Chapter 5 - Kellan

The only thing worse than an after-hours strategy meeting was knowing we had to have one.

The war room tucked beneath Hawthorne’s east wing wasn’t large, but it was fortified. Chalk-lined wards circled the entire space, reinforced after the winter breach. We didn’t speak until all five of us were seated, the sigil locks sealed, and Professor Marric had finished pacing the perimeter like the threat might be hiding in the shadows of his own damn classroom.

Elias was already unrolling a map over the center table, copper-rimmed with glow-ink runes along its edges. He tapped his finger against a marked ridge just beyond the western ward line.

“Same spot. Third time in two weeks,” he said. “Someone keeps carving into the trees.”

“Not runes,” Caelen Fae added. “Symbols. Interregnum glyphs. Sloppy, but intentional.”

“Trying to send a message?” I asked, though I already knew the answer.

“Trying to destabilize us,” Marric growled, arms crossed over his broad chest. “They want us paranoid. Overextended.”

“It’s working,” Elias muttered.

Across the table, Caelum leaned back in his chair, arms folded, gold-threaded cloak half draped over the seat like he couldn’t be bothered to sit in it properly. “So we reinforce the wards again. Double the patrol routes. And start tracking who isn’t where they say they are.”

“You think it’s internal?” I asked.

Caelum’s jaw tightened. “I think this place is too fragile to pretend it’s not.”

He wasn’t wrong.

We’d expelled students last semester. Lost staff. Had a traitor sitting at our damn dinner table. And now we were pretending everything was fine because the wards glowed blue again and the walls stopped bleeding.

Elias nodded. “I’ll cross-reference sigil pulses over the last seventy-two hours and look for anomalies. If they’re marking spots, they’re likely testing thresholds.”

“And if they breach one?” I asked.

Marric looked up, and his gaze was stone. “Then we don’t talk next time. We respond.”

The room fell quiet.

Not from fear, but from agreement.

The only sound came from the subtle hum of the wards behind the walls and the faint scribble of Elias noting things down faster than his quill should’ve allowed.

I stared at the map, at the ridgeline Elias had marked, and felt a strange twist in my chest.

It was close to the forest trail.

The old one.

Where the ancient spells thinned and the air always felt colder than it should.

Where we used to run in wolf form before curfews and council restrictions locked us tighter than the damn dorms ever could.

I hadn’t scented anything out of place there in weeks.

But…

My fingers brushed the map.

And I swore, just for a second, I caught the ghost of pine smoke on my hands.

And something else.

Something feral.

Familiar.

I didn’t mention the scent to anyone.

I scrubbed the pine smoke from my fingers and convinced myself I imagined it. 

But two days later, that same twist in my gut returned when a faculty notice arrived at my dorm just after dawn, bearing the stamped seal of Hawthorne House. 

Joint recon assessment. Two-man team. Required attendance. 

Name: Kellan Reed

Partner: Ronan Draxmere 

I stared at the parchment like it had personally offended me. 

I knew exactly whose idea this was. 

Professor Marric believed in battlefield bonding. Break a bone together, save a life, come back breathing and you earned the right to trust each other. He didn’t care about bloodline rivalries or personal shit. He cared about results. 

And someone, somewhere, decided pairing me with the Bloodpine heir made tactical sense. 

By midmorning, we were already in the northern woods. 

No backup. No faculty shadowing us. Just two enchanted pendants that pinged location every fifteen minutes and a map with four known sigil points to check for ward breaches. 

“It’s basic recon,” I said as we stepped off the trail, boots crunching frostbitten leaves. “You follow. I lead. Try not to punch anything unless it’s bleeding first.” 

Ronan grunted. “You always this charming, or is that just my effect on you?” 

“Try breathing through your nose for once,” I muttered. “You might learn something.” 

The tension between us wasn’t new. But it had sharpened since Aldane’s class. Since the almost-kiss, neither of us had mentioned. 

He walked beside me now with a predator’s ease, quiet in the underbrush, his eyes constantly scanning. Even when he wasn’t looking at me, I could feel it. Like his wolf was just beneath the surface, ears twitching toward every rustle, every breath I took.

“You hear that?” he said suddenly, low and sharp. 

I paused. Listened. 

The woods were quiet. Too quiet. 

No wind. No birdsong. Just silence. Pressed down and waiting. 

I knelt by the nearest tree, tracing the base with my gloved fingers. There, etched into the bark, faint but unmistakable was a glyph. Interregnum script. Newly drawn. 

“Shit,” I whispered. “This area was supposed to be clean.” 

Ronan crouched beside me. “Doesn’t look active. Could be a decoy.” 

“Or a trap.” 

That’s when the sigil pulsed. 

Not bright, just enough to flash a faint flicker of red before vanishing. 

Then the ground gave out. 

Wards snapped open like jaws, flaring beneath our boots in a cascade of corrupted energy. I grabbed Ronan’s jacket and yanked him backward as the roots below us split, revealing a spell-sink lined in fractured runes and crumbling stone. 

We hit the ground hard. Rolled into the underbrush. The trap sealed again with a hiss. 

My heart pounded. My shoulder throbbed. But we were alive. 

Ronan cursed under his breath, already reaching for one of his knives. 

I pushed to my knees and said what we were both thinking. 

“This wasn’t a test.” 

He met my eyes, grim. 

“No,” he said. “It was a warning.” 

