Chapter 2 - Ronan

They didn’t ask. They never fucking asked. 

Bloodpine doesn’t do requests. Orders get handed down like knives, sharp and non-negotiable. And mine? Mine came with a wax-sealed scroll and a single look from my father that said, Try to refuse and see what happens. 

So I packed. Didn’t say goodbye. 

The Bloodpine Alpha, the man who’d bled me into the earth more times than he ever praised me, called it a “favor to diplomacy.” Father said Obscura needed a show of trust from the packs. And that by sending one of ours, it proved unity. Solidarity. 

Bullshit. 

Everyone knew the truth. Bloodpine wolves don’t transfer. We don’t “study abroad.” And we sure as hell don’t wear Hawthorne colors. 

But this wasn’t about school. It was about the girl with the fire in her veins and the crown in her bones—the dragon. 

Guard her. Watch the heirs. Report instability. 

That was the order. Clean. Surgical. Detached.

My mission was simple. Get close to the dragon girl. Protect her if needed. Spy if told. And if Obscura burned from the inside out again? Make sure Bloodpine watched it happen without getting scorched. 

I hated it. 

Not the danger. That part I could handle. 

I hated being useful to them. To him. 

Every step through those gates felt like a leash getting tighter. And the worst part? I let him clip it on without a fight. Because deep down, I knew what refusing would mean. 

Exile. Dishonor. Maybe worse. 

So, I smiled through gritted teeth, packed my knives, and walked into enemy territory with a straight spine and a snarling wolf under my skin. 

Now here I was. Two days in. Already stirring whispers and clashing with the golden boy heir of Runebound like we were born to piss each other off. Maybe we were. 

Kellan Reed was everything Bloodpine hated—disciplined, polished, respected. Controlled. Which made him dangerous. And fascinating. And fucking infuriating. 

His scent still clung to me after that sparring match, sweat and frost and something steadier than I expected. 

I’d wash it off later. Or not. 

I sat on the windowsill of my assigned room in Hawthorne House, watching the campus shift through dusk. My boots rested against the glass, hands wrapped around a mug of tea I hadn’t asked for, left by some overeager junior trying to be polite to the “exchange wolf.” 

Obscura didn’t feel like school. It felt like a trap with a view. Every hallway held secrets. Every House had cracks in its foundation. And every so-called ally had a reason to turn on you when it counted. 

I didn’t trust anyone here. 

I wasn’t supposed to. 

But still, my gaze drifted toward the glow of the Aurelian tower. 

Toward the dragon. 

And the heirs I was meant to watch. 

Caelum Hawthorne, the exiled alpha who’d already bled for her. 

Elias Everley, the spell-slinger with something dangerous in his blood. 

Lucien Nerezza, all teeth and loyalty, walking away from centuries of legacy. 

They were my assignment. My surveillance targets. 

And yet— 

It was Kellan I couldn’t stop thinking about. 

Runebound’s perfect second-born heir. The polished one. The controlled one. The fucking distraction. 

My orders were clear. 

But my instincts? 

Already starting to disobey.

The stares hadn’t stopped since the minute I stepped through the gates.

Some subtle—quick glances, heads turning, breath catching when they caught the green lining of my cloak. Others weren’t even trying to hide it. One Runebound wolf stopped mid-sentence to watch me walk past, jaw clenched like my boots were scuffing up holy ground.

They recognized the Bloodpine cut in my stride. Good. Let them.

I didn’t care about their whispers.

Much.

The thing about wolves like the Runebound? They don’t just fight with claws. They fight with hierarchy, tone, and silence. The pressure here didn’t come in the form of threats. It came in the weight of how they watched, how they waited for me to mess up, to confirm whatever stories they’d already told themselves about what a Bloodpine wolf was.

Savage. Undisciplined. Dangerous.

They weren’t wrong.

But they weren’t right either.

They thought I didn’t notice the challenges. The hallway that narrowed when I walked it. The practice weapons swapped for slightly unbalanced ones in the training rack and the silence that followed me into the dining hall like a ward no one had to cast.

Runebound wolves fought pretty. I fought to survive.

And yet, under all the performance and polish, I could smell it.

Power.

Not the brute strength of the forests I’d grown up in—no. This was quieter. Sharper. Obscura had been built for war, then buried under books and rules to keep it from breaking itself apart. But the magic here? It bled through everything. The wards stitched into the library stairs. The hum of sigils in the rafters. The fact that the very air inside the House held a pulse if you were still enough to feel it.

This place wasn’t soft.

It was sleeping.

And I was here to see who woke it up.

I let my hand brush the stone wall outside the third-floor corridor. Cool. Smooth. But something old pulsed beneath the surface, like a buried rune that hadn’t been spoken aloud in years. My wolf pressed harder inside me, ears pricked, tail raised, alert.

The stares didn’t matter.

The silence didn’t matter.

What mattered was what I could learn here, what I could take back if it all fell apart.

I passed a pair of werewolf students lingering outside the dueling annex. One of them stiffened and made a show of checking the wall calendar like I wasn’t even worth a glance. The other gave a tight-lipped smile that never reached his eyes.

“Bloodpine,” he said, with mock politeness. “Brave of you to wear Hawthorne House colors.”

“Brave of your Alpha to let you speak,” I replied without pausing.

His mouth twitched. Not a smile.

