Chapter One_The Maid They Called a Student

Neris POV

I arrive at Alpha Academy before sunrise with two suitcases. Only one of them is mine.

Mine is plain and scuffed, the zipper half broken from years of being dragged across floors. Ysolde's is cream leather with gold clasps, and heavy enough that my shoulders are already burning.

"Don't drop that." She doesn't look back. "And hurry up. I'm not being late on my first day."

I shift the weight and keep walking.

The path to the main gates climbs steep and long, lined with black stone that still holds the cold of night. My arms have gone numb above the elbow. I tell myself what I've told myself for twelve years. This is temporary. Four years here, and I'll finally have a life that belongs to me.

Ysolde walks ahead like the road was laid for her personally. Dark hair smooth, uniform crisp, hands empty.

"You're too slow," she calls.

"I'm right behind you."

"Then don't be."

The gates open the moment she reaches them. Two guards incline their heads to her. Their eyes pass over me the way they'd pass over luggage that had learned to walk.

Inside, the academy rises in layers of dark stone and silver banners that hang still even when the wind moves through them. The training grounds stretch out to the left, empty at this hour, the earth still scarred from last year's fights. The towers climb until their tops vanish into gray. Everything here was built to say power. Everything about me says I don't belong in it.

We reach the first-year dormitory as the sky begins to pale. Ysolde stops at the base of the stairs and turns.

"Your room's on the lowest floor. Mine's at the top. Take everything up, unpack my things first, then do whatever you want with yours." She studies my face a moment. "Don't touch anything that isn't yours. I mean it."

"I know."

"Good." Her smile arrives on cue, the soft one she wears when adults are watching. "We're family, after all."

I carry both suitcases up.

By the third floor my shoulders are shaking. By the fifth I set them down and lean into the wall until my vision clears. Ysolde is long gone, already laughing somewhere above me with two girls who materialized the second she stepped through the door.

I keep climbing.

My room is exactly what I expected. Small, cold, one narrow window, a bed that looks like nobody who mattered has ever slept in it. I set my suitcase down and leave it closed.

Then I carry Ysolde's things up to her suite. Her room is three times the size of mine, with a balcony, a private bath, and a closet already half full of clothes shipped ahead of us. I unpack the way I've unpacked for her a hundred times. Dresses hung by color. Training gear folded. Jewelry boxes stacked. The little glass bottles of scent lined up on the dresser, tallest to smallest, the way she likes.

When I finish, I stand in the middle of the room a moment longer than I should.

I was six when the rogues came. I still remember the smell of it, blood and wet fur and smoke, and the sound my mother made when she shoved me under the floorboards and told me not to breathe.

Alpha Gideon found me two days later. People still talk about how kind he was. How generous. An orphan with no pack, no bloodline, no future, and he gave her his name.

Nobody talks about the part where I became the girl who cooked the meals, scrubbed the floors, carried the bags, and kept her mouth shut.

I close her door behind me and go back down.

Registration has already started in the main hall. Long tables, stacks of forms, instructors in dark coats watching from the walls. Students cluster into groups that already look permanent. I take the end of the line and keep my eyes down.

It doesn't help.

A boy two places ahead turns and looks me over. "You're the Virek girl. The other one."

I don't answer.

Someone behind him laughs into his hand. "The maid."

"The fake sister."

"Wolfless, I heard."

The whisper moves down the line faster than I can walk. By the time I reach the table, the girl taking names already knows exactly who I am. She reads my form, glances at my face, then looks past me for someone worth her attention.

"Neris Adebayo. Adopted. No recorded awakening. Combat ranking, untested." She stamps the page and slides a thin packet across the table. "Bottom floor. Training starts tomorrow at dawn. Try not to hold the others back."

"Thank you."

She's already looking at the next student.

Behind me, someone says, not quietly, "She shouldn't even be here."

I leave before anyone can agree with him.

The courtyard is filling. The air smells like cold stone and iron, cut through with the low hum of dominance that hangs around Alphas the way heat hangs over summer ground. I find a quiet stretch of wall and open the packet, mostly so my hands have somewhere to be.

That's when it happens again. My hearing.

It used to be ordinary, nothing worth mentioning. For the last two months it's been stretching, sharpening, reaching further than it should. Right now I can hear a conversation on the far side of the courtyard as clearly as if the speakers were standing at my shoulder.

"She's basically a servant. That's the whole story."

"Ysolde brought her to carry the bags. She's not here to train."

"Wolfless at eighteen. God."

I close my eyes and push the sound back down. It doesn't go far. The voices keep arriving, too clean, too close, and underneath my ribs something stirs and turns over. Restless. Curious. Far too strong for a wolf that only woke a few months ago.

I don't understand it. I'm not telling anyone.

A shadow falls across the page in my hands.

Ysolde is standing there with two girls I don't know, both built for this place. Perfect posture, perfect uniforms, small perfect smiles that stop well short of their eyes.

"There you are." Ysolde folds her arms. "Go back to the dorm and get the black case out of my closet. Silver clasp. Bring it to the eastern field, and don't take an hour about it."

I stand. "Now?"

"Yes, now. Don't make that face. You're here to help me, remember?"

One of the girls laughs. "So she is good for something."

"Family looks after family," Ysolde says.

I walk away before she can find a way to make that funnier.

The case is heavier than it looks. I carry it back across the courtyard while students move around me without seeing me, and a few make sure their shoulders find mine on the way past. One girl catches the corner of the case with her boot hard enough that I have to stop and steady my grip.

"Watch it, maid."

I don't answer.

By the time I reach the eastern field, Ysolde has an audience. She takes the case without a word and opens it like I've delivered something she couldn't have carried herself.

"You can go."

I turn.

A boy at the edge of the group calls after me. "Hey. Is it true you've never shifted? Not once?"

I keep walking.

"She's probably just weak," someone says. "Some people never do."

The laughter follows me across the grass.

I make it into the lower dorm hallway before my hands start shaking. I press them flat to the wall and breathe until it stops. My wolf pushes up against the inside of my ribs, stronger than yesterday. Stronger than it has any right to be.

I tell it what I always tell it. Not yet. Not here. Not where they can see.

Then the academy bell rings.

One deep note, rolling out across the whole campus. Conversations cut off mid-word. Students stop where they stand. Even the instructors along the wall go still.

The crowd begins to part.

Someone near me breathes, "The Apex Three."

I look up. Just for a second.

Three figures come through the main gates like the morning has been holding itself back for them.

The first is tall and dark-haired, his face giving nothing away. Every movement measured, like a man who has never once wondered whether he belongs at the center of a room.

The second is broader, gold-eyed, smiling like the day already belongs to him and he's deciding how much of it to break.

The third stays half a step behind the other two. Quiet. Elegant. Eyes that catalogue everything they pass.

Cassian Rowe. Evren Halden. Lucien Orsini.

Everyone already knows the names.

Backs straighten. Voices drop to nothing. A few students actually step back, as though standing too close is a risk they haven't calculated yet.

I should look at the ground. I don't.

The quiet one, the one with the careful eyes, turns his head as he passes. For half a breath his gaze finds mine across the courtyard.

Not disgust. Not the usual sliding dismissal.

Curiosity. Sharp, assessing, entirely unexpected.

My breath catches behind my teeth. The moment holds a beat too long.

Then he faces forward, and the three of them move on toward the main hall without breaking stride.

The whispers start up again around me, louder now, greedy with envy and something close to fear.

I stay against the wall with my pulse loud in my ears and the weight of that one look still sitting under my skin.

Because for one impossible heartbeat, I could swear the future Alpha King smiled at me.