Elara was ten when she asked to go to school.
Not the community school—Helena's history lessons, Mira's tracking classes, Thorne's music. A real school. Human school. In the town down the coast.
Kael sat at the kitchen table, his coffee growing cold. Lyra was beside him, her expression carefully neutral.
"Why?" Kael asked.
"Because I want to know what it's like. Out there. Where people don't know about wolves and vampires and bridges." Elara's silver-amber eyes were steady. "I've spent my whole life here. I love it. But I need to see the rest of the world."
"She has a point," Lyra said quietly. "We built this community to give her a home. Not a cage."
Kael looked at his daughter. Ten years old. Tall for her age, with her mother's grace and something of his stubbornness in the set of her jaw. She wasn't a child anymore. Not really.
"There are risks," he said. "Humans don't know about us. If they find out—"
"I know how to keep secrets. You taught me."
He had. They both had. How to blend in. How to deflect questions. How to be invisible in plain sight.
"The town school is small," Lyra said. "Maybe forty students in her grade. We can enroll her under a human name. Say we're a family who moved to the coast for the quiet."
Kael was silent for a long moment. Then he nodded. "Okay. But we do this carefully. And if anything feels wrong, you tell us immediately."
Elara's face lit up. "I will. I promise."
She ran off to tell Garrett's children. Kael watched her go, his chest tight.
"She's growing up," Lyra said.
"I know. I don't like it."
"Neither do I. But we can't stop it."
He took her hand. "We've faced ancient creatures and secret societies and centuries of hatred. We can handle middle school."
Lyra laughed. "Can we?"
"I have no idea."