Rhea

The oak doors groaned as they shut behind me, locking with a metallic snap. The sound sent a shiver racing down my spine.

Dean Aldara’s office wasn’t cozy like some of the professors’ rooms. It was sharp edges and cold power. Silver wards crawled across the walls in looping runes, their glow steady, predatory. Bookshelves towered high, packed with grimoires bound in leather so old the spines cracked like brittle bones. And behind the desk, carved into the wall itself, floated the academy’s crest: a crescent moon split by four interlocking sigils, each representing a realm.

It pulsed faintly. Alive. Watching.

The dean herself sat perfectly still, tall and commanding. Her silver hair was braided back tight, the ends tipped in faintly glowing runes. Her eyes—gold, too bright to be real—fixed on me without blinking.

“Sit.”

My legs obeyed before my brain caught up.

For a moment, she said nothing. Just studied me like I was a specimen under glass. My wolf shifted uneasily, ears flat, but I forced myself to meet her gaze.

“Tell me why you’re here,” she said at last.

I swallowed. “You don’t already know?”

Aldara’s lips curved. Not a smile. Something sharper. “Of course I know. But I want to hear you admit it.”

My throat felt raw. “The wards. The resonance.”

Her brows lifted. “Yes. The resonance.” She rose slowly, robes brushing the floor, shimmering faintly with layered enchantments. “The wards registered a bond flare this morning. Ten out of ten.”

The words slammed into me. “That’s… impossible.”

“It is.”

She paced behind her desk, every step deliberate, the air bending faintly around her with the weight of her magic. “Silver Ridge’s wards have never logged a ten. Not for Lycandra’s alphas. Not for Valoria’s fae courts. Not even for Drakonis, whose flamebounds were rumored to burn their mates alive in bed.”

My stomach twisted. “So what does it mean?”

Her eyes found mine, sharp as a blade. “It means you are an anomaly. And anomalies, Miss Morgan, are dangerous.”

“I didn’t ask for this,” I said, voice smaller than I wanted it to be.

The room darkened as her wards stirred. Silver lines along the floor lit one by one, forming a lattice around me. The sigils thrummed, sinking into my skin like cold claws.

“What are you doing?”

“Testing.” She flicked her wrist, and a rune burned to life on the desk. A bond sigil, identical to the one Professor Kaelen had forced me to draw yesterday. Except this one pulsed with heat, alive, waiting.

“Touch it.”

Every instinct screamed no. But Aldara’s gaze pinned me in place.

I reached out.

The world erupted.

Silver light burst beneath my fingers, searing hot. My wolf howled inside me, claws raking against my bones. The rune pulsed with my heartbeat—then with something else. A tether. Four tethers.

Threads whipped into me from every direction, thick, unbreakable cords of dominance. Callum’s storm. Jaxon’s fire. Rory’s wild rush. Seth’s electric spark.

They weren’t here. They weren’t anywhere near me. And yet, their wolves crashed through the wards, slamming into my chest like a pack charging through the gates of hell.

The office shook. Shelves rattled. The ceiling cracked with silver lightning as the wards fought to contain it.

Aldara hissed, shielding her eyes. “Enough!” She snapped her hand, severing the rune. The power cut out like a cord pulled from the wall.

I collapsed back into the chair, chest heaving, body trembling.

When I finally looked up, Dean Aldara wasn’t composed anymore. Her face was pale, her breath uneven. For the first time, she looked afraid.

“Never,” she whispered. “Never in this academy’s history has a bond pierced the wards from beyond the grounds.”

I wiped at my damp cheeks with shaking hands. “So… what the hell does that mean?”

Her golden eyes burned into me.

“It means, Miss Morgan, that your bond is not just personal. It is political. Cosmic.” She leaned closer, her voice a low hiss. “You and the Caine brothers have forged something the Moon Goddess never sanctioned. A resonance so strong, it tethered you across stone, steel, and runes designed to cage gods.”

Her words sank into me like ice water.

Finally, she spoke, soft but sharp. “You may be the end of us all. Or the beginning.”

The wards around us dimmed, fading back into silence, but my skin still hummed where those invisible threads had burned through me.

I sat there, staring at my trembling hands, and one truth pulsed louder than the fear pounding in my chest:

This wasn’t just a bond.

It was something else.

Something that might eat me alive.