003

WEAK WOLVES DON'T BELONG

••~Ronan's POV~••

Combat training was the one place I did not have to think.

Everything else at Apex Moon required patience I didn't have — politics, scheming, the careful leadership of who owed what to whom. 

That was Kael's language. Lucien's game. I was good at exactly one thing and everyone in this academy knew it.

I hit things.

I hit them until the problem was solved. It was simple, clean, and Honest in a way most things weren't.

I liked the training arena for the same reason I liked most things — it had rules that made sense. You fight. You win or you lose. Nobody pretends the outcome was something other than what it was.

I settled into my seat on the observation balcony with my arms on the railing and watched the first pairs warm up below. 

Kael was beside me, already bored, scrolling through something on his phone. Lucien had a book. He always had a book. Even here, where the whole point was that nobody needed to read anything.

Below, Professor Aldric was calling pairs.

"Nightshade and Vale."

I looked up.

---

Seraphina Nightshade was already smiling when she stepped into the ring.

That fake smile she had – the pretty one, but with no real feeling. She used it when she wanted something to seem like it happened by chance. 

I knew what it meant because I had seen it so many times.

She had volunteered for this.

The half-blood girl stepped into the arena across from her. Mira Vale. Still in her academy-issue training gear, nothing bespoke, nothing expensive. 

She stood straight though. 

She stood the same way as yesterday, not angry, just not backing down. She looked at Seraphina with a knowing look, like she'd already figured it out.

Smart girl.

But it did not change anything.

Seraphina was a full-blood Alpha heiress three years into specialized combat training. Mira was a half-blood scholarship student who probably hadn't been in a real fight in her life. 

The math wasn't complicated.

Aldric called it.

Seraphina was quick. She transformed a bit, got her claws out, and moved like a natural hunter. She ran across the fighting space super fast and slammed into Mira.

Mira went across the floor hard.

I felt a strange little flutter in my chest. It felt off.

I leaned forward a bit without meaning to.

Down below, Mira got up. She moved slower this time, putting one hand on the floor to help herself. Her lip was cut. She pushed her hair back and got ready to stand again.

Seraphina circled her.

"Relax," Kael said from beside me. "It's a training match."

"I know what it is."

"Then stop looking like you want to go down there."

I didn't answer.

Because I did want to go down there. And I had no idea why, which was the part that was making me angry. I didn't care about the half-blood girl. 

I had shoved her into the snow yesterday without thinking twice about it. She was nobody — a mistake the scholarship committee made that would correct itself inside a week once she figured out she didn't belong here.

Except she wasn't leaving.

And watching Seraphina hit her was making something in me pull tight in a way I didn't recognize.

Seraphina strike again. This time she caught Mira's shoulder and turned her, and Mira hit the ground and didn't get up right away. 

The arena was quiet. 

Students watching with the careful attention of people who knew better than to react without knowing which way the triplets were reacting first.

'Get up,' I thought, which was also not a thought I had planned on having.

She stood up. 

Her back felt like it might hurt, but her face, which I could see, showed no pain. 

She wasn't crying or scared. She just had that same quiet stubbornness she showed in the courtyard, even when she should have been looking away.

Seraphina stepped close. Said something I couldn't hear.

Then she grabbed Mira by the collar and threw her.

Mira hit the arena floor and Seraphina was on her in a second, one knee in her back, pinning her face-down against the ground. 

Mira's hands scratched against the floor, trying to push back, but Seraphina had the weight and the training and the bloodline advantage and it wasn't close.

The arena stayed silent.

"Half-breeds," Seraphina said, loud enough now that it held up, "don't deserve to exist."

I was already on my feet. I didn't remember standing up.

Kael's hand caught my arm.

"Ronan."

"She's had her point," I said. "It's done."

"It's a training match. Aldric will call it."

"Aldric hasn't called it."

"Ronan...."

Something happened below us.

I can't really explain it. There was no noise, and nothing looked different in the room. 

But the air felt different, like a sudden force with no clear cause. It was like the quiet before a storm, when your hair stands on end. 

Seraphina noticed it too. I saw her stop, looking a bit confused.

Mira's hands stopped scrabbling at the floor. For a second she went completely still.

Then she pushed.

She didn't just crawl or fight back. She pushed – with a strength that shouldn't have come from a girl who was only half- blood and had been tossed around twice already. 

Seraphina flew off her like she was super light. 

She even took two big steps back, which is really hard to do when you're in charge and supposed to be on top.

The whole arena froze.

Mira got to her feet.

Slowly. Like every inch of it cost her. Blood at her lip, hair loose, hand pressed to her ribs. 

But she stood up and she looked at Seraphina and her eyes....

Her eyes.

For just a second....half a breath, barely long enough to be sure I'd seen it at all.....they flashed.

Silver.

Not gold. Not the red of an aggressive wolf. 

'Silver.' 

A color I had seen exactly once in my life, in an old text in my father's library, next to a bloodline name I had been too young to understand.

Then it was gone.

Mira blinked. The color was back to normal. She looked almost as startled as everyone else.

The arena was completely silent. Beside me, I heard Lucien close his book.

"Did you feel that?" he said quietly.

Not to the room. To us.

Kael had gone very still. Neither of us answered. 

Because the answer was yes. And everything that came with that answer was something none of us were ready to say out loud yet.

Below, Mira stood in the center of the arena with blood on her face and silver fading from her eyes.

And my wolf just chilled out, and I did not even want to know why.