Page 2 of Legacy Elite

"Yes."

"Faculty secured the clearing. The bear's been moved. Professor Voss wants it examined." His voice stays even. "The upperclassman from your combat station didn't survive."

I stop chewing.

I heard him die. I heard it through the trees, his scream. I know that. It still sits in me like a swallowed stone.

"Okay," I say. It comes out rough.

He waits. "The students who came in after were sent back to the dorms. The Trial results stand. Everyone who finished, finished. And Chancellor Falken is meeting with the senior faculty tonight."

"About the bear?"

"About several things."

I put the plate down.

"And I'm here," I say slowly, "because?"

"Because you're staying here tonight."

"In your house?"

"In the spare room." He says it the way he'd correct a wrong answer in class, no heat in it at all. "The Chancellor doesn't want you alone, or in student housing, until we have a clearer picture."

"A clearer picture of what?" I sit up too fast and my shoulder twinges. "I shifted. That's what I’ve wanted to do all year. I couldn't do it before the Trial, I couldn't do it in the Trial fight, and then I did it. And now I'm being quarantined? Why? Do I have rabies?"

"Shifters don’t get rabies."

"Oh, well that’s good. Then why am I here?"

"Jessica." He waits until I look at him. "Nobody in that clearing had a problem with you shifting."

"Then what—"

"It's what you shifted into."

And that’s it.

I heard them whispering out there. I had ears like a bat and I caught every fragment — impossible, not possible, extinct — and one word underneath it all that I couldn’t even understand why—and haven’t stopped chewing on since.

"What am I?" I ask him.

Jon doesn't pretend not to know what I mean.

"Direwolf," he says.

I wait for that to make sense.

It doesn't. I know the word the way anybody knows the word. Big prehistoric wolf, museum bones, a thing that stopped existing a very long time ago. Not a word for me.

"Okay," I say. "So how is that even possible?"

And Jon hesitates.

"There's history attached to it," he says. "A lot of it. And the Chancellor needs to be part of that conversation."

I stare at him. "That’s all you are going to tell me."