chapter 3 The man Behind the Door

The handle stopped turning.

Not because the man outside had changed his mind. Because something on the other side of the wall had shifted, and whoever was out there could feel it too.

"Interesting," said the voice, and the silk in it thinned. "I wasn't told you'd brought company."

Mara, my wolf said. Get behind the shelf.

I was already moving. I wedged myself between the mop buckets and the wall, heart slamming, and a second later the door didn't open. It came off. One clean, brutal crack, and the whole thing flew inward off its hinges and hit the opposite wall.

Light flooded the closet.

Rhys Calloway stood in the doorway with one hand still raised, like he'd done nothing more than push a curtain aside.

Behind him, Kieran lounged against the corridor wall, cracking his knuckles one at a time. Sable stood a few feet back, silent as ever, with a look on his face that I can only describe as patient murder.

And between them and me, in the middle of the narrow corridor, stood a man I had never seen up close.

He was tall and neat, with a gray suit and a gray beard trimmed to a point, and a face so forgettable you'd lose it the second you looked away. But I knew the smell of him. Pine and hot iron.

"Garrick Hale," Kieran said pleasantly. "Ashfen's Beta. Funny. I could've sworn the Headmistress was a woman."

Garrick didn't flinch. "The Headmistress is at council until Monday. I'm covering her duties as a courtesy to my Alpha." His eyes slid past Rhys, over the broken door, and settled on me. "Mara. Come out, child. Your father is worried."

I didn't move.

"He's worried," Garrick went on, in the tone you'd use on a skittish horse, "because he received a message this morning. From a student. Describing, ah, an incident."

Cassia. Of course. She'd sent word before I'd even made it to the library.

"He has asked me to bring you home," Garrick said. "Quietly. Tonight."

"No," I said.

It came out hoarse. But it came out.

Garrick's smile didn't change. "I beg your pardon?"

"I said no." My hands were shaking, so I curled them into fists. "I'm a student here. I have classes."

"You have a place," Garrick corrected gently, "that was given to you out of charity. Charity can be withdrawn."

"Not by you."

That was Rhys.

He hadn't raised his voice. He hadn't moved. But the corridor temperature dropped like a stone through ice, and for the first time since I'd met him, I understood why people stopped talking when he entered a room.

"Crestmoor Charter, Article Nine," Rhys said. "Any student whose wolf awakens at the academy, or demonstrates an unregistered rank, becomes a ward of the Council until her status is assessed. No pack, no Alpha, and no Beta may remove her." He tilted his head. "Do you want me to keep going? I memorized the whole thing in first year. It was a slow semester."

Kieran made a noise that was suspiciously like a laugh.

Garrick's eyes flicked between the three of them. For a moment, just a heartbeat, the careful mask slipped, and what lay under it wasn't anger.

It was calculation. Cold, quick, and very afraid.

"Three Alpha heirs," he said softly, "standing guard over a servant girl. How touching. Does your fathers' council know?"

"Does Dorrell know you're threatening a ward in a school corridor?" Kieran said sweetly. "Because I'd be delighted to tell him."

Silence.

Then Garrick laughed. A small, dry, disbelieving sound. He adjusted his cuffs and gave a little bow, graceful as a dancer.

"Of course," he said. "Of course. Forgive me, Mara. The Alpha's concern runs deep." He straightened. "But do tell your friends, child, since they're so protective. Do tell them what I told your father, twelve years ago, the night you came to our border."

The air changed.

I felt it first in my wolf. Every hair on her back went up, and she went so still it frightened me.

"Don't," I whispered, though I didn't know what I was afraid of.

Garrick smiled, soft and sad, and looked straight at me.

"You were never an orphan from a pack," he said. "No pack would have lost you. No pack would have dared."

"What are you talking about?" I whispered.

"Ask him," Garrick said. "Ask Alpha Dorrell why he buried your coat. Why he burned your blanket. Why he sent you here, to the one place in the world where he could keep you close to the only thing that might have woken you." His gaze moved, deliberately, over the three boys. "And ask them why they felt you the second you broke that sword."

He stepped back.

"Good evening, Mara."

He walked away. Unhurried, pleasant, and utterly composed. His footsteps faded down the corridor.

I stood in the wreckage of the supply closet, with my hands shaking and my head spinning, and I realized I'd stopped breathing.

"Mara," Rhys said.

I flinched.

He had stepped into the closet. It was a tiny space and he filled it. He stopped a careful distance away, like he knew exactly how close was too close, and for the first time I noticed his hands. They were clenched so tight his knuckles were white.

"Breathe," he said quietly.

"I am."

"No. You aren't."

I took a breath. It shook all the way down.

"Better." He didn't smile. But something in his face softened by the smallest fraction, like thin ice in the first warm hour of spring. "You're safe. For tonight."

"For tonight," I repeated. My voice cracked. "That's not very reassuring."

"It wasn't supposed to be." He held my gaze. "I don't lie to people I'm trying to protect."

Protect.

Behind him, Kieran had stopped grinning. Sable leaned against the broken door frame, those dark-green eyes fixed on me, unreadable and steady.

"Why?" The question burst out of me before I could stop it. "I'm nobody. I'm Cassia's maid. Why would any of you..."

"Mara."

My wolf's voice, soft and urgent.

Look at them, she said. Really look.

I looked.

Rhys, with his white-knuckled hands. Kieran, with his smile gone, standing too still, his nostrils flared like he was drinking me in. Sable, who hadn't blinked in a full minute.

And then I felt it. It started in my chest and spread outward, a slow, impossible warmth, a pull, like three invisible threads had just been tied to my ribs and were being gently, carefully tugged.

No, I thought. No, no, no. That's impossible. You only get one.

Do you? my wolf said, and I could hear the smile.

Rhys's eyes darkened. Very quietly, in a voice so low I almost thought I'd imagined it, he said:

"Which one of us did you feel first?"

I opened my mouth.

And out in the corridor, at the far end of the hall, every window in the academy shattered at once.