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Chapter 4

Autor: Hyacinth
I kept my phone in my hand.

Rhett waited for me to pass it over, still saying nothing about the choice he had changed.

The silence between us grew heavier.

Blaire appeared at exactly that moment.

"Rhett, everyone's waiting for you at the bonfire."

She caught his sleeve, then turned to me with a concerned smile.

"Avery, I know how much Asterfall means to you. Please don't give it up because of me."

I said nothing.

She stepped closer, her hand still resting on his arm.

"You've worked so hard. You should go. I'll make sure Rhett isn't alone here."

People nearby had begun to look at us.

"I wish I had your choices," she added softly. "But Northwood is the only place I have left."

She sounded as though she was defending my future. Her hand stayed on Rhett's arm while she offered to take my place beside him.

Rhett frowned.

"You don't have to keep explaining yourself, Blaire."

Then he looked at me.

"She's trying to be considerate, Avery. What more do you want from her?"

"I haven't asked her to do anything."

"But you act like this every time you see her." Rhett sounded as if he had finally found proof that I was at fault. "You were the one who said she had lost her pack and needed help in Northwood. Now that I'm actually helping her, you resent it. Besides, the three of us will be living in Northwood for the next three years. You can't keep targeting her." The three of us.

He said it so naturally. He had already decided that I would change my choice and remain in Northwood with him.

I looked at Blaire's hand resting on his arm. "Do you truly believe this is ordinary kindness?"

Rhett's mouth tightened.

"You're going to be my Luna, Avery. People will need my help. You can't expect me to turn them away every time your feelings get hurt."

I looked at the face I had known for more than a decade and found it suddenly unfamiliar. "You can help her, Rhett. But you don't get to decide what I give up."

I walked around them and left the academy alone. Rhett's furious voice followed almost at once. "If you leave tonight, Avery, don't expect me to come after you again."

I did not look back.

Not long after I reached home, Blaire posted a public update. At the graduation bonfire, more than a dozen students were seated in a circle on the grass, playing Spin the Bottle. When it was Blaire's turn, she knelt beside the fire and sent the bottle spinning with a smile. It circled several times before stopping between Rhett and another boy. Everyone began shouting at once.

"Who is it pointing at?" "Spin again!" Blaire lifted her head and looked directly at Rhett.

"I think it chose Rhett."

Blaire leaned over and kissed him.

Rhett immediately drew back, catching her shoulder to keep her from leaning in again.

His friends laughed and whistled.

"Careful, Rhett. What if Avery sees?"

His jaw tightened. For a moment, he looked straight at the camera.

"Avery knows it's just a game."

The video ended there.

Blaire had written one line beneath it:

[Perhaps the Moon Goddess has already chosen for us.] I stared at the screen, unable to stop the pain spreading through my chest.

He had pushed her away.

But he still believed he could tell me what I was allowed to be hurt by.

At eleven fifty that night, a pebble tapped softly against my window. It was the signal Rhett and I had created when we were children.

I went to the window and saw him standing alone below. He smelled of alcohol, and Blaire's cloying perfume still clung to his jacket. He tilted his head toward me, his expression softer than usual. "Little shadow, come down."

I meant to ignore him, but he stubbornly tossed another pebble. In the end, I went outside.

Relief crossed Rhett's face when he saw me. "Stop making trouble." He reached out to embrace me, but I stepped back. His hand froze in the air. His face darkened briefly before he forced his voice to soften again. "Northwood is a good place too. If you stay, we can still see each other every day. After graduation, we'll complete the mating ceremony as promised, and you'll become Northwood's Luna." I looked at him.

"Is that the future you've chosen for me?"

"Asterfall is too far away." Rhett frowned. "You can study territorial planning here. Blaire's sponsorship is only valid in Northwood. You have options. She doesn't."

The time on my phone changed to eleven fifty-nine.

Rhett finally lost patience and held out his hand. "Give me your phone. There's still time to change it. I'll choose a Northwood academy for you. If you want to see Asterfall, I can take you there on a trip someday. Your wolf couldn't endure three months without seeing me."

I did not give him my phone. I watched the seconds on the screen in silence.

Fifty-eight. Fifty-nine.The academy clock tower struck midnight in the distance.

The final confirmation portal closed. Rhett's expression shifted. "Log in now. I'll see if there's a delayed amendment option."

I opened the locked application page and turned the screen toward him.

[Asterfall Academy: Final Admission Confirmed] [External Territory Travel Permit: Approved] Rhett stared at the two lines as the confidence slowly vanished from his face.

"You didn't change it?"

"I checked it very carefully." I drew the phone back, my voice calm.