We didn’t have time to catch our breath. 

The woods had changed the second the spell-sink had closed behind us. The air was thick, electric, almost. Expectant. My wolf pressed urgently against my skin, ears pricked, tail slick between my legs, teeth bared. 

Then we heard it. 

Grinding. Metallic. Like chains on stone. 

I yanked Ronan’s arm and dragged him behind a log sprouting more moss than bark just as the first corrupted construct stumbled out of the trees. 

“Golem,” Ronan growled, sliding down to the ground next to me. 

“A hell golem,” I said, raising my head to study the runes burned into its armor. “Dragonsteel shell. Interregnum forged.” 

It lumbered forward on reanimated joints like a corpse trying to remember it used to be alive. Jarring. Artificial. Slow. For a creation. 

Until it moved. Fast. Too fast. 

Two hooded, humanoid shapes emerged from the shadows behind it. Tall and broad, hard in muscle and sinew. Not students. Not faculty. 

Mercenaries. 

Shit. 

I dug fingers into the flat of the dagger strapped to my thigh, the blessed one with old Runebound wolf-sigils etched into the blade. “We can’t outrun them.” 

“No,” Ronan said, but he was already moving. Pulling a blade from within his coat, he went low like a dog, ready to pounce. 

I followed suit, stealing the tail end of his momentum as we sprinted into the fray together. 

He went high and I went low. 

Metal met bone. Enchanted, living. I scraped my dagger along the golem’s shoulder, shredding the rune-lock fastening the arm to the shell. Sparks flew. Ronan cut behind it, his knife driving through the soft space between armor plates like he’d done it a thousand times. 

One down. 

The mercs closed in quickly. 

The first unsheathed his own blade and raised a fire rune high in the air, letting it expand and then hurl itself in our direction. I dropped into warding stance with arms braced, face half turned, so the sigil shield I spun with my free hand would take the brunt of the blast. It shattered but held. 

Ronan took the opening. 

Footwork light as air, he darted left and spun behind the caster, hooking his arm and slamming him face-first into a tree with a sickening crunch. The second merc hurled himself at Ronan from behind. 

“Ronan—!” 

He ducked. 

I charged, shoulder ramming into the man’s midsection as I swept my blade across his thigh hard enough to drop him. 

Ronan didn’t hesitate. Turned in a fluid arc and put his knife into the merc’s chest. 

Just like that, it was over. 

Silence flooded in around us like a tidal wave. Sudden. Thick. 

My pulse drummed in my ears. 

I turned to look at Ronan. 

He stood, back straight, chest heaving, blood smeared across his jaw like war paint. His coat torn at the shoulder, one sleeve half burned away, but he didn’t flinch. Didn’t shake. 

Just stood there, knife still in hand, like he was waiting for the next one. 

And gods help me, I couldn’t look away. 

Ruthless. Calculated. Brilliant. 

He wasn’t just good, damn it. 

He was lethal. 

Watching him fight was like being too close to a wildfire. 

I couldn’t decide if I wanted to step back— 

Or get burned. 

We limped to the observatory just before the sky gave in to dusk. 

It sat like a forgotten relic at the edge of the northern ridge, its spire cracked, vines choking the rusted railings. Most students didn’t even know it was there. The old astronomy wing had been sealed off after a spellfire collapse a decade ago. 

Which made it perfect. 

The door creaked open under my hand, warped from time and frost. Inside, dust danced in shafts of fading light, and the air smelled like burnt paper and dried herbs. Ronan collapsed against a wall, dragging his coat off with a wince. Blood streaked his arm. Not deep, but angry. 

“Let me see it,” I muttered, dropping my bag beside him. 

“I’m fine,” he said, teeth clenched. 

“You’re bleeding.” 

“I said I’m fine.” 

That snapped something. 

“Gods, you’re impossible,” I bit out. “Charging into golems like you’re still in your forest backwater—” 

“Would you rather I let it take your head off?” he snapped, eyes narrowing. “Because from where I was standing, you froze.” 

I shoved him back before I could think better of it. 

“You don’t get to say that to me,” I growled. 

He shoved me right back, harder. “Why? Because you’ve got your perfect little House crest and everyone’s too afraid to tell you you’re slipping?” 

My heart punched my ribs. “You think I want this? You think I asked to carry this place on my back while everyone else either defects or dies?” 

“You want to be in charge?” Ronan said, stepping in. “Then act like it. Stop hesitating.” 

“I wasn’t hesitating.” 

“Then what the fuck do you call what just happened?” 

The silence that followed was hot. Stupid. Electric. 

We were too close again. 

My chest brushed his.

His breath hitched. 

And then he kissed me. 

No build-up. No pretense. 

Just teeth and heat and frustration crashing together. 

My back hit the wall. His hand fisted my collar. I grabbed his jacket, yanked him closer, mouths colliding like a fight with no winner. His lip was split. Mine would be. 

I didn’t care. 

All I knew was that I hated how good it felt. 

How right. 

Too right. 

I broke it with a shove, both of us breathing like we’d just gone three rounds with Marric himself. 

“Don’t,” I warned, voice raw. 

Ronan didn’t answer. Just stared at me like he couldn’t tell if he was furious or starving. 

I grabbed my pack and stormed toward the door, heart thudding in my throat. 

One more second and I wouldn’t have stopped. 

One more second and I would’ve let him ruin me.