Chapter 5 — TWO NIGHTS (1)

The forged document lasted exactly until breakfast. That's how long Luna gave it.

She didn't confront Kane. Confrontation was amateur hour. She'd grown up in a system that rewarded one skill above all others: letting people hang themselves. So she folded the order back into its envelope, left it on the safehouse kitchen table where anyone would find it, and went to class.

She wanted to see who came to pick it up.

The answer, by noon, was nobody. Nobody touched it. Kane walked past it three times without glancing down — which, Luna noted, was either innocence or an Oscar-worthy performance. Jax showed up, saw the envelope, said "Ooh, mail," and went back to arguing with Gregory about whether chips counted as a vegetable. Gregory, for the record, had very strong feelings that they did.

Not them, she thought. Whoever left it didn't come back for it. Which means whoever left it didn't need to. They just needed me to read it.

That was the elegant part. She didn't have to catch a spy. The spy had already won — as long as she started sleeping with one eye open.

So she did the opposite of sleeping with one eye open. She set a bigger trap.

It was raining by the time she reached the campus gate. The Trio were there, holding black umbrellas in a perfect little triangle around her, phones now held correctly upright, which meant they'd given up the tourist cover entirely.

"New protocol," the biggest one reported. "Tourist cover is dead. We're just... clearly with you now. Openly. It's a flex."

"A flex."

"The captain says if they're gonna come for you, they should have to look at us while they do it."

Luna looked at the three grown men in suits, holding umbrellas over a college freshman like a tiny black tent, and felt something she refused to name warm the back of her throat. "You guys are ridiculous."

"Yes, miss."

She let them walk her to the quad. And that was where her trap was waiting.

She had asked Jax, over breakfast, in a perfectly casual voice: "Hey, do pack transmissions always use wax seals?"

Jax, mid-bagel: "Wax seals? God, no. Wax seals are old-ways cosplay. We use these little encrypted tablets. Alpha sends a ping, you ping back. Wax seal. Who does wax seals." He took a huge bite. "Eliot does wax seals. The guy's a theater kid. Loves the drama."

Thank you, Jax. Thank you for your inability to keep a secret for a single minute.

So at the quad, under a dripping oak, she found the one person she'd expected to find.

Eliot Cross stood by the fountain in a cream coat, gold-rimmed glasses catching the gray light, holding a paper cup of coffee like he'd been born holding one. Next to him: a folding table, a balloon arch, and a banner that read CROSS FOUNDATION — STUDENT ACHIEVEMENT CEREMONY. Real balloons. Real banner. He had gone full event-planner.

"Luna." He lit up when he saw her, genuine and warm and about as trustworthy as a cactus. "There you are. I was starting to think you'd skipped your own ceremony."

"Ceremony." She stopped at a polite distance and smiled her smile. "I didn't RSVP."

"Your presence is the honor." Eliot gestured at the table. "We're awarding need-based scholarships. Very public. Very photographed. Very—" his eyes flicked, just once, to the rooftops around the quad, "—visible."

Luna followed his gaze. On every rooftop, every fire escape, every ledge: gold glints. Watching. Counting. She'd thought the city was friendly on day one. Now she understood it was hungry.

"So this isn't a scholarship," she said.

"It's both." Eliot sipped his coffee. "A scholarship and a location. Tonight the whole pack knows exactly where you stood at two in the afternoon. Tomorrow night, when the moon comes up, they won't have to hunt. They'll have a map."

"How kind of you."

"How cruel of me." He smiled. "I prefer 'realistic.' The Alpha wants you at the Ritual Ground tomorrow. You can walk there nicely, with an escort, or you can be carried. I'm simply offering the nice version."

Luna set her backpack on the folding table and unzipped it. She pulled out the cream envelope.

"Speaking of maps," she said. "I got a little map yesterday. Pack transmission. Direct order from the Alpha. Told Kane to get close to me, deliver me unharmed. Very official." She slid the envelope across the table. "Came with a wax seal."

Eliot's smile didn't move. Not one muscle. But his hand, the one holding the coffee, tightened by a single degree.

"Wax seal," he said.

"Yep."

"How... retro."

"Mm." Luna leaned her elbows on the table, still smiling. "Here's the thing, Eliot. I asked around. Real pack transmissions don't use wax. Real pack transmissions ping. Wax seals are a theater-kid thing. A drama thing. Something somebody invented because they wanted me to think my bodyguard was playing me, so I'd walk into your little ceremony tomorrow night all alone."

The balloon arch trembled in the rain. Somewhere on a rooftop, gold eyes waited.