Chapter three

Someone Came to Kill Me  

Nora

Alarms wailed through the academy grounds.

Outside in the courtyard, hell had broken loose.

Students ran in every direction, dropping practice swords and screaming as black smoke billowed from the shattered iron gates. Instructors barked orders, slamming magical wards across the main entrances.

I scrambled down the lower terrace steps, ducking as a stray bolt of red lightning scorched the wall above my ear.

At first I thought it was a rogue clan raid. Ravenholm was full of wealthy heirs and politicians’ kids—perfect ransom targets. But as I sprinted past the burning training dummies, my blood ran cold.

The intruders weren’t pillaging the armory or grabbing hostages.

Masked figures in dark reinforced leather were cutting through the panic, ignoring the crying students. Their glowing amber and crimson eyes scanned the crowd with terrifying precision.

Hunting.

Then one of them locked his visor straight onto me.

“Target spotted!”

Two more turned in unison.

My lungs seized. They weren’t raiding the school.

They were here for me.

I spun to bolt toward the north hall, but the first attacker closed the distance with supernatural speed. A heavily armored arm caught my collar and slammed me against the stone balustrade. The breath exploded from my ribs.

I kicked his knee. He barely flinched. His gloved fingers clamped over my throat. His eyes widened beneath the visor as he caught the glowing silver crescent burning through my torn collar.

“It really is you,” he breathed, a sick grin curling his mouth. “The last royal. You’ve been hiding like a rat in the mud.”

My whole body froze.

*The last royal.*

For ten years I had believed my family was just another low-tier bloodline slaughtered in a nameless clan dispute. I had kept my head down, taken Roland’s insults, and pretended to be an unranked nobody.

How did he know?

“Who sent you?” I gasped, digging my nails into his wrists.

He never answered.

A monstrous roar tore through the smoke.

A massive blur of dark leather and muscle slammed into my attacker like a freight train. Sebastian hit him hard enough to shatter the stone railing into powder. Before the man could raise his blade, Sebastian had him pinned against the rubble. His eyes burned like twin suns. He drove his fist into the visor, crushing the steel, and tossed the broken body aside.

I stood trembling against the wall, stunned.

This was the same guy who, two hours ago, told me I was a biological mistake. The same guy who swore he would never accept a disgraced half-blood as his mate.

Yet here he was, breathing like a rabid animal, fangs bared, standing over the wreckage like he would burn the world to keep me breathing.

Sebastian spun around, chest heaving under his torn tunic. The gold in his eyes slowly receded.

“Are you insane?” he snarled, closing the space in two strides. “When alarms sound, you run for the bunkers! You don’t wander through an active combat zone!”

“I wasn’t wandering!” I yelled back. “They cut off the corridor! And since when do you care where I run? You made it clear you wanted nothing to do with me!”

“I don’t—” He cut himself off.

His gaze dropped to my right hand.

A jagged edge of masonry had sliced across my palm. A thin line of crimson blood dripped between my fingers.

Sebastian went terrifyingly still.

The air around him turned heavy. His pupils dilated, nostrils flaring as the scent of my blood hit him. A low, dangerous rumble vibrated in his chest.

He clamped his fingers around my wrist.

“Who did this?” he demanded, voice a guttural growl. “Which one of them touched you, Nora?”

“Let go of me!” I yanked my arm free and took two steps back. “You don’t get to do this, Sebastian! You don’t get to publicly reject me, call me dirty blood, then act like you own me the second I bleed! You’re a hypocrite!”

He stood frozen, mouth parted, words dead in his throat.

A cold, elegant presence sliced through the smoke behind us.

“Hold him,” a chilling voice commanded.

Zane Vale walked out from the haze, black coat untouched by ash. Behind him two royal guards dragged a surviving intruder and threw him to his knees.

Zane studied the silver crest etched into the prisoner’s shoulder pauldron.

“House of Nightfall,” he murmured. “You wear the imperial insignia of the vampire court. Who ordered you to breach this academy?”

The wounded man spat dark blood and laughed. His gaze darted past Zane and landed on me.

“You think you can play prince forever, Zane? Your father will be very pleased when we bring her back to the throne.”

The words hung in the air like a poisoned blade.

