All Chapters of Say My Name, Alpha : Chapter 11 - Chapter 20

The night was heavy over Ironclad Academy, the kind of night that made shadows stretch long and corners seem alive. The corridors, empty of most cadets, smelled faintly of oil, stone, and tension. Somewhere in the distance, the faint echoes of drills continued, a reminder that the academy never truly slept.I moved silently, keeping to the walls, my senses alert. Every step could betray me. Every breath could betray me. Every heartbeat was a countdown toward exposure.But I wasn’t alone.Xander’s presence followed me like a storm cloud, a constant, magnetic pull I couldn’t escape. He didn’t touch me — not yet — but the heat radiating off him, the subtle brush of his aura against mine, was enough to make my pulse stutter, to make the carefully applied suppressants strain against my instincts.“Stop walking like you’re hiding,” he murmured from behind, voice low, intimate, dangerous.I forced my shoulders back. “I’m not hiding.”“You are,” he said, stepping closer, so close I could feel

The sirens didn’t stop until dawn. By the time they did, Ironclad Academy was a cage of chaos. Every Alpha was ordered to stay in their dorms. No one spoke above a whisper. No one dared to move unless commanded. The air was heavy, thick with the scent of dominance and fear. And all I could think about was Xander. They took him before sunrise. Handcuffed. Head held high. He didn’t fight. He didn’t resist. He didn’t even look back. He didn’t have to. Because I was watching. From my window, I saw them march him across the courtyard — surrounded by guards, his uniform stripped of insignias, his hands bound behind his back. It should’ve been satisfying. For months, he’d been my rival, my tormentor, my greatest threat. But all I felt was the crushing weight of guilt. He had done this for me. He had taken my punishment. My fall. My death sentence. And if I didn’t do something soon, he’d pay the price for a crime I committed just by existing. --- The academy was on lockdown for hou

The morning after Xander left, I woke up drenched in cold sweat. My body was still shaking, my pulse still racing from the sound of his voice echoing through my mind.By claiming you.He had said it so casually, like it was inevitable. Like my choice was just a formality he was allowing me to believe I had.And maybe that was what terrified me most—that some part of me had wanted it.The academy was silent at dawn. A thick fog rolled over the courtyards, shrouding the training grounds in gray. Even the birds seemed to avoid this place, as if they sensed what Ironclad really was beneath the shining banners and elite reputation.A prison for power.And I was the most fragile prisoner of all.I sat on the edge of my bunk, head in my hands, trying to ignore the faint ache under my skin. The suppressant patch had started to fail; I could feel my scent pressing faintly against its chemical barrier. Too faint for most to notice—but not him. Never him.A knock broke the silence.I stiffened.

The storm outside Ironclad Academy hadn’t stopped for two days. It battered the steel towers and rattled the glass panes like the world itself was trying to tear through the fortress. Inside, the halls were quieter than usual — not calm, but suffocatingly tense.No one had forgotten what happened in the arena.The intruder, the fight, the exposure. Everyone had questions, and none of them had answers. The instructors had sealed the training grounds, and whispers followed me everywhere I went. Eyes burned into my back when I walked, the air thick with suspicion.But none of that scared me as much as Xander Vale’s silence.He hadn’t spoken to me since that night. Not during drills, not in class, not even when we were assigned to the same training sector. He looked at me sometimes — that unreadable, cold stare that stripped me bare without a word — but he never spoke.And that silence was worse than any confrontation.I wanted

When dawn finally came, Ironclad Academy was unrecognizable.Smoke still clung to the air, curling through the shattered windows and drifting down from the broken spires. Parts of the courtyard were scorched black, the flagstones cracked and glowing faintly with heat. The once-imposing banners of the Dominion now hung in tatters, fluttering weakly against the gray morning sky.I stood in the shadows of the east hall, watching cadets move through the ruins. Some carried water, others supplies. A few, silent and pale, carried stretchers.The attack had left its mark. And though no one said it aloud, every single one of them was thinking the same thing.Someone inside the academy caused this.“Varyn.”Xander’s voice pulled me out of my thoughts. I turned, and there he was — uniform torn, bruised, eyes sharp as ever. Despite the exhaustion in his features, he carried himself like the chaos hadn’t touched him at all.“Yo