Chapter 5

I left my father's estate like a ghost. The security was tight. Guards at every gate, patrol wolves running the perimeter in overlapping shifts, cameras mounted on the outer walls. But I had grown up inside those walls. I knew every blind spot, every gap in the rotation, every shadow wide enough to hide in if you pressed yourself flat and held your breath.

Seraphina guided me through the dark, her senses sharper than mine, steering me away from the patrols before I could even smell them. We moved low and fast through the east garden, past the locked training yard, toward the massive ivy covered stone wall that surrounded the entire property. I paused near the servants' quarters when voices drifted out of an open window. My brothers. Tony and Marco, sitting inside with drinks in their hands, laughing about something.

Three days," Tony was saying. "Three days and she's Falcone's problem. Not ours anymore."

Marco snorted. "Can you imagine? Gia, married to that psychopath? She'll come crawling home within a week begging Dad to take her back."

"Let her beg," Tony laughed. "Dad made the right call. She's useful exactly once, and that's as a bargaining chip. After that, who cares?"

My nails bit into my palms hard enough to draw blood. Seraphina growled low and furious inside me.

Keep moving, she urged. Their words are nothing. They are nothing. And after tonight, we will never hear them again.

She was right. I swallowed the anger like broken glass and climbed. The wall was fifteen feet of old stone covered in thick ivy, and I scaled it in under a minute. My fingers found the familiar grooves, the same ones I had used a hundred times as a child when I used to sneak out at night to train in the forest because my father refused to let me use the family training grounds alongside my brothers. My arms burned and my shoulder screamed from the bruise Tony's claw had left but I did not stop.

When I dropped down the other side, my feet hit soft earth and the cool night air hit my face and for the first time in my life, I was outside the Moretti estate with no intention of ever going back.

I ran.

The night was cold and clean and I let it fill my lungs as I pushed through the tree line and followed the old service road north. Enzo had told me exactly where to meet him, a pull off near mile marker forty seven where the road curved away from the highway and nobody ever stopped..It took me two hours at full sprint. When I finally saw the beat up grey pickup truck sitting on the gravel shoulder with its headlights off, my legs nearly gave out from relief.

Enzo leaned out the driver's window. "You're late."

"I'm alive," I corrected him, pulling open the passenger door and climbing in. "That's what matters."

"Fair point." He turned the key and the engine groaned to life. "No airports. Your father will have people watching every terminal within three hundred miles by morning. We drive the whole way."

"How far is Gravemont?"

"About fifteen hours by road. Through the night and most of tomorrow.

Fifteen hours. I leaned my head against the cold window and let out a breath I felt like I had been holding for days. The pendant hummed gently against my chest.

"Gia."

"What?"

"We need to start now. The transformation. You cannot walk up to those gates tomorrow looking anything like yourself."

He was right. I closed my eyes and reached for Seraphina.

I am ready, she told me. Hold still. This will feel strange.

Strange was an understatement. I felt her power move through me like warm water flowing under my skin, rearranging things that should not move. My cheekbones shifted slightly. My jawline squared. The softness around my mouth tightened into something leaner and more angular. My brow bone thickened just a fraction. Small changes, but together they made a different face. A male face.

I opened my eyes and looked in the rearview mirror. The person staring back shared my blood but not my name. Sharper. Harder. Like a male cousin with the same family nose and the same dark eyes but none of the softness.

"Matteo," Enzo murmured, glancing over. "That's actually terrifying how good that is."

"Good terrifying or bad terrifying?"

"Both." He reached into the back seat and pulled out a pair of scissors. "Now your hair."

I touched the long dark waves that fell past my shoulders. My mother's hair, everyone always told me. The same thick black curls she had worn until the day she died.

"It will grow back," Enzo offered gently.

I took the scissors from him and started cutting. Long pieces of dark hair fell into my lap, onto the seat, across the dashboard. Enzo helped with the back, evening it out into the short, messy cut Matteo used to wear. Every strand that fell felt like I was shedding a layer of the girl my father had tried to sell. When it was done, I barely recognized the person in the mirror.

"Voice," Enzo reminded me.

I dropped my pitch the way we had practiced all night. "How's this?"

"Better. Stay right there. Do not let it slip, not even once. Not when you're tired, not when you're angry, not when someone surprises you. At Gravemont, a single crack in your cover will get you killed. I am not being dramatic.

We drove through the rest of the night and into the pale grey morning. Enzo drilled me on everything. Handshakes, posture, the way men fold their arms high and loose across their chest instead of tucking them tight. He quizzed me on Matteo's background, his family connections, his bloodline, his prep school history. I memorized it all.

By the time the truck pulled off the highway and onto a narrow dirt road surrounded by thick forest, I was somebody else entirely.

"From here we walk," Enzo announced, killing the engine. "About thirty minutes through the woods."

The terrain was rough and steep and the trees grew so dense above us that barely any light filtered through. The air smelled like pine and old stone and something metallic underneath it all that I could not place. Then the trees broke open and I saw it.

Gravemont Academy.

Black stone walls rose out of the earth like the bones of something ancient and angry. Iron gates, twenty feet tall at least, stood open between two guard towers carved with wolf skulls and old Latin words I could not read from this distance. Beyond the gates, the campus stretched out in hard lines and dark buildings, and the energy rolling off the place was so thick and aggressive I could taste it on my tongue like copper.

Young alpha males moved across the grounds in tight packs, all tension and teeth. Everyone of them radiated the kind of raw dominance that could crush a weaker wolf just by proximity. No laughter. No casual conversation. Just eyes everywhere, watching and measuring.

"Welcome to my world," Enzo muttered beside me.

He walked me to a stone building near the center of campus and stopped at a heavy wooden door scored with deep, old claw marks that looked like they had been there for a hundred years.

"This is the Commandant's office," he told me. "You handle this alone. I cannot be seen helping a new student or it raises questions nobody needs to be asking."

"Where will you be?"

"Northern dormitory. Room twenty two. Come find me after."

"Enzo."

"Yeah?"

"Thank you. For everything."

He smiled. Quick and tight and a little bit scared. Then he turned and walked away, swallowed up by the moving mass of alpha students without a backward glance.

I stood alone in front of the claw scarred doors. The pendant hummed against my chest. Seraphina held my features steady, the mask of Matteo Antonio Conti sitting firm on my bones.

I took one deep breath. Then I pushed the doors open.