MasukLyra put her tray down across from us and said, "Good morning. Has anyone told you two that you look like you've been awake since the moon was invented?"Cassian looked up from his coffee."That's not a compliment," I said."It wasn't meant to be." She sat down and stole a piece of bread off my plate without asking. "You both need to eat something that isn't stress. Ronan, back me up."Ronan, arriving two seconds behind her with a full tray, said, "I'm staying out of this. I value my continued existence.""Smart man," Cassian said."I have my moments."Lyra pointed her stolen bread at Cassian. "You smiled. At Ronan. With your actual face.""I didn't smile.""The left side of your mouth moved upward. That's a smile. Val, back me up."I had been staring at him. I looked away. "I didn't see anything.""You were absolutely staring.""I was looking in his general direction.""She was staring," Lyra told Ronan."Noted," Ronan said, and started eating.Cassian's expression had gone back to n
"Her name is Sera Voss," Lyra said. "Alpha. She failed the second phase of the Iron Circle last week. Dropped eight points."We were moving inside, off the field, into the east wing corridor where the lights were low. Lyra kept her voice tight and quiet."I know Sera," I said. "She was planning a rematch challenge. She told three people in Solas.""Her roommate said the same thing." Lyra pulled her jacket close. "She was angry about the ranking drop. She said she wasn't done." She paused. "This morning her bed was made. Her study notes were stacked on her desk. Her shoes were lined up by the door."Val hadn't said anything yet. She was walking slightly behind us, arms crossed, listening."Administration?" I asked."Academic transfer. Immediate. Regional school closer to her pack." Lyra's jaw tightened. "Mid-semester. No goodbye. No message to her roommate. No request to forward her things."I ran the pattern again in my head. Failed trial. Ranking drop. Gone within forty-eight hours.
I shoved my bag down so hard it knocked the chair beside my desk sideways.Cassian looked up from his book. Took one look at my face."What happened?" he asked."Nothing." I picked the chair up. Set it back. "I'm fine.""You knocked over furniture.""It was in my way.""Val.""I said I'm fine."He closed the book. Slowly. Set it down on the desk with the particular patience of someone who had already decided they were going to win this conversation and wasn't in a rush about it."Your jaw does that thing," he said.I touched my jaw before I could stop myself.He didn't say anything. He didn't need to.I sat on the edge of my bed and pressed my palms flat on my knees. Raven's voice was still moving through my head, smooth and precise, finding the exact shape of the thing I'd been afraid of since the forest.Ask yourself what he wants. And what he'll do when he's done wanting it."Raven cornered me in the side corridor," I said. "After Bloodline History.""What did she say?""That boys
Mira closed the door behind her and sat down across from me.I didn't look up. I was reading the latest ranking updates on my tablet, cross-referencing names against trial performance logs. A habit. Information was currency at Dominion and I never stopped collecting it."Talk," I said."Val Rhen," Mira said. "Three days of watching.""And?""Something's wrong with him. Not performance wrong, strategy wrong. He never pushes his wolf forward in dominance exercises. Never shifts, even when it would help him. Healing is slower than it should be for any alpha." She paused. "His scent is inconsistent. Some days it's almost unreadable."I set the tablet down."Wolfsbane," I said.Mira blinked. "You already suspected.""I've suspected since the second week." I leaned back. "Wolfsbane explains the healing delays, the muted dominance response, the scent gaps. Someone is suppressing their wolf deliberately and consistently." I looked at her. "The question isn't what. The question is why.""Could
The class was called Mate Bond Theory and Identification. It was listed as mandatory for all second-semester students, which meant there was no way out of it, and it was taught by Professor Harlan, a compact, soft-spoken alpha who had the particular gift of making the most dangerous information sound completely routine.I sat in the third row and opened my notebook.I wrote nothing in it for the next forty minutes."Instinctive protection," Harlan said, moving along the board where he'd written a clean column of symptoms. "The bonded wolf experiences an involuntary drive to position itself between its mate and any perceived threat. This is not a choice. It is a physiological response rooted in—"I stopped listening to the words. I heard them, but I stopped letting them land.They were landing anyway.Instinctive protection.How many times had I stepped between Val and something that wanted to hurt her before I'd made the conscious decision to move.Scent fixation.The way I always kne
The strategy meeting was in the Obsidian Hall, which meant long tables, house crests on the wall, and twenty-something Solas alphas who'd spent their whole lives being told they were the best at everything.I sat at the far end and kept my expression neutral.Cassian stood at the head of the table with a map of the arena floor spread out in front of him. He'd been talking for four minutes. Clean, precise, no wasted words, laying out Solas's approach to the next round of Dominance Trials like a general briefing officers before a campaign.Then he said it."Core tactical team for round two will be Ronan, Dex, Mira, and Val Rhen."The room erupted.Not loudly. These were alphas, they didn't shriek. But the quality of the silence that broke into murmuring was pointed enough to cut."Rhen?" someone said from the middle of the table. Tall guy. Brek, I thought his name was. Built like a wall, ranked somewhere in the upper twenties. "He's rank twenty-four. We have six people ranked above him
I woke with a start, my heart pounding from a nightmare of Cain finding out the truth and dragging me out of Dominion Academy.It took me a moment to put myself in order before I took in my surrounding. The dorm was dim, morning light creeping through the curtains, but Cassian was already up, rumma
Val’s panicked voice rang in my ears as I hurried through the academy halls, her voice shaking over the phone after telling her what Cain had in mind.I reached Val’s dorm, knocking softly. "It’s me," I whispered. She yanked me inside, her blue eyes wide, her small frame tense. "We need to move you
Val’s scent haunted me, that sweet trace slipping through his wolfsbane in the locker room yesterday, his arm warm under my fingers as I wiped away blood. I couldn’t sleep, my wolf pacing, the bond burning like a storm I couldn’t control. Headmaster Rin’s warning rang: “You will fall with him.” I
Raven’s smirk lingered in my mind like a poison, her words “Am I interrupting something?” ringing as I hurried through the academy halls, my heart pounding. From what Cassian told me, she had my confession to Lyra, my secret as an omega, laid bare, and now backups? My wolfsbane vial was nearly emp







