Jake doesn't think anyone else noticed the tiny spout of flame (and accompanying smoke) that appeared when he sneezed earlier, but then he notices Rose (no, she now has the honour of being called Huntsgirl) staring at him whenever he looks in her direction. They are friends, best friends, have been for as long as he can remember, but he knows they won't be anymore. They can't be.
The honour of being Huntsgirl isn't given lightly, and none of the other girls had dared grumble at the choice of the Huntsclan elders. (Not that it would be safe to do so anyway—everyone knows the hidden cameras and microphones are monitored, though how well depends on who is on shift—but that has not stopped anyone in the past.) They all know that Rose is worthy of the title. She's the best of them all. Far better than him.
And now far more dangerous to him, and not just in the usual ways.
Rose had been with him on his last recon mission, and she'd been on enough before that to know how he works. She knows his skills almost better than he does. When they work together, they barely need to speak; they simply know what the other is thinking, what the other is planning, and act accordingly. She knows his limitations, his weaknesses. She'd used them against him in their last sparring match, landing him flat on his back in an embarrassingly short time.
And she'd witnessed the apparent improvement in his (already impeccable) vision and hearing that had been written off by everyone else. The Huntsleader for that mission had chalked it up to unique conditions within the environment, but their instructors only know them by their numbers, by the statistics linked to those numbers on a sheet of paper, and they know statistics can be skewed.
But Rose is different. Rose knows better than to ignore the signs. And she knows he's been trying to avoid her, to avoid this, and he hopes she doesn't know anything else. He hopes she's come up with some wrong conclusion, something that would save him. Something that he could use to save him, for the time when the others inevitably notice, too.
She catches him after class and drags him to their secret alcove deep in the bowels of the facility, the one place where they had managed to disable the microphones without anyone in command noticing.
The one place it is safe.
Rose nods whenever they pass someone, official or otherwise, and manages to make their actions look innocuous instead of important. It rather looks like she is taking him somewhere to scold him. There is anger in the way she holds herself, plain for others to see.
Perhaps because of Rose's new authority, they are not stopped, even though it is expected that they go to the training rooms with everyone else, and that any petty disputes between them be resolved in the usual way: mock battle.
When they are safely huddled away, Rose reaches up her right hand—the one bearing her birthmark—to trace the Mark of the Huntsclan that snakes around his eye and down towards his ear. Her touch is warm, but he shivers. They are too close. She is too close. There are too many ways this could go wrong—
"You know the signs as well as I do, Jake," she finally whispers.
He does.
He wishes he didn't.
He might be able to deny it then.
But looking at Rose, he sees fear in her wide blue eyes. Not fear of him but fear for him, and he doesn't understand it.
She is Huntsgirl.
Of all the initiates and acolytes within the Huntsclan, she is favoured because of her skills and her ruthlessness. She hates dragons as fiercely as the rest of them, but she can slay them more efficiently, more effortlessly.
And he is a dragon.
Somehow.
Impossibly.
He stopped trying to deny it two weeks ago when he'd woken with a clawed foot instead of his right hand. Everything before that—weird cravings, bad breath, flaking skin, growing pains, running hot…. He could explain away everything before that. He hasn't been able to explain away the shining red scales or sharp, deadly claws, not even to himself, or how he managed to melt the tape with its damning evidence on his next errand to security. He certainly hasn't figured out how he's going to hide the dragon feet when they return.
He knows they will return.
He knows the question is when, not if.
Rose knows it, too, even without seeing it.
Where there's smoke, there's fire.
He can't hide from the entire Huntsclan, but he can't just leave, either.
This is his home. They are his family. And he doesn't want this any more than they would, were they to find out about it.
"It's not what it seems," Jake tries, but Rose is shaking her head and shushing him.
"It's exactly what it seems," she counters. "It can't be anything else. All the signs are there."
Denials would fall on deaf ears, and he has never been good at lying to her.
"What are you going to do?" he asks, for it's the only thing he can ask. The only thing that matters.
Rose's lips press into a thin line before she answers, "The only thing I can do."