Rhea

The last day of summer always tasted like disappointment.

Warm air clung to my skin as I shoved the final sweater into my suitcase, the golden light spilling through the window doing nothing to soften the gnawing dread in my chest. Tomorrow meant Silver Ridge Academy—nine months of pretending the place didn’t suck the soul out of me.

On paper, Silver Ridge was Lycandra’s pride. The jewel of the wolf realm. A boarding academy set on the edge of the capital, backed by wards older than memory and endorsed by every High Council across the realms. The school promised to mold the “next generation of leaders” into paragons of power—future Alphas, Betas, and heirs, brushed and polished until they gleamed like trophies.

Reality? Silver Ridge was a war zone disguised in velvet.

The hierarchy wasn’t written anywhere, but you learned it fast. At the top sat the bloodline elites—names carved into Lycandra’s history, dripping with wealth, magic, and centuries of entitlement. Their dominance carried the kind of weight that silenced rooms, and they thrived on cutting down anyone beneath them. Which was everyone else.

The bottom tier? Wolves like me.

The scholarship kids. The outsiders. The ones with no impressive family name, no grand claim to power, no seat reserved at the High Table. “Charity cases,” as the whispers went. And whispers traveled fast at Silver Ridge.

It wasn’t just wolves either. The Great Accord made sure of that. Every realm—Lycandra, Lycan’Dra, Valoria, Drakonis, even the borderlands near the Obsidian Wilds—sent their youth to train, study, and survive under one roof. Supposedly to build unity. In reality, it only made the battlefield sharper.

The fae glided through the halls cloaked in glamours, their dominance prickling like static whenever they were provoked. Dragon-blood heirs carried scales like jewelry across their skin, their eyes glowing faintly when temper flared. Even siren-bloods prowled the grounds, their sweet voices muted by runes woven into the walls.

Everyone here had magic—it was born into your blood. Wolves had shifting. Fae carried enchantments. Drakonics bent flame. Different gifts, same rule: everything could be bound into sigils. The academy itself was covered in them, carved into the stone bones of the castle. The wards thrummed faintly even from a distance, ancient runes keeping out external threats. But nothing inside those gates protected you from each other.

Because at Silver Ridge, danger didn’t come from the outside. It sat beside you at breakfast.

I glanced in the mirror.

Bum-length silver hair. Blue eyes too bright to hide. Curves that made blending in impossible. Not stick-thin. Not dripping in enchanted couture like half the she-wolves who strutted past in skirts tailored to gleam under moonlight. Just me. Rhea Morgan. Seventeen. Eighteen in less than two weeks.

And for all I knew, still not chosen.

The thought clawed like always. The moment I shifted, I’d know. If the Moon Goddess willed it, I’d feel the tether snap into place—soul and spirit fused to another’s. Some wolves felt it instantly. Others never did. And if She didn’t choose me? I wasn’t sure what was left.

My adoptive parents loved me fiercely. They gave me a name, a home, a life worth protecting. But the truth didn’t vanish: someone else had left me. Someone had abandoned me on Ridge Storm borders as a newborn, swaddled in nothing but a silver-stitched blanket with my birthday. They’d chosen not to keep me. Not to love me.

And if even the Goddess turned her back?

The ache in my chest throbbed sharper.

My phone buzzed. Only one person blew up my line this early.

“Hey, Rhee!” Lila Caine’s voice burst through the speaker, bright as always. “Ready for senior year?”

“Oh, thrilled,” I deadpanned. “Can’t wait to get publicly executed on the social ladder again.”

She laughed. “It’s not going to be that bad.”

“Uh-huh. That’s what you said last year before Maeve Blackthorn ‘accidentally’ tripped me into a mud puddle.”

Lila hissed. “Ugh, don’t say her name. Anyway, positives. We’re suite-mates this year. Plus Nora and Bree. It’s going to be epic.”

Nora Sinclair and Bree Hale—my other best friends. Nora looked soft until you underestimated her, then cut sharp as glass. Bree was gentle, dreamy, but carried iron when pressed. Together, they kept me alive at Silver Ridge, balancing Lila’s endless energy with their own brands of loyalty. We weren’t just friends. We were a pack.

The circle stretched further—Bree’s twin, Finn, who lived for chaos; MJ, who was as sarcastic as me but reckless; Evan, another scholarship wolf who had the rare skill of staying invisible. Misfits, royals, orphans. Somehow, it worked.

“Anyway,” Lila said. “You’re coming to dinner tomorrow. No excuses.”

I groaned. “Lila—”

“Nope. It’s my mate dinner. My parents are hosting it for Theo and me, and you’re coming if I have to drag you barefoot.”

Theo Hayes. Her mate. The future Beta. And bonded heart and soul.

“I’ll think about it,” I muttered.

“Good,” she chirped. “And don’t worry about what to wear—I’ll handle it.”

Which meant I should definitely worry.

When we hung up, I stared at the half-packed suitcase and the fragments of summer still scattered across my room.

Silver Ridge Academy waited.

The wards over its gates were already humming faintly in my mind, like they knew me. Like they remembered me.

I wasn’t ready. I might never be ready.

But the Moon Goddess had written my story the day I was abandoned.

The only question left was whether She’d ever let me rewrite it.