FIRE AND BONES

Arwen's POV

Nobody told me the most dangerous thing at Blood Moon Academy would be standing in my doorway.

He fills the entire frame. Not just because he's tall, though he is, the kind of tall that makes rooms feel smaller. It's the energy radiating off him. Pure, suffocating alpha power that presses against my skin like a physical weight and demands that I fold. Submit. Disappear.

I don't fold.

I don't know why I don't fold. Every instinct I was raised with is screaming at me to bare my throat and make myself small, because this is an Alpha, the real kind, the kind that makes wolves forget their own names. The silver light flickering around my hands clearly didn't get the memo.

"You have no idea what kind of fire you've walked into." His voice is quiet, which somehow makes it worse. Loud anger you can brace for. This kind of quiet means he's already decided something. "But you're about to find out."

"I just got here," I say. My voice comes out steadier than I feel. "I haven't done anything to you."

"You exist." He takes one step into the room and the temperature drops like something natural left the building. "That's enough."

The guy behind him is broad-shouldered, dark-skinned, with an expression somewhere between fascinated and horrified. He's watching me like I'm about to do something either spectacular or catastrophic. He's probably right about one of those.

Draven Hunter. I got the name from the intake paperwork I glanced at in the headmistress's office. Alpha heir of the Hunter Pack. Top of every ranking this academy posts. Feared by students, respected by faculty, and apparently personally offended by my face.

I still don't know why he's looking at me like I murdered someone he loved.

"I'm Arwen," I say. Maybe if we start over. Maybe if I just—

"I know who you are." Something flickers in his eyes. Something raw and old and devastated before the ice slams back down over it. "Blackthorne."

He says my name like it's a verdict.

The silver light around my hands pulses. Not on purpose. My body keeps doing things I'm not authorizing, like it has its own opinion about how this conversation should go. A crack appears in the window behind me. I didn't touch anything.

Draven's eyes go to the window. Then to my hands. Something shifts in his expression. Not fear. I don't think Draven Hunter has ever been afraid of anything. But recognition. Like he just confirmed a suspicion he was hoping was wrong.

"Get that under control," he says, very softly. "Or I will."

"You don't get to walk into my room and make demands—"

"This is my academy." He steps forward again and now he's close enough that I can see the jagged scar beneath his right rib through the gap in his shirt. An ugly, vicious thing that someone put there deliberately. "Every hallway, every classroom, every corner of this building operates under my authority. You're in my space, Blackthorne. Act like it."

I hold his gaze. I don't know where that comes from either, because the smart thing, the survival thing, would be to look away. But something in me refuses to give him that. Something in me that has been quiet and small and invisible for eighteen years decides right now, in this moment, that it is done shrinking for people who haven't earned the right to make it small.

The silver light flares. Just once. Just enough.

Draven's jaw tightens. His eyes drop to my hands and I watch something complicated move through his expression — something that isn't just anger. Something almost like warning. Not a threat this time. An actual warning, like he knows what's coming and he's not entirely sure it ends the way he planned.

Good. Neither am I.

The door behind him swings open.

A girl I've never seen before tumbles in with an armful of towels and the expression of someone who just realized they interrupted something dangerous. She's small, dark-haired, warm brown eyes that immediately take in the entire situation in about half a second.

"Oh," she says. "Wow. Okay. Hi." She looks at Draven. "Hi, Draven. Very menacing as always." She looks at me. "I'm Elena. Your roommate. I was getting towels because the ones in here are terrible." She stops. Recalibrates. "Should I come back?"

Draven looks at Elena. Then at me. Then at the cracked window.

"Control your power," he says. Just to me. Like Elena isn't there. "Before it gets out and hurts someone you don't mean to hurt." He turns to leave, then stops with his hand on the doorframe. "First warning, Blackthorne. I don't give second ones."

He's gone before I can answer. His companion gives me one last look and follows.

Elena sets the towels down on the bed.

"So," she says carefully. "You met Draven."

"Is he always like that?"

"Worse, usually." She sits cross-legged on her bed and looks at me with genuine concern. "Whatever you did to make him look at you like that, don't do it again."

"I didn't do anything. He just saw me."

Elena goes very quiet for a moment. "Yeah," she says. "That's what I was afraid of."

I want to ask her what she means. I want to ask a lot of things. But before I can, my phone buzzes. An anonymous message with my class schedule for tomorrow, except someone has already crossed out three of my assigned study partners and replaced their names with a single word.

Alone.

Draven Hunter moved faster than I thought possible. Before I've even unpacked my bag, before I've slept a single night in this school, he's already started. Every class I'll be taking. Every person I might sit next to. Every possible source of support in a school full of strangers.

Already poisoned.

"Arwen?" Elena is watching me. "What's wrong?"

I flip the phone over so she can't see the screen.

"Nothing," I say.

But something shifts in Elena's face. Just for a second. Just long enough for me to notice. She looks at my phone with an expression I can't quite read. Not concern. Not curiosity. Something older that doesn't belong on a girl who was just smiling about towels.

Then she smiles again, warm and genuine and perfect.

And I tell myself I imagined it.

I fall asleep that night listening to Blood Moon Academy settle around me like a building that knows I'm here. My last thought before sleep takes me is that I should be afraid. That I walked into something tonight that I don't have the language for yet. That the boy with my mother's eyes and that ancient, devastating rage is going to make my life here a war.

But underneath the fear is something else. Something stubborn and silver and quietly furious.

He wants a war.

He picked the wrong girl.

The plants on my windowsill grow three inches while I sleep. In the morning, every single one of my assigned study partners has transferred out of my classes.

The war has already begun.