and he kept me upright, pointed me the right way down the hall, and gave me a push that got me going. His hair stuck up wildly, dyed-black curls with dark brown roots.

He was supposed to be down in the werwulfen dorms. His eyes flashed green, startling against the

even caramel of his skin. He really rocked the ethnic look nowadays. Or maybe I was just seeing

what had been there all along under his Goth Boy front.

We ran down the hall in weird tandem. My mother’s locket bounced against my breastbone. I hit the

fire door at the end. It banged against the wall, and we spilled down the uncarpeted stairs.

That’s the thing about the Schola Prima dorms, even the cushy wing where svetocha are supposed

to sleep. Behind the scenes it’s concrete industrial, just like every other school. Just because I had

my own room didn’t make it any less, well, school-like.

And just because there was a whole wing for svetocha didn’t mean that there were any more. Just

me. And one other, but I hadn’t seen her since the other Schola—the reform school someone had

stashed me at—went down in flames.

Down two flights, a hard right, my shoulder banged into a door frame, but I just kept going. This

hall wasn’t even carpeted, so everything echoed, and the doors on either side had barred observation

slits.

There wasn’t a guard at his door. The whole hall shook as he threw himself against the walls and

howled again.

I grabbed the knob; it refused to turn. “Shit!” I yelled, and Graves shouldered me aside. He’d

thought to grab the key ring from the nail down the hall. The key went in, he twisted, the door

opened, and I piled into the room, nearly colliding with almost seven and a half feet of very upset

werwulf.

Ash hunched down, long clawed paw-fingers splayed as they touched bare concrete. The howl cut

off in midstream, like he was surprised. The white streak on his lean narrow head glowed in the reflected fluorescent glare of the hall.

I sucked in a deep breath. My hair hung in my face, a wild curling mass, and I felt the same leap of

irrational fear I did every time I came in this room. Or maybe it was totally rational fear. Someone

could sweep the door shut and lock it, and then I’d be in here with a werwulf who’d tried to kill me

the first time he met me.

And of course, he could always totally lose his shit and go all, well, crazyass werwulf on me again.

But after he’d saved my life a few times, I was beginning to think maybe he wouldn’t.

“It’s okay,” I managed, though my lungs were on fire and my throat threatened to close up. I could