Page 59 of Legacy Found

His wolf's ear turns toward me.

"Luke. Hey. I'm okay — look at me. It's over. You can stand down." I push up to sitting, ignoring the scream of my ribs, keeping my voice as warm and steady as I can make it. "I'm okay."

The wolf turns its head. Those green eyes fix on mine, and I hold them, and I don't look away.

"I'm okay," I say again, softer.

And muscle by muscle, he settles. The hackles drop. The snarl dies. Then Luke shifts back — down on one knee, human, breathing hard. His eyes never leave me.

He's furious — I can see it, at himself, at the loss of control. But when he crosses to me, none of that is on his face. It's just fear, barely leashed, as he drops down and checks me over, hands quick and careful at my ribs, my arms, my head.

"Are you hurt. Where are you hurt."

"I'm okay. He clipped me. Bruised, that's all." I catch his wrist. "Luke. I'm okay."

He goes still under my hand.

I lift my arm. "But — what the hell happened to my wrist?"

Luke sees it. And his whole face changes—recognition and shock, there for half a second before the mask drops back into place. But I've spent weeks reading this man across a training mat. I know what I saw.

"You know what this is," I say slowly.

Luke doesn't answer. But the way his jaw sets, the way his eyes cut from my wrist to Torres and back, tells me everything. They all know something I don't. It's about me. And it's sitting on my arm.

I fully expect to be expelled.

I entered the field during a live-shift exercise. I did the one thing they told us twice not to do. So when the instructors pull me aside after the medics finish poking at my ribs, I brace for the deduction and the lecture on top of it.

Instead the lead instructor — a scarred woman I've seen running the upper-year drills — studies me for a long moment.

"You saw him lose control before anyone on that field did," she says. "You put yourself between a feral wolf and another student, and you kept your feet long enough for help to reach you. You broke formation. We'll talk about that, and in a different situation it could've gotten you killed. But you read the field faster than three trained instructors and you saved Moretti. The academy minds that a great deal less than it minds the rule."

Then she names a number of Merit Marks that snaps my head up — enough to haul my ranking out of the danger zone and into the middle of the pack in one afternoon.

I don't say anything clever. I just stand there, sore and stunned, because after a whole year of Celeste Faris taking marks off me two at a time for helping people, someone with authority just handed me a fistful for the same instinct and walked off like it was obvious.

It's late by the time I'm finally alone.

The adrenaline's long gone, and my body feels like it lost a fight with a mountain, which—accurate. I shower until the hot water runs out, pull on soft clothes, and I'm about to fall face-first into bed when I lift my arm and stop.

The marks are still there.

Two dark arcs on the inside of my wrist. I know what my bruises look like — I've collected enough of them — and these aren't bruises, and they aren't scratches. They're clean. Two smooth curves side by side, precise in a way no accident manages, like someone tattooed me while I wasn't looking.

I rub them with my thumb. Nothing. I scrubbed at them in the shower without thinking, and the soap did nothing, the water did nothing. I press one, half-expecting pain, and there isn't any. I scratch at the edge, and it doesn't smudge or lift.

"What the fuck," I tell my empty room, turning my wrist under the light.

My brain helpfully replays it. Torres grabbing one arm. Luke grabbing the other. Both at once. That soundless explosion in my chest, the heat, the pull. The light burning up through my skin. Luke's face when he saw it. Torres, thrown for the first time since I've known him. Two men who very clearly know more than they're telling me.

I grab my phone and take a picture. The flash washes the arcs out, so I take another without it, and there they are, undeniable. My thumb hovers over Torres's name. I start typing. Do you have any idea what the hell this is, because I —

A knock at my door.

Chapter twenty-one

Jon