Page 3 of Legacy Elite

"I'm not going to give you half of it tonight."

"Why not? Half is more than I've got."

"Because half of this is worse than none." He says, no apology. "If I tell you what I think is true and I'm wrong about a detail, it could hurt you. I'd rather make you wait than give you an answer that is totally wrong."

"Wait how long?"

"Less than a day."

"Fantastic."

I shove my hair out of my face and immediately regret the shoulder involved. Because apparently turning into a giant extinct wolf means everyone gets secretive and weird.

"This is exactly what you did when you recruited me to come to Luftis Academy," I say.

Jon looks at me.

"You told me what you knew, admitted there was more you couldn't explain yet, and asked me to wait until orientation."

"Yes."

"I hated that too."

The corner of his mouth moves. Barely.

"I remember."

"And now you're asking me to wait again."

"Not long. Because right now I can tell you that you shifted into a direwolf. I cannot yet tell you what that means with enough certainty to be useful."

Annoyingly, that is almost exactly what he said before.

Across the room, Pickles has been returned to his fancy house and is stalking the far corner of it like a very small, very smug crocodile.

I sit back.

"Fine. Then answer this question for me."

"If I can."

"How big was I?"

Jon looks at me.

Because that's something I don't know. I know what it felt like to shift. I know my eyesight sharpened and the world exploded with things I'd never been able to smell before. Wet stone. Blood. Pine sap gone sticky in the cold.

I know what it felt like to run on four legs. Muscle and speed and a body that finally seemed to know exactly what it was supposed to do.

And I know I wasn't afraid.

That's the part I keep coming back to. There was a rabid bear in front of me, and I wasn't afraid of it. I wasn't afraid of the teeth or the blood or what I'd become.

It was the best thing that has ever happened to me.

But I never saw myself.

"How big?" I ask again.