And we’ll find out where she is.”
Anders couldn’t stay with them a second longer than he had to. If he did, he’d surely give away their connection by saying something stupid. He had to find a way to get away from them, and soon.
Rayna had a long head start on the wolves—she had been flying, after all. If she managed to sneak back into the city, he had to be waiting for her, not locked behind the towering gates of Ulfar.
The Academy itself was a huge building, housing all the children who successfully made their transformation at twelve. It was half school, half military barracks, because if you could transform, there was only one job in your future.
You’d be a part of the Wolf Guard, patrolling the streets to enforce the law, protecting Vallen against dragons, or helping raise the next generation. The barracks for the adult wolves was next door to the Academy, joined to it and surrounded by the same high walls. The students were small guards-in-waiting.
The Academy students only ever seemed to come out into the city in groups of four, or with adult members of the guard. He’d be trapped in their midst when he needed to move independently to either meet Rayna or figure out how to find her.
If their positions were reversed, he knew Rayna would walk straight through anything in her path to get to him. Now it was up to him to do the same.
The wolves left him to his thoughts as the four of them made their way out onto the streets once more. Hayn and the woman reached down toward the ground, figures growing leaner in a way that was hard for Anders’s eyes to follow. It was as if his brain was telling him that what he was seeing was impossible, and therefore refusing to let him see it properly.
By the time he’d finished that thought, they were wolves once more, lifting their noses to scent any approaching threats. The change had felt to him like his body was on fire, but they’d made it look so easy. The pair trotted ahead of the two remaining humans, and the townspeople were quick to move out of their way.
The aftermath of Rayna’s flight was visible all around them. The streets were crowded with people, everyone abuzz with their own version of the story, but they stayed close to their doorways, ready to duck back inside if the dragon returned to attack once more. The middle of the cobblestone street was clear, and the wolves and humans made their way down it with every pair of eyes tracking their movement. With the girl’s cloak on over his makeshift clothes, Anders knew he looked like one of the guard.
Except he knew he walked differently from the rest of them, just as he was different from them. There was a grace to their movements, something wolfish, even when they were human. A confidence. They walked as if they knew people were watching.
He glanced sidelong at the girl and found her looking at him. “I’m Lisabet,” she said quietly. Then, her lips quirking: “Don’t worry about this. There’s a reason they tell new students to stay in wolf form all the way back to the Academy. There’s always one that gets caught out every few years, and they don’t have a dragon for an excuse. Just think, at least you didn’t change back up on the dais.”
Anders felt himself go cold just thinking about that. She was right, he could have ended up naked in the middle of the docks. He’d literally had nightmares about that sort of thing. He knew she was trying to be nice, so he made himself try to smile back.
Lisabet was the only Ulfar student Anders had ever seen without a group of four, and he wondered if there was something special about her. He felt like he should introduce himself, but he couldn’t remember a single made-up name to give her. “Thanks for the cloak,” he whispered back instead. She smiled again.
He’d never seen a wolf smile before, or at least not in human form. Sometimes when they trotted through the streets of Holbard in pairs on patrol, tongues lolling out, they seemed almost to be smiling at the fun of weaving through the crowd. But there was something gentle about this girl that didn’t fit with the idea he had in his head of the Academy students.
Anders had never wondered before what happened to the children who made their transformation, but didn’t want to fight, or train, or learn to salute and patrol as the guard members. But now he did.
He wasn’t sure if these new questions were about Lisabet or himself.
They turned a corner, and he caught a glimpse of the dockside square where the Trial of the Staff had been held. He forgot about his speculation, his worries flooding back. The streets were more peopled now, merchers and townspeople making their way out to gossip and gawk at the wreckage of the dais, though everybody kept one careful eye on the sky.