Tous les chapitres de : Chapitre 31 - Chapitre 40

CADENBren opened his mouth."You want to finish your two weeks," Caden said, still not looking at him, "or add another two on top? Because I'll go to Drax right now and tell him exactly what I watched you set up in here, and you can spend the rest of this term with a mop."Bren closed his mouth.The two boys had already stepped back.Calloway's phone was in his pocket.Caden looked at the senior staff officer. "Ten minutes. Log it as a documented-injury inspection. The clinic file covers it."The officer looked at him for a moment. Looked at the room. Nodded and gestured everyone out.They went. Not happily, not quickly, but they went, and Bren went with them, and Calloway; and the last thing Caden saw before the door closed was Bren's face, that calculation he wore underneath everything, recalibrating again, storing this away for later.He filed that for later too.The door closed.Ash was still against the wall. Hands up, shoulders back, chin level. Ready to fight someone who had a

CADENSoren closed the door behind him and stood with his back against it."You want me to pull her file," he said. Not a question."Everything." Caden sat at his desk with his hands flat on the surface. "Background. Pack registration. Merit exam records. Whatever the regional office logged when he applied." He paused. "Use the Crown Pack channels. Keep it quiet."Soren did not move immediately. That meant he had something to say and was deciding how to say it."Say it," Caden said."You're the Alpha King," Soren kept his voice level. "You're investigating a freshman student behind their back using royal resources." He looked at him. "If he finds out—""She won't find out.""You don't know that.""Then I'll deal with it when it happens." Caden looked at the desk. "She's running out of time. Bren is not done. Whatever she's hiding, whatever brought her here under a false name, she's carrying it alone, and she doesn't look like someone who asks for help before the last possible moment."

CADENHe saw it from across the training ground and told himself he was not going to walk over there.He walked over there.Zion and Rhen at the east wall. The body language of two people running a conversation was performing casually while being something else entirely underneath. He had watched Zion work rooms and negotiations and training dynamics for two years and he knew exactly what Zion looked like when he was invested in an outcome, and he was invested in this one.That was the part Caden could not let sit.He crossed the ground at a pace that was not hurrying. Both of them saw him coming with enough time to decide how to handle it, and neither of them moved, which told him the conversation had already reached a natural stopping point and they had each arrived at their own position on his arrival."Walk with me," he said to Zion.Not a question. Zion heard that and fell into step beside him without comment, and they moved away from the wall and Rhen and the rest of the trainin

NOVASoren left without looking back.She listened to his footsteps move down the corridor and turn the corner and fade, and she stood behind the door in Caden's hidden office with her heart going loud and her hands completely still and her brain running very fast through everything she had just heard.He had her file.He had pulled her file. Used his channels, his access, his position, whatever that position was, to dig into the identity she had spent three months building from nothing with Cass in a cold cottage kitchen. And he had found it thin. Three months old at most.He knew.She ran it back. Soren's voice. She. He had said 'she', and Caden had not corrected it, had not asked what he meant, and had simply said, 'Keep this between us.' Which meant the pronoun was not new information. Which meant Caden had already known; had known before the file; had known and said nothing and sat across from her this morning in that chair by the window and said, 'No, you just passed out; you're

NOVAShe looked at him for a long moment before she answered.The room was still. The lamp threw light across the desk and his face and the unopened folder, and she thought about everything she had been carrying since the morning she walked out of her father's house with one bag and her mother's voice in her chest."You want the truth," she said."That's what I asked for."She looked past him at the stone wall. Not avoiding his eyes. Just putting enough distance between herself and the memory to say it without her voice doing something she would regret.********************************The training yard had smelled like wet dirt and blood and the specific confidence of men who had already decided how the morning would end.She had fought seven of them. One after another. The way her mother taught her before the illness came and stripped everything away piece by piece. Don't fight angry. Angry wolves make noise. Quiet wolves win.She had been quiet. She had won.She had stood over the