Vordrak

NOVA

Vordrak Academy sat in the northern highlands like it had grown there instead of being built. Stone walls, dark and massive, cut into the hillside at an angle that meant the sun only hit the courtyard directly for about two hours a day. Everything else lived in the shade.

Nova walked through the front gates with her bag on one shoulder, her heartbeat at a controlled sixty, and her face doing the thing she'd practised in every reflective surface since leaving home: relaxed, mild, and belonging.

You're Ash Darvin. Freshman intake, a packless applicant, placed by the regional merit exam. You've been here a hundred times in your head. Act like it.

The courtyard was full. New arrivals moved in clusters, all male, all carrying that particular easy aggression of young wolves who'd grown up being told they were the best thing in any room they walked into. Their scents hit her like a wall. Pine and musk and iron and half a dozen pack markers she filed automatically before reminding herself she wasn't here to map territory.

She located the registration table along the far wall and started toward it.

She was ten steps in when she heard it.

A grunt. The flat, specific sound of a body thudding on a stone.

She turned.

A boy was down on one knee near the eastern wall, one palm braced against the ground, the other arm pulled in tight against his ribs. Young. Lean. Breathing carefully through his teeth in the way of someone trying hard not to show how much it hurt.

Nova crossed to him without thinking about it.

She crouched and checked his arm. "Hey. You okay? What happened?"

He looked up at her. Opened his mouth.

But the air around them changed.

Not a sound. Not a scent. Just a shift in pressure, the way a room feels different when something that outweighs everything else in it walks through the door. The back of her neck went tight. Her wolf stirred once, low and alert, then went very still in the way it only did when it had clocked something it didn't know how to read.

Nova straightened slowly and turned.

He stood six feet away with his back against the wall. Bare from the waist up, a training jacket hanging off one hand, dark pants low on his hips. Not especially tall. Just built with a kind of density that made the air around him feel closer. Like he bent the space near him slightly, and everything in range had to adjust.

His face was the problem.

It wasn't the type of face you would classify as handsome in any soft or approachable way. Strong jaw, sharp nose, a mouth that sat in a natural line that wasn't quite a frown but wasn't anything friendlier. Dark eyes that were currently moving over her face with the focused, unhurried attention of someone who'd never once had to rush an assessment.

He was, Nova registered with deep personal irritation, extraordinarily attractive.

She locked that observation in a box and buried it immediately.

"That was me," he said. Flat. Completely unbothered. Like he'd answered a question about the weather.

Nova looked at the boy on the ground. Looked back at him.

"Why?"

"Because he stepped into my space." The corner of his mouth pulled slightly. "So I stepped back."

She could feel the other students in the courtyard pulling attention toward them. The small gravitational shift of a crowd that senses something worth watching.

"That's not stepping back," Nova said. "That's just hitting someone."

His eyes moved to her face and sharpened. Not anger. Curiosity. Like she'd done something unexpected and he was deciding what to do with it.

He pushed off the wall and took one slow step toward her.

"You're new, I guess" he said.

"Everyone here is new."

"You're new, and you're talking to me like that. You have guts, I must say." He tilted his head slightly and moved closer to her, trying to dominate the space between them. Something moved through his expression. A small frown. His nostrils moved, barely perceptible. "Your scent is off."

Nova's stomach went cold.

Her face stayed completely still.

"Three days of travel," she said. "I probably smell like the road."

He stared at her.

She stared back.

Three full seconds. Neither of them moved.

Then he smiled. It was a slow thing, that smile, and it didn't reach anywhere near his eyes.

"Caden Voss," he said. "Remember it."

He walked away.

Nova let out one breath. Turned back to the boy on the ground and helped him up without saying anything because she was using her mouth to control her heartbeat.

Her hands were steady.

The rest of her was doing something significantly less steady, and she was going to need it to stop immediately.