"I chose Asterfall, Rhett. I'm not asking you to come with me anymore."
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  • No Longer Following Him   Chapter 10

    Three years later, I graduated first in my class from Asterfall Academy.The warning system I had designed during the training project had been upgraded and formally adopted by six territories. Before graduation, I also received an invitation from the Continental Territorial Planning Commission. I would become its youngest project leader and participate in the reconstruction of the western territories. Nolan and two other classmates agreed to establish an independent design team with me.Our office belonged to no family and answered to no Alpha.After the graduation ceremony, I saw Rhett again outside the auditorium. Three years had stripped away much of his old sharpness. Northwood had ultimately chosen another candidate to inherit the Alpha position. Rhett remained with the border patrol and started again at its lowest rank.Blaire had appealed the academy's ruling several times, but the evidence of stolen credentials and forged documents was irrefutable. No academy would admit her a

  • No Longer Following Him   Chapter 9

    The Inter-Territory Defense Trial began two weeks later.Asterfall, Northwood, and five neighboring territories each sent a team to establish a temporary defense line in an abandoned industrial district. The trial simulated rogue attacks, equipment failure, and large-scale civilian evacuations. I was responsible for Asterfall's overall plan. When I entered the site, I saw a familiar structure on Northwood's defense map.It was the three-layer warning network I had designed two years earlier. The original blueprints had remained in the cloud storage Rhett and I once shared, and I had never published them. Now the design bore another name. Blaire Voss. Blaire had clearly noticed me as well. Wearing the uniform of Northwood's core team, she approached and lowered her voice."The structures only look similar. You never formally submitted your design, so you cannot prove it belongs to you." "The digital underlay preserves the serial number of the original device." I reminded her calmly."On

  • No Longer Following Him   Chapter 8

    On the day Rhett arrived in Asterfall, I was adjusting sensors on the training field. He stood outside the fence, visibly thinner than he had been a month earlier, with deep shadows beneath his eyes.I looked at him once, then returned to checking the data. Rhett waited for a long time before approaching. "Avery.""This is a restricted project area. Visitors are not allowed inside." My voice was calm.He stopped outside the marked line. "I only want to talk.""If this is about the academy application, there is nothing left to discuss.""It isn't about the application." For the first time, the certainty Rhett had always carried was missing from his voice. "I made everything clear to Blaire. She no longer lives in the core residence, and she cannot use my access privileges. After the joint trial, I can apply to transfer to Asterfall.""You don't need to do that.""But you wanted me to come here with you, didn't you?""I did once."Those three words drained the color from his face.Rhett

  • No Longer Following Him   Chapter 7

    Life at Asterfall was busier than I had imagined.During the first week of border training, we were assigned to redesign the warning system on the academy's northern perimeter. The area bordered an unclaimed forest. The old equipment could identify the scent of an intruder but could not distinguish between an ordinary werewolf who had lost the trail, an authorized patrol, and a rogue approaching with violent intent.I proposed combining scent recognition with changes in body temperature and movement patterns, allowing the system to assign different threat levels before an intruder reached the barrier. At first, some members of the group thought the plan was too complicated. Nolan pushed his tablet toward me. "She'll handle the overall design. I can build the operating model. Give us three days."Three days later, the system's false alarm rate had fallen by sixty percent. Professor Lane, who supervised the project, immediately decided to submit our work to the annual Inter-Territory Def

  • No Longer Following Him   Chapter 6

    When my mother saw the returned ring, she finally asked what had happened between us.I hid nothing. I calmly told her how Rhett had secretly changed his application, how he had allowed Blaire to kiss him, and how he had arrived that morning with a late-admission form from an inferior academy and tried to decide my future for me.My mother remained silent for a long time. "Are you certain?""I am."She did not ask me to yield for the sake of the two families. Instead, she crossed the room and embraced me. "Then go to Asterfall. Your life should not begin with becoming someone's Luna."I packed within two days and submitted a request to the Northwood territorial council to cancel our registered courtship arrangement. Rhett and I had never completed a mate mark or entered a formal mating bond. Our future union had been nothing more than an expectation shared for years by our families and ourselves. Canceling the registration was simple.My hand did not shake when I signed my name.On the

  • No Longer Following Him   Chapter 5

    When I went downstairs the next morning, Rhett was already sitting in the living room. He had clearly not slept. His eyes were bloodshot, yet beside him sat my favorite cinnamon roll and a glass of warm milk.My mother did not know what had happened the night before. She assumed Rhett and I had simply fallen into another ordinary argument. "Talk it through calmly," she said, patting my shoulder before leaving us alone.Rhett pushed the breakfast toward me. "Eat something first. Then come to the academy with me.""Why?""To withdraw your acceptance from Asterfall." He said it so naturally, as though it were a matter of no consequence."The final portal is already closed.""I know." Rhett pulled a late-admission form from a folder. "Greyford Institute is still accepting students from within the territory. I asked an instructor to hold a place for you. They have a territorial planning program too. Its ranking is only a little lower than Asterfall's."A little lower was a generous descript

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