CHAPTER 3

My father is home when I get back. I know before I open the door — his car is in the driveway and the kitchen light is on, which means he is eating early and wants the house quiet.

I come in through the side door.

"Zara."

I stop. He is standing at the counter, still in his Beta uniform, a folder open in front of him. He does not look up.

"Yes, sir."

"I heard there was a demonstration in intermediate training today." His voice is even. He has the ability to deliver bad news and good news in exactly the same tone, which means you never know which one you are getting until you are already inside it.

"Yes."

"And you participated."

"Commander Holt asked me to."

A pause. He turns a page in the folder. "In front of the Alpha King's evaluator."

My stomach tightens. "Yes."

He finally looks up. My father has a face built for authority — square jaw, dark eyes, grey beginning to thread through his close-cut hair. He looks like a man who has never been uncertain about anything. I used to think that was strength. Now I think it is a wall he built so high he forgot there was anything on the other side.

"I don't want you drawing attention," he says. "That is not your role. Your brother represents this family in pack affairs."

"Bren didn't volunteer for the demonstration," I say. I keep my voice level. "I was asked."

"Then you should have declined."

I look at him. He looks at me. And something in me — the part that has spent seventeen years being quiet, being small, being the girl who steps aside — that part tightens like a fist.

"I'll keep that in mind," I say.

I go upstairs before either of us says anything we won't be able to come back from.

Mira finds me at lunch the next day.

This surprises me. I eat in the east courtyard, alone, against the wall, behind the utility shed that blocks the sightline from the main cafeteria. Nobody comes here because there is nothing here — no shade in summer, no coverage from wind, one broken bench. I found it in eighth grade and it has been mine ever since.

She rounds the corner with two trays and sits down on the broken bench like she has been sitting here for years.

"How did you find this place?" I ask.

"I followed you yesterday and you didn't notice," she says, handing me a tray. "Which is unusual because you notice everything."

I stare at the tray. "I don't need—"

"I got extra. Just eat it." She opens her water bottle. "So. Is every day here like yesterday, or was that a special occasion?"

I think about how to answer that. "That was fairly standard."

"The girl in the heels."

"Nia Strand."

Mira nods like she is filing it away. "How long has she been doing that?"

"Since fifth grade."

"Five years." Mira chews, thinking. "And she's never faced any consequences."

"Her father is on the pack council."

"Ah." She doesn't say anything else about that. She doesn't perform shock or outrage. She just nods, slowly, and keeps eating.

I don't know why that makes me trust her more than almost anything else she could have said.

"The evaluator was watching you," she says after a minute.

"He was watching the demonstration."

"He was watching you specifically." She glances at me sideways. "I was watching him while you were watching the drill. His attention was not distributed evenly."

"He's here to assess warriors. It's his job."

"Sure." She smiles at her food. "Very professional."

"Mira."

"I'm just saying."

"Don't."

She laughs — a real laugh, nothing performed about it — and I feel something shift very slightly in my chest. Not much. Just enough to notice.

Two things happen on Thursday.

The first: Kade Voss formally joins the intermediate training sessions as an additional instructor. Commander Holt announces it at the start of the session with no further explanation, and nobody questions it because nobody questions a man who carries himself like Kade Voss.

He runs the session hard. Harder than Holt usually does. No cruelty in it — just a standard that is several notches above what the group is used to. Two people quit midway through. The future ranked boys — Bren, Theo, and their group — keep pace but only barely. I can see it costing them.

I sit in the back corner and try to be furniture.

It doesn't work. It has never worked less.

"East wall," Kade says, halfway through the session, without looking up from his clipboard. "Come in."

I look left and right. There is no one else at the east wall.

I come in.

He pairs me with a senior patrol warrior named Felix for a live drill — a defensive scenario that involves three attackers at variable timing. It is a complex sequence. Felix knows it and runs it well. I run it better, which I immediately try to make look like luck.

I am not sure Kade buys it.

He doesn't say anything. He just writes something on his clipboard and moves on.

The second thing that happens on Thursday: I come back to my locker after third period and find my Combat Theory notes gone. Not moved — gone. Every page. Three weeks of notes.

I stand there and breathe for a moment.

I have digital backups. This is not catastrophic. But it is deliberate, and it is a message, and the message is: I see you getting visible. Stop.

I take out my phone and text the one person I have a number for now.

My notes are gone. Do you have yours from the last three weeks?

Mira responds in under a minute: Yes. Come to the east courtyard after school. We'll copy them together. Also: it was definitely Nia.

I put my phone away.

I don't know what is stranger — that I have someone to text, or that texting her made the tightness in my chest ease, even just a small amount.

Raya surfaces that night when I run the patrol trail.

She does not take over — she slides in beside my thoughts the way she does when something is working in her, something she is processing.

He assigned himself to intermediate, she says.

To assess the group, I say.

To assess you. There's a difference.

It doesn't matter.

She is quiet for a moment. Then: He asked Holt about you. Last night. After training. A pause. Holt told me. He thought you should know.

I run another hundred meters before I answer.

What did he ask?

He asked how long you've been training. Holt said since you were able to walk. Then he asked why you stand at the east wall. Another pause. Holt said that was a question for you.

I push faster into the trail. The trees press in on both sides, dark and familiar. This is where I am clearest — no hallways, no calculation, no performance.

Raya.

Yes.

Don't get interested in things we can't afford to be interested in.

She doesn't answer for a long time. Long enough that I think she has dropped it.

Then, right at the edge of my hearing, she says: You already are.

I am fifty meters from the gate when I hear a second pair of footsteps on the trail behind me.

I stop. Turn.

Kade Voss walks out of the tree line like the dark belongs to him. He has training clothes on — plain grey, no rank markings. Off duty, maybe. Or something else.

We stand there on the trail looking at each other.

"Evening run?" I ask.

"Something like that." His voice is the same as it always is. Even. Controlled. "You run this trail every night."

"You've been watching my schedule."

"It's my job to know the routine of anyone I'm evaluating."

"And after that?" I ask. "Is it still your job then?"

Something shifts in his face — so small I would have missed it a year ago, before Raya taught me to read the things people work hard not to show.

He doesn't answer.

I turn back to the gate.

"Cole," he says.

I stop.

"Whatever you're hiding—" His voice is careful. Deliberate. Like someone choosing each word from a selection of many. "You should consider whether hiding it is still working."

I don't turn around. My hands are steady. My voice is steady.

"Good night, Commander Voss."

I walk through the gate.

Raya is absolutely silent inside me. Not gone — present. Listening. The way she gets when something is about to change and she wants to make sure she catches the exact moment it starts.

I latch the gate behind me.

Inside my chest, something that has been still for a very long time begins, barely, quietly — to move.