Chapter 632: Founding Father Of Good Boys

The howl carried across the academy and the fields beyond it and the forests beyond those and the mountains beyond those. It was the first howl. The first sound of its kind produced by a Fae-born throat on Fae soil, the frequency of a species that was being invented in real time by a boy whose body was the prototype.

In the academy dormitory, Tristan Aelindor sat up in bed. His green eyes were wide. His hair was a catastrophe. His expression was the expression of a man who had been asleep three seconds ago and was now fully, irreversibly awake.

Tristan crossed the room to the window.

In the training yard below, lit by the last of the moonlight, a wolf the size of a small horse was standing on the grass with its head tilted toward the sky.

"Oh," Tristan said. "He is going to be insufferable about this."

He had approximately nine hundred questions and his sleeping clothes were not dressed for any of them.

✦✦✦

A FEW WEEKS LATER

Tristan and Lucian stood in the forest outside the academy.

Lucian shifted. The transformation took three seconds, much faster than his first one.

One moment, a Fae boy standing in the moonlight. The next, a wolf the size of a small horse, black-furred, gold-eyed, radiating the kind of ancient, predatory authority that made the trees feel shorter.

Tristan walked up to him. Then he squished the face of the first wolf in Fae history.

"Who’s a good boy," he cooed, in a voice three octaves above his natural register. "Who is the biggest, scariest, most goddess-blessed good boy in the whole kingdom?"

The wolf’s gold eyes went flat.

"Look at these paws. These paws are the size of dinner plates. These are sacred paws. Deity-approved paws." Tristan scratched behind Lucian’s left ear. "And look at these ears. These are enormous. These are the ears of a very important wolf who was chosen by the Moon Goddess herself and who is also a very good boy, yes he is."

Lucian’s wolf growled. Low. The kind of growl that should have communicated I am an apex predator gifted by a deity and you will remove your hands.

But his tail wagged once. He killed it immediately. But it happened. They both knew it happened.

Tristan’s face split into the widest grin of his life. "Your tail wagged."

The growl got louder.

"Your. Tail. Wagged. The first wolf in Fae history, chosen by the Moon Goddess, built like a warhorse, growling like a thunderstorm, just wagged his tail because I scratched his ears."

Lucian shifted back. His face was murderous.

"I will end you."

"Your tail disagrees."

✦✦✦

THE WOLVES — THE FINDING

They found him.

Over the following months, as word of the shift spread through channels that operated beneath official communication, they arrived.

Fae-born. All of them. Carrying the same gold in their eyes and the same silence in their chests and the same story, told in different dialects and different accents and different kingdoms but carrying the same essential architecture: I shifted. Nobody told me this could happen. My family thinks I am cursed. I have nowhere to go.

The sentence hit Lucian the same way every time. In the same place. Behind the sternum, where the boy who had been carried into a palace by a king still remembered what it felt like to have nowhere, and the remembering was the engine that powered every welcome he gave.

"You’re building an army," Tristan commented after one of those meetings.

"I’m building a community."

"A community of wolves."

"Yes."

"Led by you."

Lucian rolled his eyes. "There’s no leader. I’m just helping them."

"Could have fooled me. I’m torn between being proud of you and terrified."

The meetings grew to pairs. Then groups. Something that had started at the academy gates and in forest clearings and on roads, turned into Lucian leaving the academy altogether because he felt a pull towards something he recognized, but didn’t have a name for it yet. The academy didn’t officially approve his departure. The academy also didn’t officially stop him.

"So who’s telling Father?" Tristan asked, in the tone of a man who had already decided the answer.

"I was hoping—"

"No."

"You didn’t let me finish. We—"

"We." Tristan laughed. "We. There is no we. You want me to stand next to you while you explain to Atlas Aelindor, King of the Fae, the man who once made a general cry with eye contact, that his adopted son is dropping out of the academy to start a wolf civilization in the woods."

"When you say it like that—"

"There is no other way to say it, Lucian. That is the only way to say it. I just described exactly what is happening."

"I am not dropping out," Lucian corrected. "I am redirecting my academic trajectory."

"I would rather fight your wolf. Bare-handed. In the rain. At night. Than tell Atlas Aelindor that his adopted son is redirecting his academic trajectory."

"Your support is overwhelming," Lucian said flatly.

Tristan clapped him on the shoulder. Twice. The way people clap someone on the shoulder when they’re about to watch them walk into something terrible and have no intention of following.

"I have a kingdom to inherit. I can’t risk that by being in the blast radius when Father processes the sentence ’I’m leaving the academy to build a new species in the forest.’ That sentence has casualties, Lucian. I don’t want to be one of them."

"He won’t be angry."

"He will be."

"You’re being dramatic."

"I learned it from you. You shifted into a wolf the size of a horse in the middle of the night and howled loud enough to wake up the mountains. Don’t talk to me about dramatic."

"That is a fair point. My wolf is huge," Lucian said with his chest puffed out.

Tristan stared at him for a full three seconds. "Who are you and what have you done with Lucian Moon? The Lucian I know has never puffed out his chest in his life. The Lucian I know would rather die than say the words ’my wolf is huge’ with that face."

"It is huge, though."

"It is massive. That’s not the point. The point is that you are preening and it’s unsettling and I need it to stop immediately."