Page 28

28

CALLUM

I get the message from Elias just after dawn.

Kendall wants to meet. Today. Same place you trained her. Bring no one.

It’s not a request. It’s a whisper written in ash. Elias has become our messenger somehow. At least Kendall figured out reaching out to him is safer than going directly to me.

I don’t answer the message, all I do is go.

By the time I drop into the tunnels where Kendall and I trained under damp darkness, the sun’s just starting to peel gold over the city’s buildings.

Kendall’s already there.

She’s pacing. Jacket too big for her frame, eyes locked on the dirt like she’s arguing with it.

“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.

I know her. 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. But something in 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 that you were the Callum my sister had mentioned.”

“Well, it’s not like I told everyone at school what I was.”

Kendall watches us like she’s trying to read a language she doesn’t understand.

“I’m not here for drama,” Adora says.

“Didn’t think you were.”

“I’m not here for you, either. Not like that.”

I nod. “Understood.”

She looks at Kendall, then back at me. “She said you could help.”

“I can try.”

Adora tilts her head. “You helped her. I figured you’re either crazy, brave, or hiding something.”

“It’s usually a mix,” I admit.

Something in her expression shifts—too subtle to name, but I see it. Recognition? A flicker of memory?

Then it happens.

She reaches out without warning. Picks up a small, moss-covered stone off the ground and turns it over in her palm. Her fingers flex, and I feel it.

A ripple. Not magic. Not wolf. Not just shifter…. There’s something more at play here.

But not just that. Something... familiar. The pattern of it. The resonance. It’s familial. Like blood calling to blood.

Suddenly, I’m back in the Hollow, fifteen years ago, watching Mathis lose his mind after a fight with a woman I didn’t recognize. Yelling about betrayal, about bloodlines, about weakness. About a child that should’ve never been kept from him. All I knew was the woman wasn't a shifter… and wasn't human either… she was something more.

No name. No details. And when I asked, he shut me down immediately letting me know to never bring it up again. I didn’t push. I was already starting to lose faith in my father then. His sleeping around with other women had happened long before my mother had passed.

But the way Adora holds herself? The way that energy rolls off her? It matches his . The way he shifts too quickly, breathes too slow. The control in her movements. The subtle hum beneath her skin.

Shit.

Adora might be Mathis’s daughter. She might be my sister.

And she doesn’t know.

I mask the realization fast. Bury it beneath the same neutral mask I’ve had to wear since I could walk.

“You feel that?” she asks, narrowing her eyes at me.

“Yeah,” I say carefully.

“What is it?”

I pause.

“I don’t know,” I lie. “But I’ll help you figure it out.”

Kendall exhales beside me like she’s been holding her breath since Adora arrived.

“Can you train me?” Adora asks. “Like you did with her? Or at least help me figure out what the hell is going on with me?”

I nod. “If you trust me.”

“I don’t.”

Fair.

“But I’m out of options.”

I glance at Kendall.

Her hand brushes mine, just barely.

Not enough to spark the bond. Just enough to ground me.

“Then we start tomorrow,” I say.

But my brain’s already screaming behind my eyes.

If Adora is Mathis’s daughter… If she’s shifter by blood but something else entirely from her mother, which is what my senses are telling me, then this whole thing just got way more complicated than anyone knows.

Even for Kendall, because that means she’s not just Bolvi, which is combustible enough.

And I’m the only one who’s figured it out.

For now.