Chapter 31 The Stranger

Chapter 31 The Stranger
Davina’s POV

The moment I opened my eyes I could hear whispers. Hushed and cautious voices in the corridor outside my room.
Immediately I sat up in bed, they fell silent. A door creaked open somewhere down the hall, and I could hear footsteps retreating, leaving only an eerie quiet behind.

I stared at the ceiling, trying to shake off the feeling. Maybe I was imagining it. Or maybe I’d been here long enough to recognize the difference between the usual sounds of the compound and the way people deliberately lowered their voices when they noticed movements that I was awake.

After getting dressed, I made my way to the dining hall. The compound was already buzzing with activity, wolves crossing the yard with supplies, training groups gathered at the eastern field, and someone barking out drill instructions in the distance. Everything looked just like it always did. But as I pushed through the dining hall doors, conversations dropped enough to catch my attention. A few heads turned my way, while others quickly looked away, the kind of not-looking that made it obvious they had been watching just a moment before.

I joined the breakfast line, pretending not to notice any of it.

“Morning,” Sloane said, suddenly appearing beside me with her plate already in hand. She looked at me like she was trying to read my thoughts.

“Morning,” I replied.

“You look terrible.”

“Thanks for that.”

“Not quite what I meant, but okay.”

We found a table near the window and sat in silence for a few minutes, which I appreciated. Sloane had a knack for knowing when silence was exactly what someone needed. Outside, a group of wolves was sparring on the training ground, and one of them hit the dirt hard enough that I could hear the thud from where we sat. No one stopped to check on him. He just got up and kept going.

I understood that feeling more than I wanted to admit.

“How are you really doing?” Sloane eventually asked, setting her fork down.

I watched the sparring wolves and said, “I feel like I’m failing a test nobody even told me about.”

She opened her mouth to say something, but before she could, something hit the side of my head. A crumpled ball of paper bounced off my temple and rolled onto the table between our plates.

The dining hall fell silent, and my stomach knotted. I picked it up slowly, smoothing it out with my thumb.

Three words were scrawled in thick black ink. GO HOME HUMAN.

I stared at it, feeling my throat tighten.
The words weren’t surprising, that was the worst part. They were exactly what I’d been expecting, and somehow that made them feel even more burdensome.

Sloane snatched the note from my hand, her chair scraping back so loudly that the wolves at the next table jumped. “Who threw this?” she demanded, her voice cutting through the silence. “Who did it? Because I will stand here all morning if I have to.”

Silence hung in the air. A few wolves looked uncomfortable, but most didn’t bother to react.

I reached across the table and touched her arm. “Sloane. Sit down.”

“Absolutely not.”

“Please.” I kept my voice steady. “Just sit down.”

She glared at me, her jaw tight, eyes blazing with anger. But eventually, she sat back down, slowly, like it cost her something. She dropped the crumpled note on the table and stared at it as if she wanted to burn a hole through it.

I glanced at my breakfast and realized I had completely lost my appetite.

Outside felt better. The cold air was refreshing, and the open space helped clear my mind at least for a couple of minutes, until I noticed the paint.

Bright red and still dripping, it ran down the stone wall of my building in thick, uneven letters: HUMANS DON’T BELONG HERE.

I stopped in my tracks, and Sloane muttered a quiet curse beside me. The paint was fresh, with small red trails running down the stone as if the words were bleeding. Whoever had done it did it this morning.

They wanted me to see it.
The note felt impulsive, but this felt premeditated. Someone had planned this, standing outside my building with paint and a brush and decided it was worth doing.

“I’m finding out who did this,” Sloane said, already moving.

I followed her around the corner of the building, and that’s when I spotted movement out of the corner of my eye. A figure darted between two buildings on the far side of the yard. He was tall, dressed in dark clothing and moving quickly.

He’d been watching us when we found it.

“Davina,” Sloane called from behind me.

But I was already moving.
I had no idea what I would do when I caught up to him, I hadn’t thought that far ahead. My feet just took off, and I chased after him, crossing the yard and slipping between the same two buildings he had. I came out from a narrower path I hadn’t seen before.

He was still ahead of me.
Every time I got close enough to catch a glimpse of his face, he turned another corner. After the third turn, it dawned on me that he wasn’t running from me he was leading me somewhere. That realization should have made me stop, but it didn’t.

The compound around me transformed as I followed him. The familiar buildings gave way to older structures, the stone darker, the windows narrower, and the paths between them less worn. The sounds of the main compound faded until all I could hear was my own breathing and the crunch of gravel underfoot.

Then I turned the last corner, and he was gone.
Just like that.

I stood in the silence, feeling the hairs on the back of my neck stand on end. The area was completely still, surrounded by old storage buildings on three sides, with a narrow gap between two of them leading into darkness. A single door stood slightly ajar, newer than the others, or at least better kept.

Every instinct told me to turn around, but I stepped closer anyway.

The gap in the door was narrow but just wide enough. Inside, a single shaft of morning light fell across a wooden table, illuminating an object resting on it.

An old leather journal. Dark brown and worn at the corners, with the spine cracked from years of use.

And pressed into the cover, so deeply that the leather had hardened around the shape, was a symbol I had never seen before.

A crescent moon surrounded by seven stars.

I don’t know how long I stood there, staring at it. The symbol pulled at me in a way I couldn’t explain, something deep within me resonating with it. I had never seen it before, but some part of me felt like I knew it.

“That should not be here.”

I spun around so fast I nearly lost my balance.

Caspian stood just a few feet behind me, his eyes glued to the journal through the gap in the door. His face, which had always exuded calm during my time here, was now filled with something I couldn’t quite place, an emotion that looked a whole lot like alarm.

He looked at me. “How did you find this?” His voice was barely above a whisper.

“Someone led me here,” I replied. “Who does that symbol belong to?”

Caspian glanced back at the journal.

A long moment passed before he finally said, “Come with me right now. And don’t touch it.”

He turned and walked away, and I followed him, the pull of that symbol lingering in my chest like something that had been waiting a long time to be discovered.