The Damned

Rhett:

Night slicks the stones of the courtyard like spilled ink. I cross it fast, every sense straining. The wards hum, faint and thin, the way a dying heart might. Shadows slide along the cloisters, too quick to be mine.

The Headmistress waits for no one, but I don’t knock. Her door swings open on a hiss of old hinges.

Voss’s office smells of rain-soaked parchment and dying roses. Candles gutter as I enter, their flames bowing as if they recognize the power inside me.

She sits behind a desk carved from obsidian, white hair coiled tight, a single streak of silver catching the dim light. Her eyes—eerily-bright, ancient—lift to mine.

“Rhett,” she says, low and measured. “You look like a storm come to beg the sky to let it brew.”

“I’m not begging.” My voice is rough, still edged from patrol. “The wards are failing. Something’s moving in the dark. It’s after her.”

Her fingers pause on a ledger, then resume, slow strokes of a quill. “Her,” she repeats. “Isadora, you mean.”

“Yes.” The word grates out of me. “Someone inside is attacking her—or trying to. You know it.”

Voss sets the quill down. “I know only that the four royals circle her like moths to flame. You. Silas. Kai. Lucian. She is an anomaly. Chaos wrapped in soft skin.” Her gaze sharpens. “And you, wolf, are drunk on the scent.”

I take a step forward, jaw tight. “This isn’t an obsession. It’s a warning. I’ve hunted enough to know a predator’s breath when I feel it.”

“And yet,” she says, “the wards admit no predator. You know our law. Everyone who dwells within these walls has walked through the gatefire. If they were too tainted, they would have burned before they crossed the threshold. The Damned survive here, yes, but the truly lost do not.”

Her words thrum against the scar beneath my collar, the one that still burns when the moon rises. I force the memory down, but it presses back, vivid as fresh blood.

That night—

Moonlight, silver and cruel.

My first shift ripping me apart, bones cracking, fur sprouting like black wildfire.

The forest smelled of home, until it didn’t.

When I woke, the pack was nothing but meat and silence.

Blood soaked the roots, every familiar scent drowned.

And me, alone, crimson to the elbows, the copper taste of death thick in my mouth.

Did I kill them?

The question still chews at me.

I drag myself back to the present, to Voss’s steady gaze.

“You think I don’t know why I’m here?” My voice is a low snarl. “I’m here because when I opened my eyes, everything I loved was dead. And no one—not even me—knows if I did it.”

Something flickers across her face, gone before it’s born. “This is a sanctuary for the Damned, Rhett. A last resort before more…intense measures. We do not hunt our own without proof.”

“I found a demon in the woods.” The words crack like a whip.

Her silence deepens. “Who do you think let it in?”

“Professor Maldric.”

A slow exhale, almost a laugh. “Ah. Him.”

“You know what he is.”

“I know what he was,” Voss says. “Once, yes, I all powerful incubus that sought to topple the high thrones. The Four condemned him to the layers below. He cannot surface. The wards lock him there.” Her eyes narrow, gleaming like forged steel. “Nor can he be released without the combined power of all four High Lords. Do you plan to unlock him, Rhett?”

“No.” The word is immediate, certain.

“Then he is no harm.”

I step closer, the heat of my anger searing the chill of her office. “You’re wrong. I smelled it tonight beyond the eastern wall. Old, rotted magic. Something testing the barrier. If it isn’t Maldric, it’s something worse.”

She rises, tall and dark as a cathedral spire. “Be careful where you aim your suspicion. If the Council hears you speak of traitors inside these walls, they will not be gentle. This place exists because we are all monsters trying to remember how to be more.”

“I don’t need their gentleness,” I bite out. “I need the truth. Someone wants Isadora. Broken, claimed, or worse.”

Voss studies me for a long, electric moment. “Perhaps,” she says finally, “the truth you seek is inside you, not her.”

The shadows in the corners twitch like startled birds.

I turn before my temper shatters the room. “If she dies because you looked the other way—”

“She will not,” Voss interrupts, voice like a closing door. “But remember, wolf: chaos draws chaos. Guard her if you must. But do not mistake your hunger for destiny.”

Her warning follows me into the hall, a whisper of hell fire and smoke.

Outside, rain begins to fall—cold, relentless, yet not strong enough to wash away the sins of this place. I lift my face to it, letting the storm slick my skin.

The wards still hum, faint and wrong. Somewhere in the dark, a predator moves.

My teeth ache for the shift. For blood.

If no one else will hunt it, I will.

For her.