LOGINLyra's POV:Nobody asked Maya anything.That was the agreement that nobody stated out loud but everyone in the room honored. Selene looked at the map. Gregory looked at the tracker. I looked at Maya and Maya looked at the floor and the silence that followed her revelation was not the cold kind. It was the kind that came when a room full of people had received something significant and had decided that the receiving was enough for now.There would be time for the rest.Blake and Alex were in rogue alpha territory with an unknown substance in Alex's system and the afternoon was moving toward evening and that was the only thing with a deadline on it.Everything else could wait.We split to prepare.Selene and Gregory went to coordinate with the pack representatives who had been at the competition and were now redirected to something considerably more serious than a competition. I watched them move through the administrative block corridor side by side, not touching but close enough that
Lyra's POV:The arena was still loud when I left it.Not the good kind of loud. The kind that came after something had gone wrong in a public space and nobody had enough information to know how wrong and everyone was filling the gap with noise. Pack representatives on their phones. Academy staff moving with the specific urgency of people who had been given instructions and were following them while also being frightened. Students in clusters talking over each other.I moved through all of it toward one destination.Blake's mother.I had felt him through the mind link and the mind link had told me everything his words had not said directly. The specific quality of Blake Silver when he was frightened was something I had known since we were children and it was rare enough that encountering it was its own alarm system.I am honestly terrified.Blake did not say that.Blake did not say that to anyone.I walked faster.Someone had given Selene a room in the administrative block during the c
Blake's POV:The growls were close enough now that I could feel them in my chest before I heard them with my ears.Too close.I looked at Alex against the tree trunk and made the calculation in under two seconds. He was not going to regain consciousness fast enough to move himself and I was not going to leave him and the approaching wolves were not going to stop because I asked them politely.I semi shifted.Not the full change. The halfway version that gave me the strength and the enhanced senses without committing fully to four legs. Harder to maintain. More expensive on the body. Useful for exactly this kind of situation where I needed to carry something and also run.I got Alex over my shoulder.He was completely limp and the dead weight of an unconscious person was different from the cooperative weight of someone who was helping with the process and I adjusted and moved.I ran.The forest received us.What forest this was I genuinely did not know. The tunnel had been long and the
Blake's POV:They did not answer.The senior wolf looked at the others with the specific look of someone giving a silent instruction and the four of them moved simultaneously and the wolfsbane came out fast, two dart launchers from the wolves on the right flank and a spray canister from the one on the left and the whole setup had the coordinated quality of people who had practiced this specific configuration.Practiced on wolves.On shifted wolves specifically.Which meant they knew what they were dealing with and had prepared accordingly.Unfortunately for them I had also prepared.Not for this specifically. But for the general category of things that went wrong in ways that required everything available and left no room for managing the response.I shifted.Full Alpha form.The white coat settled into place and the world rearranged into the richer version and I was already moving before the first dart cleared the launcher. The dart hit the tree behind where I had been standing and I
Blake's POV:The floor cracked.That was the only way to describe it. Not a gradual thing. Not a structural warning that gave anyone time to respond. One second it was solid arena stone and the next second it was not and Alex was going down with it and the gap that opened was not small.I did not think.I moved.My feet left the edge before I had processed the decision and the air came up around me and I heard everything behind me simultaneously. Maya's voice. Lyra's voice. Liam. The crowd. All of it hitting at once like a wall of sound and none of it slowing me down because right now there was only one thing that existed and it was somewhere below me falling into a hole that had opened in the floor of the Academy arena.The shift happened in the air.Mid-fall.I had shifted many times in my life. On the ground, in water, on the run. Never in freefall. The change moved through me with the urgency of the moment and I came down on four legs and the tunnel floor hit hard and I absorbed i
Alex's POV:I had not planned to cross the floor.That was the honest version. I had been standing in the competitor observation area watching the scoring board and when the final aggregate came up with Blake's name at the top something in my chest had done something that bypassed every calculation I had and I was already moving before I had decided to move.The arena was loud and full and none of that was relevant.He was standing at the finish marker with Liam and Leo and Lyra and Maya around him and he was looking at the board and the particular quality of him in that moment, the specific realness of it, Blake Silver who had climbed a broken platform twelve meters above the forest floor and activated a beacon and descended and run three hundred meters and won, hit me somewhere that had no name except necessary.I crossed the floor.He saw me coming.His expression did not change into the managed version. It stayed exactly what it was which was open and warm and carrying the thing i
Blake’s POV:I sit on the stone bench behind the academy building where no one usually comes.The training field is loud somewhere far behind me, but here it is quiet. Only the sound of leaves moving in the wind. I lean forward, elbows on my knees, staring at the ground like it will give me answers
Alex’s POV:Night is the worst.Daytime is loud. Training. Voices. Orders. Footsteps. I can hide in that noise. I can act like nothing touches me. But now I am inside my dorm and the walls are too quiet. The bed looks too big. My head will not stop.I sit on the edge of my bed and stare at the door.
Maya's POV:The room feels too warm tonight.I sit on Lyra’s bed, pretending to scroll through my phone while she talks about decorations for Alex’s birthday. Her voice is light, excited, soft in a way that makes people feel safe. She is sitting cross legged on the floor, papers and ribbons around
Alex’s POV:My chest hurts.I am still on the floor, knees pulled close, hands shaking. Tears keep falling even though I try to stop. I press my palm over my mouth to silence the sound, but my breathing still comes out broken.Why does it always hurt more at night?When I see his face in the Academy







