Seb got to Ashford House at six fifty two.
Damon opened the door at six fifty three which meant he had been watching the path and Seb decided not to comment on that because some things were more useful as information than as conversation.
"Caspian isn't here yet," Damon said.
"He will be," Seb said and walked in.
He was right. Caspian arrived at exactly seven with two coffees which he held out without explanation, one to Seb and one to Damon, and Damon took it with the expression of someone who had not expected that and was deciding what to do with the unexpectedness of it.
Nobody said anything about the coffee.
They went to the back room.
The session was harder than Saturday.
Damon pushed his Alpha presence into the room at full weight this time, not the moderated version from the first session but the actual thing, and the difference was immediately significant. Where Saturday had felt like pressure this felt like standing at the bottom of something very deep and very heavy and being asked to hold it up.
Seb's ability rose to meet it automatically, faster than Saturday, like it had learned something from the first session and was applying it, and he focused on what he had discovered about direction and tried to push back with intention rather than just reaction.
"Better," Damon said. "Don't just push back. Shape it."
"Shape it how?"
"Like water around a stone. Don't fight the weight, move around it."
Seb tried. It took four attempts before something clicked and when it did the difference was immediate, the pressure didn't disappear but it became manageable, something he could work with rather than something working against him.
"There," Caspian said from across the room.
"I felt that," Damon said and there was something in his voice that was not quite surprise but was close to it.
"What did it feel like?" Seb asked.
"Like something redirected," Damon said. "Not blocked. Redirected." He looked at Caspian. "He moved it."
"He moved it on the fourth try," Caspian said. "In the second session."
They were doing the thing again where they talked about him like he wasn't in the room but Seb had decided this was actually useful information so he let it continue.
"What does that mean in terms of timeline?" he asked.
Caspian looked at him. "It means you're developing faster than any recorded account of Prime ability emergence suggests is normal."
"Is that good?"
"It's necessary," Damon said. "Given what Victor is doing."
Seb looked at him. "What is Victor doing? Specifically. Right now."
Damon and Caspian exchanged a look, the kind that had a conversation inside it.
"Tell me," Seb said.
Damon sat in one of the chairs. "Victor has been collecting information about you since before you arrived. Who you speak to, where you go, what responses you produce in wolves around you." He held Seb's gaze. "He's building a case. Confirming what he suspects before he moves."
"How close is he to being certain?"
"Close," Caspian said. "The courtyard incident last week pushed him significantly further along."
Seb thought back to Thursday, to the moment on the main path when three wolves from different packs had been in a standoff and he had walked through it and the whole thing had simply stopped. He had added it to the wall that night without fully understanding what it meant.
"He saw that," Seb said.
"He has people watching you," Caspian said. "He saw it."
"So he knows."
"He strongly suspects," Damon said. "There's a difference. He needs certainty before he moves because moving on a Prime without certainty is the kind of mistake that costs everything." He looked at Seb steadily. "Which is the only window we have."
"How do we use it?" Seb said.
"We keep training," Caspian said. "And we find out who his informant is."
Seb stared at him. "He has an informant."
"Someone at this school has been feeding him information since before you arrived," Caspian said carefully. "The specific details he has access to, your timetable, your daily movements, information about your family, it didn't come from watching you. Someone told him."
The training room was very quiet.
Seb thought about his wall. About every name on it and the lines connecting them and whether one of those lines was pointing in a direction he hadn't drawn yet.
"Do you know who?" he said.
Another look between Caspian and Damon.
"We have a suspicion," Damon said. "We're not certain enough to say the name yet."
"How long until you're certain?"
"Soon," Caspian said.
Seb held his gaze. "When you are certain. You tell me first. Both of you. Together. Before you do anything about it."
"Seb—" Damon started.
"Before you do anything about it," Seb said again, and something in his voice had a quality that neither of them pushed against, not authority exactly, just the complete absence of any possibility of negotiation.
Damon looked at him for a moment. "Agreed."
Caspian nodded once.
They went back to work.
An hour later Seb was on the floor against the wall with his water and his tiredness and the specific satisfied feeling of something being built and Damon was in his chair and Caspian was at the window and the morning light was coming through at an angle that made the old wooden floor look warmer than it was.
"Can I ask you something?" Seb said.
"Go ahead," Damon said.
"The Prime ability at full strength. The two directions, calm or conflict." He looked between them. "Has anyone ever used it to do something else? Something that isn't either of those things?"
Caspian turned from the window. "What do you mean?"
"I mean those are the two recorded uses. The documented history." He looked at his hands. "But if an ability is woven into what someone is rather than being a separate layer, why would it only do two things?"
The room was quiet.
Damon and Caspian looked at each other.
"That's not a question anyone has asked before," Caspian said slowly.
"That you know of," Seb said.
Caspian looked at him with those dark steady eyes. "That I know of," he agreed.
"Which means the recorded history might not be the full picture," Seb said. "Which means we might be training toward something smaller than what's actually possible."
Damon was very still in his chair with the expression of someone encountering a thought that had rearranged several things in his head simultaneously. "You think there's more."
"I think an ability that hasn't been properly understood in centuries might have been documented by people who only saw part of it," Seb said. "And I think assuming we know the full shape of it before we've tested the edges is a mistake."
The room held that thought for a moment.
Then Caspian said, very quietly, "Wednesday. We test the edges."
Damon nodded.
Seb finished his water and stood up and stretched and picked up his jacket. At the door he stopped and looked back at both of them, at this thing the three of them were building in a back room on Monday mornings that didn't have a name yet but was becoming something real.
"Good session," he said.
"Don't," Damon said.
"I'm just saying it."
"You always just say it."
"Because it's always true," Seb said and walked out.
Behind him he heard nothing for a moment and then the low sound of Caspian saying something to Damon and Damon's quiet response and the particular quality of two people talking to each other in a room without the weight of fifty years sitting between them being quite as heavy as it used to be.
He walked back through Ashford House and out into the Monday morning campus and headed toward his nine o'clock and told himself the thing in his chest was just the cold air.
It wasn't the cold air.
He was starting to be okay with that.
His phone buzzed halfway across the quad.
Lyra.
Meet me after your last class today. It's about the informant.
He stared at the message.
Then typed back. Where?
Campus cafe. Four o'clock.
I'll be there, he sent back.
He put his phone in his pocket and kept walking and thought about the name he didn't have yet and the line on his wall that he hadn't drawn yet and the particular cold feeling of already suspecting something before it had been confirmed.
Four o'clock.
He had seven hours.
He focused on his nine o'clock and kept walking and did not think about which name he was most afraid to hear.
He mostly succeeded.