The cool night air was perfect for exploring the forest. I stared up into the sky, smiling when the clouds scuttled away from the white sliver of the crescent moon hanging in the darkness. Another week down, and Saturday had arrived. Specifically, Saturday at 8 p.m. All the conditions were perfect, and still, my wolf refused to rise to the surface. She perceived Honor as a threat. Not that he would ever hurt me, but his presence with the intention to provoke my wolf made her uneasy, and she stayed put—the opposite of what she should do.

“Can you feel her here?” Honor asked, tapping his chest.

We stood behind my dorm, at the edge of the woods, for our first class of “Help Nai Shift 101.” So far, we’d had zero success, which was to say I was still human even after he’d waved a knife in my face.

At least, Honor wasn’t rubbing my failure in my face by shifting back and forth. Pushing away the painful memory of my one lesson with Nolan from years ago, I sucked in a deep, cleansing breath.

Pine and mulch. Loamy earth and verdant growth. Sandalwood and sage.

‘Mate.’

My eyes popped open, and I scanned the tree line. My skin prickled with anticipation, and my wolf surged forward. I took another breath, but then his scent was gone.

Just like that, my wolf retreated. She’d been like this ever since the attack. Hesitant.

“She’s there,” I said, patting my chest. “But also here,” and I patted my temple. “She doesn’t want to come out for you.”

Running through the woods? Sure, no problem. But my wolf was not a beck and call kinda girl. Not for me, my father, and apparently, not for Honor. The urge to ask if he knew who my mate was burned at the tip of my tongue, but if I disclosed I was half of the fated-mate pair, would I reveal a secret my mate kept from his brothers? Of all the green-eyed boys at this school … I was sure in my bones it was one of the Midnight brothers, most likely Justice or Rage.

Honor cocked his head. “What do you mean, ‘she?’”

His question pulled me back to the lesson, and I held my hand out to stop what would surely follow. “I know, I know. ‘She’ is me.”

My father said the same thing. In fact, every wolf-shifter I knew felt the same. The wolf was merely the embodiment of the animalistic instinct of their ‘human.’

But that’s not how I felt.

Honor limped closer. “Then why did you say she?”

How could I explain without sounding insane?

“I know we’re one and the same as far as beings, and most of the time, it feels that way.” Not completely true, but the best I could come up with. “However, whenever I’m in peril or under pressure—” I pursed my lips and shrugged “—she steps back, freezes up as if she thinks my human form is more powerful.”

“That’s not good,” Honor stated just like every other wolf shifter who’d discovered my secret. “Are you sure she freezes up?”

“I don’t know how else to explain it.” I crossed my arms over my chest, frowning.

He chuckled. “There are shifters who fight their instincts as they get older, and some even say they can control whether or not they shift. But what you’re saying…” He shook his head. “Our wolf is physically stronger than our human body, so when it comes to physical danger, the instinct to shift is almost impossible to stop.”

Almost impossible wasn’t the same as impossible. And it didn’t matter what everyone else did or didn’t do. I could only speak for myself. “You’re not telling me anything I haven’t heard before.”

“All right,” Honor said. “Then tell me what it’s like for you. When that wolf attacked you, you didn’t have any…drive or push to shift?”

“I wanted to, but I couldn’t.”

He shook his head, and I reached back to a conversation I’d had with my father, years ago, to try and explain.

“You know that feeling of presence as you shift, and I mean just before your instinct takes over and your rational mind goes away, that few seconds when both the human rational side and wolf instinct coexist in the same space at the same time?”

Honor stared at me, his gaze piercing. “That’s like a millisecond.”

I snorted. “Not for me.”

“You mean you can still think and rationalize even when you’re in your wolf form?”

“Yep.”

He shook his head. Again. But it wasn’t in a disrespectful way. He looked … amazed. “I’ve never heard of anything like that.”

His words prickled my skin. Dammit. I’d said too much. Revealed too much. What if he told the alpha king? I grabbed his arm.

“Please don’t tell anyone. The last thing I need is more scrutiny for being different. Everyone already treats me like a freak for having two affinities.” I straightened, dropping his arm, and gave him an apologetic smile. “Maybe that’s why. Maybe my two affinities are stronger than my wolf.”

I was grasping for straws, but the pity in his expression twisted my insides. There had to be a reasonable explanation for this.

He pulled me in for a hug, surprising me. “Maybe. But I need you to be able to shift and defend yourself. We just want you to be safe, and I would never tell anyone your secret.”

Without him saying it, I knew the “we” he referred to was him and Noble. Sweet and caring, both of them. Or could that “we” also include the other two Midnight brothers? Probably, at least one of them—if one of them was my mate.

Gah! Why did there have to be so many green-eyed boys at this school?

Emotion clogged my throat, and I sank into Honor’s hug. “Thanks for trying.”

Honor kissed my temple and then pulled away. “We’re not done,” he said, crouching to look me in the eye. “I’ll meet you here same time next week.”

I watched him leave, guilt pressed against my breastbone. As soon as he disappeared around the corner, my wolf nudged me.

‘Run?’

Blessed Mother Mage. Really? Now that Honor was gone, she was willing to come out? No one told her what to do.

Granted, I’d been keeping my shifts to once a week so that I didn’t run into my mate again. Staring out into the darkness, I found the normal skittering and hoots served to reassure me that, hopefully, I wouldn’t see him. So long had passed that the odds had to be in my favor. Surely he wouldn’t be out in the woods this late. Right? The stress was going to kill me. Or drive me mad—except I might already be there.

Ugh. I needed to connect to the earth. To feel the air in my fur.

Before I could formulate any further arguments, I marched into the woods, stripping out of my clothes as soon as I’d cleared the tree line.

With a deep breath, I relaxed, letting my wolf surge forward. The fur prickled as it spread down my skin, and I grinned as my bones twisted and morphed. Seconds later, I let my tongue loll out of my mouth in the wolf-equivalent of a grin. I so needed this.

Racing into the forest, I left the tension of the last few weeks behind and thought of nothing but the night and the beauty of the woods. The scent of wolf was everywhere, but this deep into the forest, the other smells ruled. Early autumn’s foliage, decomposing mulch, the scat of small rodents and birds.