Chapter 157 First Day Of School
ADRIANA
The school question had been sitting with Elijah for weeks before he finally said it out loud.
It lingered in the spaces between conversations, the way he would start to say something and then stop, like he was testing the weight of it before letting it exist.
I could tell because he had that careful energy around Leo. He hadn’t decided how to approach it yet.
Watching him in a way that was almost analytical, as though he was trying to measure readiness in things that could not be easily measured.
We had talked about it privately several times. Whether Leo was ready. Whether the environment would be the right one. Whether being around children his age would be good for him or overwhelming.
Each conversation ended the same way—with no clear answer, only a shared understanding that whatever decision we made had to be made with intention.
Elijah’s concern was specific and understandable. Leo had spent most of his formative years in an adult world, had learned to communicate through sign language with adults, had not had extended exposure to the particular social ecosystem of children in groups. He might struggle. He might be targeted.
Children could be unintentionally cruel in ways adults often underestimated, and Elijah knew that. He had lived long enough to recognize that strength in one environment did not always translate cleanly into another.
I thought Leo was stronger than Elijah was giving him credit for, but I also understood that Elijah’s caution came from love, not from underestimating the boy.
He just prepared for worst-case scenarios even while hoping never to see them.
We settled on telling him during a park day.
A neutral place. A happy place. Somewhere the conversation would not feel heavy before it even began.
We spent the whole afternoon there, running and playing and eating badly. Elijah had sat down with Leo on a bench while I watched from nearby and brought it up.
I pretended not to watch too closely, giving them space, but my attention never really left them, tracking every shift in posture, every pause.
Leo had listened, processing each part of it as it came, and then he had stood up from the bench and hugged Elijah around the neck without being prompted, which made Elijah close his eyes for a moment and hold on.
There was something in that moment that softened Elijah in a way I didn’t see often.
Leo was ready. He had been ready. He just needed to be asked.
His first day of school , and Elijah had gone early to handle pack matters that had accumulated, and I had made the decision to be the one who picked Leo up because I wanted to see his face when he came out. I wanted to be there for that.
“Luna.” The greeting followed me through the front entrance as I came outside, and I returned it automatically, still slightly surprised each time by how naturally it had settled into the way people addressed me.
The title had felt borrowed at first, something I was wearing carefully until its original owner came to reclaim it. Now it just felt like mine.
Not something I was holding onto, but something that had rooted itself quietly into my identity.
Elijah appeared behind me and slid his hand around my waist.
“Where are you going?”
“To pick Leo up. He’ll be out soon.”
“I’ll come—”
“You have the meeting with the border patrol warriors in twenty minutes.”
He made a face that confirmed he had known this and had been hoping I might not.
It was almost boyish, that expression, completely at odds with the Alpha he presented to everyone else.
“Also,” I added, “you’re doing that thing with your hand.”
He looked down. His hand had migrated from my waist to somewhere less appropriate for a public setting. He looked up and registered, apparently for the first time, that three maids and two guards were watching with barely concealed delight.
“My apologies,” he said, without any audible apology in his voice whatsoever. “Luna.”
I punched him lightly in the ribs and he laughed and released me.
His fingers lingered for a second before letting go, like he didn’t entirely want to.
Hazel appeared from around the corner and made a face at both of us.
“Married people are actually disgusting,” she said, and walked away.
I got into the car and the driver took me to Leo’s school.
It was a place designed specifically for the children of Alphas and pack leadership. A place where Leo’s world would be populated by children who understood, at least in broad terms, what his life actually looked like. Elijah had chosen it carefully. I had agreed with the choice.
It wasn’t just about education. It was about belonging and giving him a space where he wouldn’t have to explain himself before being understood.
Leo came through the front gate at exactly the right time and his expression when he saw me standing there was the joy of a child who was not expecting to see the person they most wanted to see and has been surprised in the best possible way. He walked fast and then faster and then he was beside me.
There was no hesitation in it, no pause to check if it was really me. Just certainty.
“How did it go?”
I stayed quiet and let him talk, which he did. At length. With detail. About his teacher, whose name he pronounced with great care, and about a boy he had sat next to during lunch who had a dog that sounded, based on the description, improbably large, and about what they had done in the afternoon that he had found interesting.
His hands moved as he spoke animatedly, his entire body involved in the telling of it.
He talked the whole way to the ice cream place. He talked while we ordered. He talked, in slightly muffled form, while eating his ice cream, pausing only to ask me what my favorite flavor was and then to provide his considered opinion on my choice. I loved every second of it.
I didn’t interrupt, didn’t redirect, didn’t correct. I just listened and let him have the space to exist fully in his excitement.
I called Elijah from the car on the way home.
“He had a wonderful day. He wants to go back. He likes his teacher.”
“I told you he would be fine,” he boasted.
“You told me you were worried he wouldn’t be. I told you he would be fine.”
He paused and I could picture him smiling as he replied. “I may have expressed some concern.”
“You were practically pacing.”
“I was thinking. Pacing is different.” Another pause. “How does he seem?”
I looked at Leo in the seat beside me, who was watching the passing streets with relaxed satisfaction.
There was a quiet confidence in him now, something subtle but unmistakable.
“Like himself,” I said. “But more.”
The car came to a stop so suddenly that I reached out instinctively to steady Leo, catching his shoulder before he could pitch forward. My heart jumped into my throat as the momentum snapped forward and then died just as quickly.
The vehicle had stopped completely, and the driver’s voice came back to us, tight with alarm.
I looked up at the road ahead.
Something about it felt wrong. The air itself seemed to shift.
“What the hell is that?”