Page 19 of Legacy Found

"It did," I hear myself say, wrecked.

"It did," he agrees, easy, no argument. "But you're still you. Right now, this second, you're exactly who you were ten minutes ago. That doesn't change today. I promise."

I turn to him fully, and the question comes out of me raw: "How are you so calm?"

He gives me a small, crooked smile. "Because I already had my freak-out."

And that — that lands in the room like a hand on a shoulder. I feel the collective flinch of understanding go through all six of us at once.

Sophia scrubs at her face, hiccuping. "You mean — you knew? This whole time? You knew and you just — did the ropes course with us?"

"Yep." Torres shrugs. "You all looked about how I looked, well except I cried more."

Sophia lets out a wet, startled laugh despite herself. "Really?"

"Oh, yeah." He says it with total, cheerful conviction. "I was a complete disaster. Full meltdown. There was snot involved. It was not my finest hour."

And somehow, impossibly, the room laughs. Just a little — shaky, half-hysterical, watery — but it's real, and it cracks the terror open just enough to let air in. Even Declan lowers himself slowly back into his chair. Even Freya's shoulders come down a fraction.

Torres didn't take the fear away. He just made it survivable, by proving somebody already had.

Jon lets the laugh settle before he speaks again, and when he does, his voice is quiet.

"He's telling the truth," Jon says. "About all of it. I'm a wolf. I was born into a wolf pack. I've known what I am my entire life."

He gestures toward Torres. "Torres's story is different. He was born human, with no idea any of this existed. He carried a latent shifter gene his entire life, dormant, until it activated. He discovered what he was at Frosthaven."

Jon looks around at us.

"That's why you're here. Every one of you carries that same latent gene. You weren't raised in packs. You didn't grow up knowing wolves existed. Until recently, you had no reason to believe you were anything other than human."

He is silent a moment.

"But you're not."

My brain catches on those two words and refuses to move past them.

Jon's voice softens. "We don't know when—or even if—each of you will shift. That's part of what we're here to help you discover. But your bloodwork wasn't a mistake. The scholarship wasn't random."

His eyes settle on mine.

"You're here because you're one of us."

Nobody breathes.

I turn to Torres, because I have to, because it's the only fixed point in the room. "You knew," I say again — not an accusation, just needing it confirmed, needing something solid.

He nods.

Jon looks at him. "Would you be willing to tell them? Your version? I think they need it from someone who isn't me."

Torres considers it, then nods again, and when he talks he doesn't dress it up.

"I was in juvie," he says, plain. "Seventeen. Long record before that — foster homes, fights, the whole thing. Everybody'd already decided what I was." He turns his scarred knuckles over, an old habit. "They did a blood panel on intake. A few weeks later some people I'd never met showed up and told me I was getting transferred to a special school." A short, dry laugh. "I figured it was a scam or a psych ward. Once I got there, I shifted. I was scared out of my mind, no idea what was happening to my own body." He says it without drama, but I feel it anyway, the size of it. "Feral Academy taught me it wasn't the end of me. That I wasn't broken, I was just — this. Then I transferred to Frosthaven, and now I'm here."

He looks around at us, steady. "So when I say you're still you? I mean it." His eyes flick, briefly, to me. "You five already have more than I did. You've got a week of knowing each other. You've got Jon. You've got somebody who came out the other side sitting right here telling you it's possible."

I realize, looking at him, that he's been exactly where we are right now. Exactly. And he's fine. More than fine — he's the calmest, safest-feeling person in the room. It's the first thing all morning that makes the ground feel like it might hold my weight.