LOGINBlake's POV:He was quiet for a second."Because it is not only your circle," he said. "The rogue alpha does not discriminate by pack when he decides he wants to destabilize something. Shadowclaw has had our own version of this problem for three years." He glanced at me sideways. "I am not your enemy, Silver. I need you to start actually believing that."I studied his face.He held it steady. Not performing steadiness. Just carrying it the way people carried things that were genuinely true."I do not have answers yet," I said carefully. "We know the threat exists. We do not know who."He nodded once. Slow."Watch the edges," he said. "Not the people closest to the center. He never plants at the center. Too obvious, too much scrutiny. He plants at the edges where the access is quieter and the suspicion does not land as naturally." He straightened up. "That is all I have. Consider it freely given."He stood and walked back to the Shadowclaw side without another word.I sat with what he
Blake's POV:We stayed on the call for another six minutes after that.I know because I was watching the clock on my wall without meaning to, the way you watched things when the rest of your attention was somewhere else entirely and your eyes needed something neutral to rest on.Lyra did not cry again. She breathed and I held the line and neither of us filled the silence with things that did not need to be said. What was left after everything honest had already been spoken was just the being there, which was sometimes the only thing available and also the most important thing.When she finally said she was going to wash her face and get ready I said okay and meant it and hung up.I sat with the weight of it for a moment. Her father. The dean. Heavy and real and not mine to fix, which was the hardest part. She had said do not bring mom into this and she had meant it completely and I was going to respect that the way I always respected the things she said from the honest place underneat
Lyra's POV:The call lasted four minutes.I know because I watched the timer on Maya's phone from across the kitchen table without meaning to, counting the seconds in the specific way you count things when you are trying to occupy the part of your brain that would otherwise be doing something less useful like panicking.Her face had gone pale in the first thirty seconds and had not come back from that.She said yes three times and no once and I understand once and nothing else that I could hear from where I was sitting. Her free hand was flat on the table and I watched her fingers press down against the surface slowly, the way you pressed down on something when you needed to feel that the ground was still there.Then she said goodbye and ended the call and sat with the phone in her hand and looked at it."Maya," I said.She looked up at me."It is my father," she said. Her voice was even in the way that voices were even when evenness was being maintained through effort rather than the
Blake's POV:The north loop was longer than the east trail by about a kilometer and the terrain was different, more open in stretches, the canopy thinning out where the older trees had been cleared years ago and not yet replaced by anything of equivalent age. Running it beside Aaran was easy in the physical sense. He had a good pace and did not need to talk to fill the silence and the silence was useful because I needed it.My mind was not on the trail.My mind was eight minutes behind me on a different section of forest with a fallen branch and a hand on the back of my neck and a kiss that I had not asked for and had not walked away from fast enough.Why.That was the question sitting in the center of everything. Not why had he kissed me. I understood impulse. I understood the specific quality of a moment that arrived before the management did because I had been living adjacent to those moments with Alex Thorne for long enough to recognize them on sight.Why did his actions and his e
Alex's POV:I sat in the undergrowth for approximately three seconds after he stepped back onto the trail and then I stood because sitting in the undergrowth was not a position I intended to remain in.My legs were fine. My hands were fine. The place on my chest where his hand had been when we landed was not a bruise and was not an injury and was not something I was going to think about.The branch was enormous.I looked at it properly now that the immediate moment had passed. Old oak. The split at the joint was clean on one side and ragged on the other which meant the rot had been working at it for a long time and the clean side had held until it could not anymore. If it had come down on the trail where I had been standing the weight of it would have been significant. The kind of significant that did not resolve quickly.Blake had been ten meters ahead of me.He had turned and come back and covered the distance and moved me off the trail before I had fully registered that something w
Blake's POV:The forest was mine before anyone else wanted it.That was the thing about early mornings at Midnight Academy. The grounds belonged to whoever got there first and at five forty seven in the morning the answer to that was almost always me. The trail through the east woods was packed dirt and exposed root and the kind of uneven ground that required actual attention which was exactly why I ran it. Attention was the point. Attention meant the rest of it stayed quiet.I ran.The air had that specific quality it got before full light arrived, cool and carrying the smell of pine resin and wet soil and something underneath both of those that was just the forest being itself before the day had opinions about it. My shoulder was cooperating. I had woken at five and put it through thirty minutes of careful work before I laced my shoes and that had been the right call because now it moved clean and the pull I had been managing for three days was sitting at a two rather than a five.G
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







