It was great that Kyren seemed to have convinced Shion not to kill him, but that didn’t mean he had solved his problems. The first thing he had learned from living in hiding as a supernatural was that mundane consequences were far more threatening for him than they were for others.

Right after his parents had died, Kyren had nearly been found out. Hawkthorne was a reasonably lenient guardian, but he did have one rule that he had made clear from the first day. Kyren was not allowed into Guild branch’s morgue where the bodies of the werewolves were stored. When a werewolf was killed, they had to be identified and posthumously accused of their crimes. Even when the identity of the individual was known, the body was kept in the hopes that other werewolves of the same circle would show up. All that really meant to Kyren at the time though was that his parent’s bodies were being held in a cold, dark room.

As a kid, Kyren couldn’t help but think of his parents, sitting in that room. Kyren had only wanted to give them a proper burial. When he had tried to break into the lab, he had been caught before he even opened the door. It hadn’t been Hawkthorne who had caught him though, it had been Drakesmith. The consequences had been mundane. Kyren had been set to cleaning Hawkthorne’s stables with the Drakesmith twins who had apparently also caused trouble somehow.

Kyren still had nightmares about that. At the time, Kyren’s enhanced sense of smell was new, so, his parents hadn’t taught him how to manage it. When he had walked into the stables where the twins were already working, he had been hit by the smell of manure multiplied by a thousand times. The smell had sent him into a panic. He had started throwing himself at the walls, blindly trying to find a way out. If he had been old enough at the time, his eyes would have been glowing yellow and he would have torn through the wall with his claws. As it was, he would have hurt himself if the twins hadn’t intervened.

Rafe had held him while Alex had talked to him, calming him down. If the twins hadn’t helped him without truly even knowing what had been going on, Kyren would have been found out and killed then and there. Even at a young age, Kyren had been able to heal himself unnaturally fast. He could stop himself from doing that if he thought about it, but in the panic of the moment, he would have bashed himself against the wall until he was bloody then his body would have knit itself back together before their eyes.

Kyren could think of countless examples just like that where mundane problems had nearly led to disaster.

As he sat on the forest floor with Shion, feeling his torn muscles slowly knit themselves back together, half his mind was on the consequences that faced him now. Kyren sniffed the air. He had no trouble picking up the scent of the twins. They had clearly already moved on from the math class. Kyren groaned, realizing what that meant. The first period was already over. Kyren took another sniff. It was hard to tell, but it seemed that the twins were feeling confused. They seemed confused, angry, and maybe a little worried.

“What are you doing?” Shion was standing nearby, leaning against the trunk of a maple, actually the same tree that Kyren had thrown her up against earlier. Shion already seemed fully healed. She had told him that white phoenixes had better natural healing abilities than just about any other supernatural.

Kyren realized he was sniffing at the air repeatedly and felt his face flush slightly. “I’m trying to get a sense of how my friends are feeling right now. I don’t want to go back in their blind.”

Shion looked at him in wonder. “You can tell that just by smell!?”

Kyren nodded. “I can only do it since I’ve known the Drakesmiths for years though.”

“That’s…incredible. You must have sensed me for miles out then. Why did you even bother getting close to me?”

Kyren looked down, grabbing a nearby stick to leverage himself back to his feet. “I did sense you a way away, but I thought I could keep far enough away that you would never even know I was there.” A groan left his throat involuntarily as he put weight on his leg again. “I didn’t expect you to walk into my first period.”

Shion moved froward and helped him to lean up against a tree, shaking her head in wonder. “It probably would have worked too. I didn’t even sense you until we were in the same room.”

This whole situation felt surreal. Kyren had never even thought past trying not to be killed by another supernatural. Talking about his abilities to someone similar was incredible, but one of Kyren’s rules of survival was to never fully enjoy himself. He always had to stay vigilant—at least as best he could—and right now was not the time to give in to passing pleasures. Kyren had to think of how he would explain why he sprinted out of math class to two budding Guild hunters.

“You said something about Drakesmiths earlier, right?” Shion looked around nervously. “I don’t suppose they would have any relation to…”

Kyren interrupted her. “Alex and Rafe are Drakesmith’s kids.”

Shion gave a soft groan. “Great. Just what I needed.” Shion shrugged her shoulders. “So, what do you plan on telling them?”

“I’ll have to introduce you to them seeing as they saw you chase me out here.”

Shion shook her head adamantly. “No. That’s not happening. My clan’s not exactly an enemy of the guild, but we haven’t exactly stepped forward to fight against the shades either.”

“What do you expect is going to happen? Even if I tell them you weren’t involved, they won’t believe me.”

Shion kicked a nearby tree in frustration. The entire tree shook and groaned from the force. “This day sucks. School was bad enough when I didn’t have to watch my tailfeathers to make sure I’m not being hunted by trained killers.”

“Why don’t you just transfer schools or drop out then?”

Shion almost kicked another tree but stopped herself in time. “Government was too suspicious. I had to go to school. I doubt I’ll be able to transfer either.”

Kyren nodded as though he understood what she was talking about. “I’m thinking we could go with long lost cousins. What do you think?”

Shion looked him over then shook her head. “We look nothing alike. Besides wouldn’t that be suspicious since your family were werewolves?”

Kyren shook his head. “Former neighbors then. The guild thinks I was kidnapped when I was about five. I’ll say we were friends before then.”

Shion eventually agreed to the plan after going over all the details of their story. It took half the day for Kyren’s muscles to fully repair themselves. Their clothes were sporting several holes and were covered in dirt, but there wasn’t much they could do about that. By the time they got back, it was already lunchtime.

When they snuck back into the school via the back door of the gym, it didn’t take long for them to find the Drakesmiths. They were sitting off by themselves at a small table in the corner of the cafeteria. After giving Shion an encouraging smile and getting a nervous scowl back, Kyren sat down at their table, pulling up a chair for Shion in the process.

It took all of two seconds for the twins to explode in anger at the same time. “Where in the world did you go!?” Rafe looked downright murderous, but Alex was the scarier of the two in that moment. While Rafe may have inherited his father’s stature, Alex had managed to combine her father’s worst glare with their mother’s best scowl. The result was a look that Kyren was never eager to see. Even Shion—who Kyren was pretty sure could lift their entire table with a single finger—flinched as the look passed over her.

Kyren decided to press on with introductions. “This is Shion.” Kyren gave a faked pause as if he were feeling nervous. The act wasn’t exactly hard to pull of all things considered. “I knew Shion from when I was young before…”

Alex’s look faded away as she realized what he was talking about. “You mean before you were…”

Kyren nodded quickly. “Yeah, before that.”

Shion took the cue to throw out more information on their prepared backstory, proving to be a surprisingly competent actor. “We were close when we were kids, but I thought he had died with the rest of his family.”

Alex stuck out her hand. “No need to say more. Kyren really doesn’t like to talk about all of that.”

Rafe nodded along. “I still can’t believe you ran from your friend though.” Shion looked nervous for the split second before Rafe started chuckling. “I mean I know you’re not exactly smooth with the ladies Ren, but this is sad even for you.”

Kyren leaned over and gently hit Rafe in the arm. “You’re one to talk. I seem to remember your last crush throwing her book at you as she chased us out of the school.”

By the time lunch was over, Shion had started to settle down somewhat. The rest of the day was less eventful. It turned out that Shion had a surprising number of classes with them, but fortunately, the twins didn’t seem to suspect anything. Even better, Rafe had somehow managed to cover for Kyren in the classes that he had missed. Shion hadn’t been so lucky though and when the day was over, Shion had to excuse herself to attend detention while Kyren and the twins left to get a ride back home.