Chapter 3

My pencil case hit the ground.

Pens, erasers, and a ruler scattered everywhere. My admission slip skidded a few feet away.

“Sorry. Didn’t see you.”

The boy who’d hit me stood beside me, not sounding sorry at all.

I ignored him and crouched to retrieve the slip.

Just before my fingers reached it, a shoe came down on the paper.

He bent over me, smiling at my red hair.

“A half-blood applying to an Alliance academy? Can you even hear orders over the link?”

“Move.”

“Don’t get nasty. I’m just telling you to stop hanging off Kieran.”

I looked up.

His face was familiar.

“Whatever’s between me and him is none of your business.”

“How’s it not? He’s got the best chance in our year of getting into patrol command. You have to follow him there so he can keep babysitting you?”

I tugged at the paper.

He pressed down harder.

“You need to learn to stay where you belong. Stop expecting purebloods to do everything—”

His shoe twisted.

The thin paper tore.

A second later, someone shoved him aside.

Kieran stood in front of me, his face frighteningly cold.

“What the hell is wrong with you?”

The boy stumbled, then caught his balance.

“I already apologized. It wasn’t on purpose.”

Kieran ignored him and bent to gather my things.

Then he took the torn admission slip and led me straight to the exam office.

The teacher on duty checked my electronic record and printed a replacement.

It wasn’t until the intact sheet was in my hands that I realized my fingers had been shaking the whole time.

Kieran noticed.

“I’ll walk you to your room.”

As we passed the boy, I heard him mutter, “Ginger mutt. Really knows how to play the victim.”

Then I remembered him.

He’d been beside Viola that night, complaining that I was dragging Kieran down.

Kieran paused.

“Let me hear that again, and you can explain yourself to the disciplinary committee.”

He stayed with me until we reached my exam room, then left.

For a few minutes, everything had felt like it used to.

But his coldness had been real.

So had his impatience.

I didn’t understand him anymore.

Once the exams were over, the whole academy seemed to breathe easier.

That evening, I finished sorting my notes and picked up my phone.

Viola had posted a photo.

A record.

The caption read:

“A birthday surprise, a few days late. Been playing it all night. Thank you.”

I stared at the picture.

In the lower-right corner of the sleeve were the small letters I’d etched by hand.

Happy birthday, Kieran.

It was the gift I’d given him.

He’d passed it on to Viola.

My eyes burned as I called him.

“You gave Viola the record I got you?”

“Yeah.” He sounded casual. “We were talking, and it turns out she likes it too. I took it over for her to hear.”

My hand tightened around the phone.

“I spent two weeks looking for it.”

“What?”

“The record. It took me two weeks to find a copy.”

There was a second of silence.

Then irritation crept into his voice.

“Ivy, it’s a record. You called just to put me on trial?”

“It’s not about the record.”

My voice shook.

“You could’ve at least told me.”

“You gave it to me. That makes it mine. I need your permission to do something with it?”

I opened my mouth.

Nothing came out.

He sighed.

“This is exhausting.”

The call ended.

I sat on the edge of my bed with the phone in my hand, my chest hurting so badly I could barely breathe.

The same words as picture day.

Exactly the same.

After that, we stopped talking.

Until our class organized a dinner before graduation.

I hadn’t wanted to go.

My mother thought I’d spent too much of the year buried in exam preparation and not enough time with other people. She encouraged me to get out and relax.

Before we left, Carol told Kieran to come home with me afterward.

It was the first time we’d seen each other since the argument.

He was in a bad mood the whole way.

I tried twice to start a conversation. He gave me “yeah” and “whatever.”

So I stopped.

The restaurant was noisy.

Everyone was talking about patrol exercises, link training, and the group hunts they planned to join over the summer.

I shifted more slowly than purebloods, and I couldn’t access their mind-link. During practical training, the instructors had often assigned me to a different group.

When they talked about what they’d done together, I had nothing to add.

We’d barely sat down, and I already wanted to go home.

Then someone suggested truth or dare.

The bottle went around a few times before landing on Kieran.

He chose truth.

The girl across from him grinned.

“Kieran, you’ve been protecting Ivy all these years. Do you like her or not?”