All Chapters of Fated To The Three : Chapter 1 - Chapter 10

Every morning at exactly 5:40, the hot water stopped. It was not because the boiler was old. It was because someone on the upper floors used it first. Aria knew this. She had lived on the Ironblood Pack estate for eleven years. She had learned all the small, cruel rules of the place.She stood at the sink. The water was cold. She did not show pain. Long ago she had stopped being surprised by the cold. She washed her face quickly. Then she looked in the mirror. Dark auburn hair. Grey eyes that looked tired. A face ready for a hard day. She was eighteen years old. She had come here when she was seven. She arrived with a bag that smelled like her mother's coat. Nothing else.In her years here, she had learned three important things. First, the lower washroom hot water was gone by 5:40. The household staff upstairs took it. Nobody said this, but everyone knew. Second, if she wanted food before work, she had to reach the kitchen before Greta finished her rounds. Greta gave the good bread t

Aria waited in her small room until the estate was deeply quiet. She knew which stairs made noise and which did not. She knew the guard's walking path. She moved at 10:20 when the hallway was clear.The records room was on the ground floor of the north wing. It had three walls of shelves filled with old papers, maps, and books. Aria had cleaned it twice a year. She knew the shelf with the land survey books. She closed the door, let her eyes adjust to the dark, and went to the back corner.She moved the books. The box was small. Dark wood. Old. It had a green brass clasp. On the side, in handwriting she somehow knew, was one word: NIGHTHOLLOW. Below it was the year she was born.Aria sat on the floor with the box in her hands. Her heart beat too fast. The name was not hers. It was her parents' name. The name she was told to stop using when she came here at age seven. She was registered as Aria, ward of Alpha Voss. No family name.She opened the clasp. Four things were inside.First, a

She kept the note in her pocket all night. She did not open it. She did not sleep. She sat on the edge of her bed. The sealed paper was in her hands. Cole's warning went around and around in her head. Do not open it anywhere they can see. Who were "they"? Who had been in her room? And why was it Cole Voss, of all people, who had warned her?She opened the note just before dawn. When the first grey light touched her window, she had read it seven times. When she got dressed for her work, she had made a choice. The east gate. Midnight. She would go. But she would not go alone. She would tell someone first.She tucked the note into the box with the disc. She hid the box under the spare blanket. Then she walked into the morning. The weight of it all pressed hard against her ribs.Seraphine Vale came down the main stairs at eleven in the morning. She always did. Aria had noticed this. The morning light hit the stairs at that time, and Seraphine looked perfect. She was tall, with fair hair,

He was near the outside door. He looked like he had been there for a minute, not just arriving. He had been watching the hallway. He had seen the brothers pass. His arms were crossed. His face showed nothing. He seemed like a person who saved up all his reactions for when he really needed them.He looked at Aria as she walked closer. She looked back."Morning," she said."Morning." He glanced the way the brothers had gone. "Do not be in the training courtyard today."She stopped. "Why?""Cole will be there for the next two hours. He is in the kind of mood where everything nearby becomes a target." He looked back at her. "Your afternoon path goes past it.""I will take the lower path.""Good."He pushed the door open and stepped outside. The talk was over. That was normal for Rook. He used words like they were a limited supply.Aria stood in the hallway after the door closed. She added this to her mental shelf. Rook had been watching. And what he chose to do with what he saw was warn h

Aria found Nyla in the laundry room at half past eight. Nyla was there most mornings. The room was good because nobody visited without a reason.Aria closed the door behind her. She told Nyla everything she had translated so far.Nyla listened without cutting in. That was how she listened when something was serious. She folded and refolded a pillowcase three times without seeing she was doing it. It was Nyla's version of walking back and forth.When Aria finished, Nyla set the pillowcase down."A piece of the original bond stone," she said."That is what the letter says.""Your mother touched it.""She was brought there just to read it.""And then she ran.""And then she ran." Aria looked at her hands. They were resting on her knees. Still. She had trained them to be still. "There is still more I have not translated. The second page. The part where she explains what she took and what she did with it.""She took you," Nyla said."She took me and she took something else. The disc." Aria