Sebastian stepped up beside Zane. Zane’s fingers tightened on the hilt of his rapier.

“My father?” Zane’s voice was barely a whisper. “Why does the Vampire King want a half-blood student from Ravenholm?”

“Because she isn’t a half-blood, you blind fool,” the man cackled. “She is—”

A blast of blinding azure flame erupted from the colonnade.

The fire consumed the prisoner in a fraction of a second, scorching him to black cinders.

Frederick Moon Flame—Sebastian’s father—stepped out from the archway, blue flames dying from his fingertips. His face was carved from granite.

“Father,” Sebastian said tightly. “He was about to talk.”

“He was a terrorist who breached our sanctuary,” Frederick replied smoothly. “We do not negotiate with court assassins. The perimeter is secure. Return to your quarters.”

As he turned to leave, his cold gaze flicked over me.

It wasn’t the look of a leader checking on a traumatized student. It was the look of an executioner staring at an unfinished job.

By nightfall the campus had quieted, but my mind was spinning.

Unable to sit in my dorm staring at Ivy’s empty bed, I slipped through the darkened hallways toward the east-wing infirmary for an antiseptic wrap.

The clinic was empty except for a dim amber lamp burning behind the curtain of the private recovery room.

I nudged the fabric aside—

And froze.

Sebastian sat on the edge of an examination table, black tunic discarded on the floor.

Across his broad back was a long, jagged gash, still sluggishly bleeding where a silver-coated blade had carved through his flesh. He was trying and failing to reach around his shoulder to stitch it closed.

He had taken that hit for me.

“You’re an idiot,” I whispered from the doorway.

Sebastian flinched. When he saw me, a flash of vulnerability crossed his face before he reached for his shirt.

“Get out, Nora. Students aren’t allowed in here after curfew.”

“Shut up.” I walked past his protests, grabbed the needle, antiseptic thread, and a clean towel. I stepped up behind him and pressed the cloth firmly against the gash.

He stiffened but didn’t pull away.

“Why didn’t you let the healers look at this?” I asked, cleaning the blood from his skin. “Silver-laced steel doesn’t heal on its own.”

“The healers report directly to my father,” he muttered. “If he saw I took a silver blade for an unranked half-blood, he’d ask questions I don’t want to answer.”

“Why did you do it, then?” I threaded the needle. “You told me you didn’t want this bond. You told me I was nothing to you.”

Sebastian went silent for three long seconds.

“Because it hurts,” he confessed.

I paused. “What?”

He turned his head to look at me over his shoulder. His blue eyes were dark and stripped of every arrogant armor.

“The bond,” he whispered. “Every time you’re in danger… every time your heart races or you bleed… it feels like someone is tearing my ribs open from the inside out. I’m trying to fight it, Nora. I swear I’m trying to be the son my father wants. But my wolf… my wolf is losing its mind.”

My breath hitched.

He turned fully on the table. His bare chest was inches from mine, radiating that heat of crushed pine and winter smoke. His eyes dropped to my lips. His hand rose, fingers hovering just millimeters from my cheek.

The magnetic pull was suffocating. My mark burned. For one reckless second I leaned in, eyelids fluttering shut—

No.

I jerked backward, stumbling away from the table.

“Don’t,” I choked out. “Don’t use your bond to play with me, Sebastian. I’m not a toy for you to break when you’re conflicted.”

I threw the needle onto the metal cart and sprinted out of the infirmary, not stopping until I slammed my dorm door shut and locked the deadbolt.

I slid to the floor, burying my face in my hands. Everything was closing in—Roland, the attack, the Vampire King, Sebastian’s touch.

A faint scratching sound near the floorboards made me lift my head.

Right beneath the bottom crack of my door, a parchment envelope had been pushed through.

No name on the front. Only an unbroken seal of dark black wax.

I broke the wax and pulled out the contents.

An old, slightly faded photograph. My mother and father sat in the center of the frame, smiling under the sun in a lush garden. Taken just weeks before the massacre.

I flipped it over.

Written in black ink across the back were six words:

*One of them survived that night.*

My hands shook. I flipped the picture back and leaned close to the dim candlelight, scanning the background.

Zane Vale.