Chapter 002

Mirelle's POV

Hundreds of first-years crowded the registration, a bark so loud it sent birds flying from the nearby trees as new cars rolling through the gates every few seconds. Making the excited crowd even louder.

I set Chloe's mountain of luggage down beside the registration desk and rolled my shoulders, feeling every hour of the drive settle into my spine at once.

A professor stepped up onto a low platform at the front, voice carrying without effort. "Every first-year will undergo an aura reading before dorm and class placements are finalized. Step forward when your name is called. Place both hands on the crystal. The light doesn't lie — it will tell us exactly what you are."

One by one, students climbed the platform and did exactly as told, light erupted from it — gold, violet, deep sea-blue, depending on what kind of creature stood there. The crowd gasped and clapped like they were watching fireworks instead of paperwork.

Chloe and Bianca appeared from wherever they'd been lingering just in time for their names to be called, and their light didn't just erupt — it sang, gold and blinding, the crowd cheering like they'd witnessed a miracle instead of two girls touching a rock. Luckily for them, they landed in the same dorm room. Of course they did.

Chloe caught my eye across the crowd and gave me a look that needed no translation. Hurry up with my bags, or else...

Then, "Mirelle Corwin"

I walked up on legs that didn't feel entirely mine and pressed my trembling hands to the crystal.

Nothing. Absolutely nothing.

Not a flicker. Not even a spark. Just cold, dead stone under my palms while the entire hall waited, I stood there like an idiot and the silence stretched long enough for someone to start laughing.

"Oh my goddess — she's wolfless. Actually wolfless."

"I knew it. You can just tell with some people."

"How does the Corwins even explain her at family dinners?"

The word spread through the lobby faster than any of the flashy transformations had — wolfless, wolfless — passed mouth to mouth like the best gossip for a beginning of a semester. Chloe smirked from the front row, delighted in a way she didn't even try to hide, while Bianca pressed both hands over her mouth like she was witnessing something scandalous.

I kept my chin up. I'd had a lot of practice keeping my chin up.

The professor cleared his throat, slid a card across the desk without quite meeting my eyes, and moved on to the next name like nothing had happened at all. Room 35.

Not because Alpha Sebastian decided where I belonged, I told myself, taking the card with a hand that didn't shake half as much as I expected. Because I earned it.

I forced my face into a smile, picked the card up, and — because old habits die harder than pride does — picked up Chloe's luggage again on my way out.

The siren cut through the hall before I'd made it three steps, and every conversation in the building died at once. Students began flowing toward the central courtyard in one enormous, obedient tide. I slipped into the back of the crowd where nobody bothered looking, which was exactly where I wanted to be.

The headmistress stepped onto a raised dais at the courtyard's center, and I understood within a single breath why the entire crowd went quiet without being asked to. Silver-grey hair, pulled back so severely it looked less like a style and more like a decision, and a stillness to her that made every restless first-year around me stop shifting their feet at once.

"Welcoming all freshmen to Valez High Academy. I'm Headmistress Selene," she said, and the words carried to the very back of the courtyard without her seeming to try. "Some of you are heirs. Some of you are legacies. Some of you were sent here because your parents didn't know what else to do with you. I don't care which. Within these walls, you are students, and you will be treated exactly as well as you earn — nothing more, and I promise you, nothing less."

Her gaze moved over the crowd slowly, unhurried, the way someone might walk a fence line looking for a weak post.

"If any of you believe you cannot survive that standard," she said, "the gates are still open behind you. Leave now. It will save us both the trouble later." Then everything changed. The atmosphere shifted without warning. Conversations stopped. Students fell silent. Even the professors straightened as if preparing for someone important. Confused, I noticed everyone turning toward the academy gates. Curious, I

gaze out of pure reflex — just in time to watch three black Bentleys, royal crests glinting on their hoods, roll through the entrance one after another, spaced apart like each one deserved its own moment.

The courtyard held its breath, then broke completely.