A challenge.

Good.

Let them keep pushing. Let them all think I’m here to cause problems.

Because eventually, they’ll realize the truth.

I’m not here to start anything.

I’m here to finish it.

I’d barely made it down the hall before the fight replayed in my head again.

Fucking Kellan Reed.

Everything about him pissed me off—the calm, the clipped words, the control so tight you could hear it cracking if you knew how to listen. But it was the way he moved that stuck with me.

We shouldn’t have worked together in a fight. He was textbook Runebound—every stance carved out of tradition and training manuals. I was forest-born chaos. Bloodpine didn’t choreograph. We tore shit apart.

And yet, it worked.

His blade met mine like it knew the rhythm before I did. Every strike pushed me, tested me. Not just to win, but to match him. I hadn’t felt that since I was a kid getting my ass handed to me in survival drills back home. Not since I earned the right to be brutal.

And he was clean. That’s what drove me fucking crazy. Reed didn’t snarl, didn’t grin, didn’t even pant like he was exerting himself. Just fought with those sharp eyes and sharper instincts, stepping into my space like he belonged there.

But it was when we hit the mat, when sweat hit stone and he had me pinned for half a breath, that something shifted.

Our wolves recognized each other.

No words. No posturing.

Just heat.

Territorial awareness dialed to ten.

And that moment, his palm on my chest, mine wrapped around his collar, was the kind of close that felt more like a challenge than a victory.

I hated it.

Because I didn’t trust him. Not his House. Not his posture. Not that fucking way he looked at me after we broke apart, like he wasn’t sure if he wanted to stab me or study me.

But I couldn’t stop thinking about it.

I rounded the corner of the Hawthorne stairwell, ignoring the second-years who flinched when I passed, and ducked into the training wing. The space was empty, still echoing the sound of our bodies crashing into mats, walls, and wards.

I walked the line where we’d fought, boots scuffing against faint marks still pressed into the stone and closed my eyes.

There. That moment when his blade nicked my ribs. Where my hand caught his belt. Where we clicked in that half-second of shared violence.

Our wolves knew.

His scent still lingered here. A little colder than mine. Cleaner. But not soft.

Never soft.

I flexed my fingers, jaw tight.

We were supposed to hate each other. He was Runebound. I was Bloodpine. Different bloodlines. Different law. Different fucking worlds.

But the match had said something neither of us wanted to admit.

We weren’t opposites.

We were equals.

And that?

That was way more dangerous than anything else.

I didn’t stay in the training wing long.

The scent of old sweat and magic clung too thick to the walls, and Kellan’s ghost still lingered in the air like smoke that hadn’t cleared. My wolf was restless. Pacing under my skin, ears back, tail twitching.

He didn’t like this place. Not the stone. Not the quiet. And definitely not the way the students looked at me like I might bit, and then looked away like they’d want to watch if I did.

I left through the back corridor and headed toward the dormitory wing of Hawthorne House, where a waiting Professor greeted me with a clipboard and a strained smile.

“Mr. Draxmere,” she said, polite enough not to choke on my last name. “Headmaster Arx has assigned you quarters on the fourth floor of Hawthorne. You’ll find your belongings already inside.”

I didn’t bring much. Didn’t trust Obscura to hold anything sacred. My entire life fit in one weather-beaten duffel and the two blades strapped to my back.

She continued, ticking down a list like it’d been rehearsed. “Curfew is midnight unless granted patrol exemption. First-years must be escorted after dusk. Spellcasting outside approved areas requires a signed request. And combat, physical or magical, outside the training wings is grounds for disciplinary action.”

I raised a brow. “How often does that rule get broken?”

The pause told me everything.

“Frequently,” she admitted. “Especially between Houses.”

That tracked. The students here were dressed in a polished manner, but the tension hung in the halls like a fog. Like power wrapped in silk and sharpened behind the teeth. Everyone smiled too much. Walked too straight. Spoke too carefully.

Obscura was armored in etiquette, but that didn’t mean it wasn’t bleeding underneath.

I followed her through the wide stairwell toward the fourth floor, the silence between us broken only by the echo of boots and the occasional flicker of sigils etched into the stonework. Some were old. Worn. Faded with time. Others were new, still humming with unstable edges, like they’d been rushed.

I smelled magic gone sour under the lacquer of fresh wards.

And something else.

Decay.

Not the sharp rot of blood or death.

This was slower. Political. Structural.

A foundation starting to crumble while the tower still stood proud.

She left me at a heavy oak door with a silver number plate etched into the wood. My name had been freshly carved below it, not printed. Carved. With intent.

Bloodpine.

Outsider.

Message received.

The room wasn’t much. Just a single bed, a desk, a wardrobe, a small window with a view of the eastern tower, but it was clean. Wards sealed the corners and framed the sill. One pulsed blue in the arch of the doorframe. A boundary rune. Someone had keyed me in already.

I dropped my bag at the foot of the bed and turned slowly, taking it all in.

On the surface, Obscura was doing everything right. New staff. New protocols. United front.

But I could smell the fracture lines underneath it all. Could feel them in the way guards shifted their patrols too often, how professors avoided locking eyes too long, how wards were triple-layered in corridors that shouldn’t need defending.

Something here wasn’t just wounded.

It was infected.

And if they didn’t cut it out soon?

It would kill the school from the inside out.