CHAPTER 4

The bruise on my forearm is purple and deep and runs from my wrist to the inside of my elbow. Nia didn't do this one. She has graduated past doing things herself. This was Jade, a hallway corner, and a very specific angle that left no visual evidence except to me.

I don't report it. There is no point.

What I do is put on a long-sleeved base layer under my training shirt, cover it with my standard hoodie, and go to five a.m. training like every other morning.

I am at the east wall when Mira arrives beside me. She has figured out my arrival routine and times hers to match, which nobody else has ever done. She doesn't announce herself. She just shows up.

"How's the arm?" she asks quietly.

I look at her. "How do you know about the arm?"

"I saw Jade's positioning in the B-corridor yesterday and when you came out of the corner you were favouring your left side." She doesn't say it like an accusation. Just information. "I wasn't fast enough to get there before it happened. Next time I will be."

I open my mouth.

She looks at me calmly. "Don't tell me you don't need backup. Needing backup isn't weakness. It's just math — two people cover more ground than one."

I close my mouth.

"Thank you," I say. Which is two words I haven't said to someone my own age in a very long time and they feel strange in my mouth, like a language I studied but have not spoken aloud.

Mira nods. "Also," she adds, "Kade Voss has altered the training schedule. He filed a request with Holt to add a fourth weekly session for ranked blood members. Your brother already confirmed attendance."

I process this. "When?"

"Starting today."

"He said nothing to me."

"The list was posted on the board near the gate this morning." She pauses. "Your name is on it. Bren's name is on it. The full future-ranked group. Also mine, for some reason, which I think is because Holt put me forward."

I think of last night on the patrol trail. Whatever you're hiding — consider whether hiding it is still working.

"He's building a picture," I say.

"Of everyone's ability?"

"Of what this pack is actually producing versus what it claims to produce." I think for a moment. "The Alpha King sent him here for a reason. It's not just routine evaluation. He's looking for something."

Mira is quiet for a moment. Then: "Or someone."

I don't answer.

The fourth session runs Friday evening. Six students total: Bren, Theo, Sam, another future ranked boy named Colt, Mira, and me.

I notice immediately that Nia is not here. She has never been to any advanced session in her life but I expected her to appear today, given that Kade is running it. Either she couldn't get herself onto the list or she decided the work wasn't worth the proximity.

I decide to believe the second option. It makes her seem more human.

Kade runs the session without explanation or warmup speech. He starts with combat fundamentals at full speed, one-on-one pairings, rotating every four minutes. He pairs himself against each person for at least one rotation.

When he gets to me, I feel the shift in the group energy. Everyone slows their own work slightly to watch. I feel it like pressure from all sides — Bren's particular stillness, Theo's carefully neutral expression, Mira's deliberate focus on her own drill so she doesn't make me feel watched.

Kade faces me. Combat distance. He has about seven inches on me and is built in a way that makes the size difference feel significant.

It isn't. I know how to work a size difference. Raya knows better than I do.

"Standard form," he says. "Come at me."

I do.

I am controlled and correct and I execute cleanly and I dial back about forty percent of what I am actually capable of.

He blocks it. Then he says, very quietly, only for me: "Again. Don't manage it this time."

I look at him.

He looks back. No challenge in it. No baiting. Just a straight, even request.

I go again.

Sixty percent this time. I take his first block and redirect off it and get inside his guard for half a second before he recovers. It is a very small half second. He covers it quickly and well.

But his eyes change. Just slightly.

"Good," he says. Out loud, to the group, like that was the end of the demonstration.

He moves on to Mira. I go back to my assigned drill. My hands are completely steady. My heartbeat is not.

After the session, Bren falls into step beside me on the way to the gate.

This does not happen. It has not happened in years. I keep walking and wait.

"Dad knows you've been coming to the extra sessions," he says.

"I'm ranked blood. I'm allowed."

"That's not the point and you know it." He glances sideways at me. He has our father's eyes — dark, direct — but the weight behind them is different. Bren carries something he hasn't named yet. I have seen it growing in him for a while. "He doesn't like you being visible."

"Then he can tell me himself."

Bren is quiet for a few steps. "He's going to say something to Holt. To have you moved back to basic training."

Something cold drops through my chest. I keep my expression exactly level.

"He can try," I say.

Bren stops walking. I keep going.

"Zara." His voice behind me — lower now, stripped of the performed indifference he usually carries. "I'm not telling you this to threaten you. I'm telling you because—" He stops. Starts again. "Just be careful. The evaluator being here changes things. Dad doesn't like things he can't predict."

I stop. I don't turn around.

"Tell me something, Bren." My voice is even. "In all the years that Nia Strand has been making my life inside this pack something I survive instead of live — did you ever once say a word to her? To Dad? To anyone?"

Silence.

"Be careful," he says finally. Quiet. Tired.

"I've been careful my whole life," I say. "It didn't protect me from anything."

I walk through the gate.

That night, I find a folded note in my bag.

I don't recognize the handwriting. Small, clean, slightly tilted — not a school person's handwriting. Deliberate.

The east gate. 7am. Bring your running shoes.

No name.

I don't need one.

I put the note in my pocket and sit on my bed for a long time, listening to the house settle around me. My father's door closes at ten. Bren's light goes out at ten-thirty.

Raya is awake. Present and quiet the way she gets when she is paying attention to something her instincts have flagged.

He knows, she says. About us, I think. Or close to it.

How?

The way you move. The reflex patterns. The speed. A pause. And Holt. Holt would have said something if he thought it mattered.

Holt wouldn't betray that.

No. But he might confirm it if asked by the right person with the right clearance.

I look at the ceiling. Somewhere below in the house, the refrigerator hums.

If he knows, I say carefully, and he tells my father—

He won't, Raya says. And her certainty is not blind — it has that quality she gets when she is reading something with her whole body, not just her thoughts. He's not a man who reports things to fathers. He reports to the Alpha King.

That's not better.

It might be, she says. It might be exactly what we've been waiting for.

I lie in the dark for a long time after that. The note in my pocket feels very small and very significant at the same time.

I set my alarm for six-thirty.

And I think about what Kade Voss's face looked like when I stopped managing it — when I let sixty percent of what I actually am show through — and how he said good like it was the answer to a question he'd been asking since before he arrived.

What exactly are you sending me into? I ask Raya.

She doesn't answer.

Which means she doesn't know either. And that is the most honest thing she has said to me in years.