Chapter 3: Kael

He filled the doorway like he'd been built specifically to make small rooms feel smaller, all shoulders and quiet intensity, still dressed in the dark Academy uniform that made him look older than the boy I remembered and younger than the man standing in front of me now. His hair was longer than it used to be, dark and slightly unkempt like he'd run his hands through it too many times that evening, and there were faint shadows under his eyes that hadn't been there when we were children.

"You shouldn't be here," I said, one hand still braced against the door like it might do something to protect me, though we both knew a wooden door had never stopped an Alpha who didn't want to be stopped.

"You shouldn't have come back." Kael's voice was rougher than I remembered, worn down at the edges by years I hadn't witnessed, but the eyes were exactly the same the same gold-flecked brown that used to look at me like I was something worth protecting, right before he'd let me be thrown away without so much as a goodbye whispered in the dark.

"I didn't have a choice. The scholarship board picked my file at random." A lie, and a thin one, but useful enough to buy me a few seconds to breathe, to remember how to stand in front of him without shaking.

He didn't buy it. I watched him not buy it, watched the way his jaw tightened like he was deciding whether to push or let it go, the same internal debate I remembered from when we were children and he'd catch me lying about something small and let me get away with it anyway, out of some misplaced kindness I'd never understood.

"Your scent hasn't changed," he said quietly instead, choosing not to fight me on the lie for reasons I couldn't read on his face. "Seven years, and it hasn't changed at all. I used to think I'd imagined it. How specific it was. How I could have picked you out of a thousand people blindfolded."

"Neither has yours. Still smells like a coward." The words came out sharper than I meant them, but I didn't take them back.

Something flickered across his face not anger, though I'd braced for anger, braced for the kind of temper that came standard with an Alpha heir raised to expect deference. Worse. Guilt, raw and unpracticed, like he'd never actually let himself feel it until right now, standing three feet away from me holding a door like a weapon between us.

"We didn't have a choice either, Runa."

"Don't." My voice cracked on the single syllable, and I hated that it did, hated that seven years of practiced calm could crumble this fast in front of one boy I used to trust with everything I had. "Don't you dare stand there and tell me what choice felt like from the side that got to keep everything. You kept your name. Your house. Your crown. I got a fake identity and a mother who died still afraid someone would find us in whatever forgotten town we'd fled to that year."

He flinched at that, actually flinched, shoulders drawing in like the words had physical weight, and for one second I almost regretted saying it. Almost.

"I didn't know about your mother," he said quietly, and something in his voice made me believe him despite every instinct telling me not to. "I didn't know any of it, Runa. They told us you'd been relocated somewhere safe, that you were fine, that the arrangement was for everyone's protection, yours included. I was twelve. I believed what they told me because the alternative was believing my own father had thrown you away like you were nothing."

"Maybe he did."

"Maybe he did," Kael agreed, and the honesty of it startled me more than an argument would have. "That doesn't mean I get to pretend I wasn't part of it. I'm not asking you to forgive any of us. I'm asking you to understand that the bond never broke. That's why you can still feel it. That's why I can still feel it, every single day since they told me you were gone, like an ache I could never quite locate the source of. We didn't erase you, Runa. We just made everyone believe we did, because it was the only way anyone could figure out to keep you alive long enough to grow up."

The mark on my collarbone pulsed like a second heartbeat, hot enough now that I had to fight not to press my hand against it in front of him, not to give him that much of a window into what his presence was doing to me.

"That's supposed to make this better?"

"No." His hand lifted, hovering an inch from my jaw, close enough that I could feel the heat radiating off his skin without him touching me at all, close enough that the space between us felt charged in a way that made it hard to breathe. "It's supposed to make you understand that this was never going to stay buried, no matter how careful you were, no matter how far you ran or how many names you buried beneath. Not with three more of us in this building breathing the same air as you every single day. Not with the Council already asking questions about why the new scholarship student smells like a ghost they buried themselves seven years ago and paid a great deal of money to keep buried."

"The Council knows?"

"The Council suspects. There's a difference, and it's the only reason you're not already gone from this school." He said it plainly, without softening it, the way I remembered him being blunt even as a child when the truth mattered more than comfort. "Thane's been watching you since orientation. He reports directly to all four houses. If he confirms what he suspects, this stops being something the four of us can protect you from quietly."

Footsteps sounded at the end of the hall unhurried, deliberate, the kind of footsteps that belonged to someone who wanted to be heard coming, who had no reason to hide their approach.

Kael went still in a way I recognized instantly, even after all this time. Alpha-still. Threat-assessment-still, the same stillness I'd seen in him as a child right before he'd stepped between me and something dangerous without being asked, some instinct in him that hadn't changed no matter how much else had.

"Someone's coming," he murmured, dropping his hand and stepping back like the last few minutes hadn't happened at all, like he hadn't just told me more truth in five minutes than his entire family had managed in seven years. "Someone who isn't supposed to know you're alive. Get inside, Runa. Lock the door. I'll deal with this."

I didn't move at first, some stubborn part of me refusing to be ordered around after everything, but the look on his face genuine fear, the first I'd seen from him since I'd arrived got me moving before I could argue.

"Kael." I stopped him with a hand on his sleeve before he could turn away. "Who is it?"

His expression answered before his words did. "Someone from my father's house. Which means it's already worse than either of us wants it to be."