A bodyguard opened the first door, and the boy who stepped out moved like the ground had been swept for him specifically. Dark hair with blue eyes, cut close and disciplined, blazer buttoned all the way up and pressed sharp enough to cut skin. He ran a hand through his hair once, adjusted a cuff that didn't need adjusting, and somehow made the gesture look like a rule he'd set for himself rather than vanity.

"Aldric Graham." The girl behind me breathed the name like it was a prayer she'd been saving.

The second door opened before the first car had finished pulling away, wore the exact same uniform completely differently — chocolate brown hair with gold eyes. Collar loosened, sleeves rolled to the elbow, blazer hanging open like the rules that governed Aldric's had simply never been introduced to him. Hands in his pockets. A half-smile already aimed at nothing in particular, like the whole procession amused him more than it impressed him.

"That's Adrian Lancaster," someone else whispered, and I filed the name away next to the first one.

The third car took its time. Long enough that a ripple of anticipation moved through the crowd before the door had even opened, and when the last boy finally unfolded out of it, I understood why. Same blazer, unbuttoned at the throat, sleeves untouched, like he hadn't needed to alter a single thread of it for it to belong to him completely. Platinum blonde hair with grey eyes, unhurried, cataloguing the courtyard like he already knew exactly what he'd find.

"Hardin Scott," the whisper went, reverent in an entirely different key.

Three boys. Same uniform. Three completely different ways of wearing it — and I understood, watching them, that whatever this school actually was, the rules bent themselves around people like this instead of the other way around.

Students parted for them without being told to, like the path had already been decided somewhere above our heads before any of us arrived.

"Ric, you walk like someone's about to inspect your shoelaces," Adrian said, just loud enough to carry, throwing an arm over Aldric's shoulder.

Aldric shrugged it off without breaking stride. "Someone has to look like they belong here."

"Bold claim from the guy who ironed his blazer for a courtyard walk."

"Better than showing up looking like you slept in yours."

"I did sleep in mine," Adrian said, entirely unbothered, and Hardin's laugh cracked through both of them, low and easy, like this exact exchange had happened a hundred times before and would happen a hundred more.

I noticed, absurdly, that no one else in the crowd would have dared call Aldric "Ric." Half the courtyard looked scandalized just hearing it — like a nickname that intimate belonged to exactly three people on earth, and everyone else understood better than to reach for it.

Bianca actually lunged half a step toward them before Chloe's hand shot out and yanked her back, a look passing between them that needed no translation. Mine. Not yours.

The three of them moved through the parted crowd together, still trading something under their breath that made all three of them grin, right up until their eyes swept the assembled first-years and every girl within range straightened like she'd been personally called on.

They all looked directly at me.

I turned around to see it there was anyone behind or beside me, but there was none. I stood alone.

Hardin. Grey eyes catching mine for exactly one second before he winked — slow, deliberate, like he already knew something I didn't — and kept walking without breaking stride.

I felt my knees do something they had no business doing.

***

By the time we were dismissed for dorm assignments, I'd hauled Chloe's luggage up four flights of stairs and made it exactly three steps back down the hall before someone slammed into my shoulder hard enough to spin me sideways.

"Out of my way, newbie." she snapped, fangs just visible when she sneered, didn't even slow down.

My suitcase burst open against the floor, spilling clothes, books and the cookies I'd packed from the royal kitchen for this journey. Everything I owned across the corridor in front of an audience that had clearly been hoping for exactly this kind of entertainment.

"Wow. She can't even hold a bag right."

"Bet she borrowed that suitcase too."

I bit down on my own humiliation and dropped to my knees, grabbing what I could before the crowd could enjoy it any longer, refusing — to let a single tear show. I reached for the last book skidding across the tile.

Another hand got there first.

I looked up slowly, past a wrist, a sleeve, a jaw I didn't recognize, straight into a pair of eyes so sharp they didn't feel like they belonged to anyone I'd met yet — and I had absolutely no idea who they belonged to at all.