“Since when are you early?” I call out.

She looks up and the wind catches her hair. There’s something in her face—tight, unreadable.

“I couldn’t sleep.”

“Yeah. Me neither.”

I step closer, but not too close. Not yet. The bond between us still crackles, raw and restless.

“So, what’s up?” I ask.

She bites her lower lip in hesitation and my guts twist for a moment. “So, I haven’t really mentioned that I uh… I have a sister. But she’s not like me...”

I stare at her for a moment unable to take in what she’s saying. There’s another Bolvi? Why wouldn’t Edmund want both of them training?

“What do you mean?” I ask, forcing myself to remain calm.

“She needs your help, Callum. You’re the only one I trust. She’s lost and she’s on her way. Can you please at least meet her and see if there’s anything you can do? I think she might be more like you than me.”

I don’t know what to say. I take a breath and simply nod, knowing I can’t say no, especially if a shifter needs my help.

There’s a beat of silence between us. Then she says, “I need to tell you something before she gets here.”

My stomach tightens. Great, there’s more. “Okay.”

She rubs her hands together like she’s trying to warm herself—or shake something off. “Dad tried to do to her what he did to me. The bite. The push. But it didn’t go how he expected.”

“What happened?”

“She didn’t shift,” she says. “At least not like a werewolf would. Her body reacted. But something else came out. Something not like me. Not like Dad.”

My breath slows.

“Because she’s not his,” she adds. “Not biologically.”

I stare at her, mind already moving too fast. “You’re sure?”

Kendall nods. “She talked to our mom. She didn’t get much, but she said her real father isn’t human. And not a wolf.”

Fuck.

The hairs stand up. The bond between me and Kendall flares as her sister steps into the clearing. I freeze.

Iknowher. High school.

Three years apart, different orbits entirely. She was just a freshman when I was finishing. But I remember her. She used to look at me like I’d hung the damn moon. That big-eyed kind of crush, all unspoken stares and awkward hallway silences. I’d always turned her down. Not cruelly. But clearly. Because even then, something about her felt too complicated. Too familiar.

And now? Now the air shifts when she walks closer.

Not like it does with Kendall. That pull is constant, alive in my bones. Butsomethingin Adora snaps to attention inside me. She stops a few feet away. Arms crossed. Eyes sharp.

“Callum Wulfson,” she says.

“Adora.”

Her mouth twitches. “You remember me.”

“I do. I didn’t know thatyouwere the Callum my sister had mentioned.”