MasukZANA’S POVMy pleasure kept building and building.I had to lean across the wall for support.My hand reached where it was going.The water ran down my spine and over my hips. Everything was warm inside me.I thought about Darren pinning me against the wall in the training ground, the weight of him, the moment just before he pushed back when neither of us moved. I thought about the specific sound his voice had made then. I thought about the look in his eyes when I had said you're worried and he had denied it too fast.I thought about Percy in the astronomy tower.‘Come here” he had said.I thought of the way he had held me like I was something that mattered, the way he had kissed me like being careful about it was the most important part.The climax built slowly. My orgasm hit me hard and my body shivered with it. I bit down on my lips even harder to stop myself from screaming through the pleasure.I stood still for a moment after. Water still ran down my back. slowly, my breathing re
ZANA'S POVI was dreaming about them again.In the dream there was no academy. There was just warmth and the three of them, which should have felt strange and didn't, which was the thing about dreams - they didn’t follow logic most times.I started to feel them. I felt Ken's hands in my hair, Darren's mouth at my throat. His voice was low as he said something I couldn't quite hear but could feel in my chest. I felt Percy's looking at me with total lust.I was warm everywhere. My whole body was warm.Then I was awake.I woke up fast, the way I always did, zero to alert in one breath, which my father's trainers had drilled into me as a child and which my body had never unlearned. My eyes opened on the ceiling of my room.I was breathing too fast and I was very, very warm. I could still feel the dream sitting all over my skin.Fuck.My wolf was awake too. Of course, she was. She was practically vibrating, which was not helpful. She craved them all the time.I turned my head and looked at
ZANA’S POVWe moved closer.I closed my eyes, preparing for the kiss and so did he.My wolf howled inside me, practically begging me to touch him. She felt this connection to him so bad.Our lips were close enough to touch until….There was a sound in the hallway, probably a student passing. We both flinched and looked back but saw nothing.Great.I cleared my throat and spoke back on the issue, like we weren’t so close to making out seconds ago. "That's not reassuring,""I know," he said. "I'm not trying to reassure you. I'm trying to be honest with you.""Okay”He looked at me. I noticed something. Ken didn’t have his walls up too much around me anymore, not ever since the classroom incident.His wall was further down than I had ever seen it. Not gone - it was never going to be fully gone, that wasn't who he was - but low enough that I could see something real behind it, something that had been there for a while, I thought, something that was not about the tournament or the bloodl
ZANA'S POVI spent the rest of that afternoon in the library trying to read and failing completely.The words on the page kept sliding off my attention before they made it to my brain. I would get three lines into a paragraph and then I would be somewhere else - back in the assembly hall, hearing Ken's voice say my name like it was a simple and obvious thing, or standing in front of that board in the corridor reading Percy's name, then Darren's, then Ken's at the top.I closed the book after the fourth attempt and just sat there.The library was quiet at this hour. Most students were at dinner or in their common rooms recovering from the news of the tournament. I had skipped dinner. I wasn't hungry or I was hungry but I didn’t care.I sat alone at a table in the back corner until the librarian started turning off the lights, which was the academy's polite way of asking you to leave. Then I gathered my things and walked back toward the dormitory wing.The corridors were quieter now. I
ZANA’S POVI stared at Aisha for so long, wondering what I had done to make her hate me like this.I had just been nominated for tribute and the next thing she could do was to work as a strategist for a rival team.And now, she was looking at me with this calculated look in her eyes.A strategist. A strategist wasn’t someone placed there as an afterthought or a body to fill a slot. This was someone who had stepped deliberately into a role that required planning, information management, and the specific intelligence that worked in the background while other people stood in the foreground.I thought about Aisha in the courtyard that morning, already perfectly positioned in the right social circle, already laughing the right laugh with the right people. I thought about how long she had been building her position here. she did it quietly while I was too busy just staying upright to notice all of what she was constructing around me.She had known this tournament was coming or she had posit
ZANA'S POVZANA’S POVMy eyes went wide with surpriseThe air in the room changed immediately.She kept going."The academy will be hosting a royal tournament in three weeks," she said. "This is not a drill and it is not optional. Every house will field a primary representative. That representative will compete across two disciplines - combat and magical strategy - in front of a formal audience that will include visiting officials from the royal court."The air in the room shifted. I felt it before I understood it. I saw every person in the hall sitting slightly straighter. Even people’s breathing changed”"This is not an internal academy exercise," Carver continued. "The visiting officials will be making assessments. The royal court takes a formal interest in the academy's output, and this tournament is one of the ways that interest is expressed. The winning house will receive royal recognition - resources, political standing, and the kind of favor that influences how the rest of y







