LOGINGIDEON'S POV Seraphine’s call with her father had run forty-seven minutes. I knew because she walked back into the suite looking like someone who’d just finished a heavyweight round and was still trying to catch her breath without showing it. She dropped into the chair, flipped open her notebook to a blank page, and said, “He listened. All of it. Every single piece.” “And?” Tanya asked right away. “He’s filing a formal inquiry with the High Council about the Blackwood Foundation’s admin conduct at Moonstone. Specifically, the way they slipped a non-enrolled person into a student dorm room using a Foundation override. He’s calling it misuse of institutional access to pack-affiliated facilities.” Seraphine’s voice stayed even, but I could hear the weight behind it. I crossed my arms. “On what standing?” “The Southern Crescent’s territorial agreement with Moonstone gives him room to flag integrity issues that affect students in the territory. Including me, since I’m still enr
TANYA'S POV I stared at the text for way too long. Does she know yet? Not Ginna’s number. Not Victoria’s Foundation line either. Just some random unknown. No extra words, no follow-up, nothing. It just sat there on my screen like it had all the time in the world, waiting for me to figure out what the hell it was even asking. Know what. Know yet. The way it was phrased made it feel personal. Like whoever sent it thought I was missing one specific piece of information, and they were watching close enough to guess exactly what I didn’t know. I took a screenshot and fired it off to Gideon without saying anything. His reply came back in like twenty seconds: Don’t reply. I’m tracing the number. I shoved the phone in my bag and headed for the Research Wing anyway. I didn’t have a session scheduled. Thursday had been the last regular one before the lab rotation break. But Elias had texted me at eight asking if I could spare twenty minutes to go over the corrected third-set data
GIDEON'S POV The Pack Investigations filing hit the system at 6:47 AM. I knew the exact time because Liam texted me the bulletin notice with a message that just said Gid. Someone went above you. Check the timestamp. I pulled the log immediately. 6:47. Way before Tanya reported the empty room. Way before any of us had even thought about making an official move this morning. Which meant this didn’t come from our group. Someone else had done it. Someone with full access to the formal complaint system and enough pull to bump a rogue attack case straight from campus security to full investigation level overnight. The filing was clean. Too clean. It listed the three attack sites, the exact security footage timestamps, and Ginna’s real name—the one we only got from the coven archives. It asked for a territory-wide alert and a formal probe. Everything an investigator would need to hit the ground running. And if Pack Investigations opened a real case, the first thing they’d do is pull
TANYA'S POV Ginna's side of the room was just... gone. Like someone had come in with a vacuum and sucked out every bit of her. I stood there in the doorway for a minute, staring at the bed made up so tight it looked like nobody had ever slept in it. The pillow sat dead center. The blanket was flat and perfect. Even the little water ring on the nightstand had been wiped away. She hadn't rushed out in a panic or anything. This was careful. This was planned. Like she knew exactly what she was doing and didn't want to leave a single crumb behind for anyone to pick up. I went straight to the housing office at nine and told them my roommate had cleared out overnight with no note, nothing. Mr. Cho, this tired beta guy who's probably heard every dorm horror story twice over, just sighed and started typing. Then he frowned at his screen. "Huh. That's weird." "What?" "Your roommate's whole record. It's deleted. Not just marked as moved out—the entire file's gone. There's this blank
GIDEON'S POV Seraphine and Max left around 2:30. It wasn’t planned or anything. Seraphine said she needed a couple of hours in the archive to get the ward stuff ready for the library tonight, and Max mumbled something about heading to the east quad to practice directing the light where nobody would freak out if something weird glowed for a second. Both of those things were true. But they also both knew the room had been thick with something obvious for the last two hours, and they were giving us the space to deal with it. The door clicked shut. The suite went really quiet. Tanya was still sitting at the desk, staring at the response we’d drafted to Ginna’s message. Four careful lines offering the meeting at nine in the east library reading room, and a rough idea of what we were willing to put on the table. She’d read it three times already. Her pen was in her hand, but she hadn’t changed a single word in the last ten minutes. I stayed by the window for a second longer, then
TANYA'S POV We called the meeting for noon. All four of us crammed into Gideon’s suite. Seraphine already had her notebook cracked open like it was part of her body. Max was fidgeting with that restless kind of energy he gets when he’s been poking at something all morning and thinks he has answers worth sharing. Gideon stood by the window in the exact stance he always falls into when things get serious. I sat at the desk and set my phone right in the middle of the table so Ginna’s message was staring up at everyone. I want to talk. Tonight. For a second, nobody said anything. Then Seraphine broke the quiet. “She’s reaching out before the window closes. That matters.” “It’s a tactic,” Max said. Not mean about it. Just stating what he saw. “She wants to look like she’s offering something first so she can negotiate from higher ground before she tries the dissolution working. It’s a hedge.” “Maybe,” I said. “Or it’s what I was thinking this morning. She wants to be heard befor
TANYA’S POVThe silence of the dorm room was heavier than any textbook I’d ever lugged across campus. I had spent the last four hours staring at the cracks in the ceiling, trying to force my brain to shut down, but sleep was a ghost I couldn't catch. Every time I closed my eyes, the darkness didn't
Tanya’s POVSunlight slipped through the gaps in my old curtains, but that wasn’t what pulled me awake. I opened my eyes and stared straight up at the ceiling. There they were, the glow-in-the-dark stars and planets I stuck up when I was eight. The edges were curling now, the glow barely there any
GIDEON’S POVThe heavy oak doors of the lecture hall creaked as I shoved them open, the sound echoing through the tiered room. Every head snapped in my direction. The air was thick with the scent of old paper, floor wax, and the nervous sweat of fifty different wolves. I didn't slow down. I didn't
TANYA’S POVThe mid-term break was supposed to be a relief. It was the first time since the semester began that the campus would actually be quiet, a reprieve from the whispers, the glares, and the suffocating pressure of being the "Omega" everyone was afraid of. The hallways were already buzzing w







