Chapter 3

Celeste's POV

"Ten. Your two-year term ends today. The Frost Family is here to pick you up."

The voice cuts through the dim cell like a rusted blade. 

The single incandescent bulb above flickers-on, off, on again-casting jagged shadows over the stone walls of the tiny room I've been shoved into since that night with the masked man, and for a moment I think I must be hallucinating because I'm curled so small that the bandages on my back press like a promise of pain and the syllables mean nothing and everything at once. 

Two years. Seven days ago I was counting down the hours; now the numbers feel like a cruel joke.

I lift my head. 

My hair is a mat of dirt and dried blood; the scratch on my cheek is a numb line I hardly notice anymore. 

When "Frost Family" lands in the air, something flickers in my chest-not hope, not relief, only a hollow, bitter pressure, like pressing a finger into a wound that never healed. 

The Enforcer in the doorway watches me with that bored, professional cruelty-uniform crisp, jaw slack-"Move it. They're waiting. Don't make them angry," he says, and there's no tenderness in the order, only the blunt efficiency of a place built to break things.

I push myself up. My legs tremble from hunger and pain and the way my heart slams against my ribs, and I stumble out to follow him, the corridor swallowing us: past the common room where the washboard still sits stained with Lyra's blood and my tears, past the isolation cages that glitter with silver like teeth, past the private room door where Kane was torn from me and where the echo of that night still seems to hang in the air-whip cracks, a human scream, the masked man's cold laugh. 

My throat seizes. I stop.

"Kane." The name slips out so soft it could be a prayer. The Enforcer keeps walking. I grab his sleeve, nails biting into coarse fabric. "Kane-the boy who was taken that night. Is he… is he okay?"

He looks down at me and sighs as if I wasted his time. "Dead. Been dead three days. Tried to stop the Guest, so the Guest took his time. Body was… messy. They threw it in the woods this morning."

Dead. 

The word lands like a hammer. For a beat the world collapses to the size of that single syllable-the bulb's flicker, my breath, the Enforcer's impatience-all fade into a thin, awful silence where only Kane's voice remains: "It'll be okay, Celeste. Just a few more days." 

I see his face-bloodied, defiant-and the sound he made when he stood for me repeats like a shard behind my eyes.

My knees give out. 

I hit the stone hard; the bandages bite into my spine but I don't care. 

I curl inward and for the first time in two years I let myself fall apart-sobs that are loud and ugly and everything I held down until now, ripping out of me with a force that shakes marrow. 

He's dead because he tried to save me. He's dead because I was taken. He's dead because people I called family and those who took pleasure in my pain decided I was expendable.

"Hey. Get up." The Enforcer kicks my foot; the motion is mechanical and contemptuous, but I cannot stand. Grief has become a thing too big for my limbs to hold. I am collapsing under names and betrayals when a voice I know like a blade slides into the hall-sweet, cruel, and practiced.

"Aw. Look at the poor Hallow. Crying over a dead boy." Lyra appears at the corridor's end, uniform clean, hair brushed, smirk in place, and her boots click like punctuation on the stone as she saunters closer to dagger the moment. 

She leans down, views me like a spectacle. "You think you're special, don't you? Getting picked by the Guest, getting the Frosts to come get you."

Lyra's laugh is sharp. She leans in with that nasty whisper meant to sever whatever shreds of dignity remain. "Oh, Celeste. You were always naive. Do you think your father would let you rot here forever? Even if you're not… his anymore." 

She pauses, enjoys the cut, then drops the hammer: "He sent me. Alpha Rowan. Said to make sure you don't cause a scene when you see them."

I already knew-in that slow, dreadful place under hope, the truth had always lived-but hearing it aloud is like a blade finding a new place to twist. 

I push myself up. My legs wobble, but I stand. "Get out of my way."

Lyra tilts her head, smirk widening into a sneer. "You know who the Guest was, don't you? The one who picked you? The one who killed your little friend?" Her next words fall like ice. 

"He's a business partner of your brother's. Callen. You know-your warrior brother, the one who said you were cruel?" She breathes hot, close. "Callen traded you. For a project. Said you were ‘expendable.' Worth more dead or broken than alive."

Expendable.

The word detonates inside me. Grief splinters and something else kindles-first a single ember, then a spreading heat that eats through fear. Callen-my brother who taught me to hold a knife, who swore he'd protect me-had sold me. My father had signed the papers. The Frosts were not rescuers; they were collectors of bargains and blood.

And while they tallied deals and inked papers, Kane was the one who paid with his life-he stood between me and that mask and that whip and it cost him everything. 

That is the last thin strand that held me together: the knowledge that someone died because I was marked "expendable." It snaps. There is no more holding on. Only a cold, terrible clarity that whatever I used to be has been burned away-and in the ash, something else wakes.

Lyra's smugness wavers; she tastes the sudden change in the air and for the first time looks small. Her smirk falters, uncertainty flickers, and she takes an involuntary step back. "You… you shouldn't look at me like that." 

I don't answer. I walk past her. My steps are steady now, no more shaking. No more tears. 

Just that fire, burning in my chest, in my veins, in every scar on my body. 

The academy doors are ahead. I can see them-big, iron, imposing. And beyond them? My family. The Frosts. The ones who turned their backs on me, who threw me away, who killed the only person who ever cared about me. 

I push the doors open. The sun hits my face-bright, warm, something I haven't felt in two years-but I don't flinch. 

This isn't the end. It's the beginning. 

The Frosts think they can take me back. They think I'm still the broken, scared girl they threw into this hellhole. But they're wrong. I'm not Celeste Hallow anymore. I'm not the discarded pup. I'm the one who survived. The one who remembers every scar, every lie, every scream. And I'm coming for them. 

The fire in my chest burns brighter. I walk outside. 

And as I do, I smile-a cold, sharp smile, just like the one on the masked man's mask. 

Let them see me. Let them know. The game is over. Now, it's my turn to hunt. 

I am Celeste Hallow.

I am the wolf who survived Angel Reform Academy.