All Chapters of The Girl the Alpha Academy Couldn't Break: Chapter 1 - Chapter 10

Neris POV "She mostly carries my things."Ysolde pitches it across the courtyard so every first-year hears. The laugh that comes back is quick and easy, the kind that finds me no matter how small I make myself.I keep my face still. Hands loose. Shoulders down, the way I've practiced for years so nobody sees the heat climbing my neck.I tell myself what I've been telling myself since yesterday morning. I imagined the smile. Someone like him doesn't notice someone like me.Then I go back to what I'm good at. Disappearing.Orientation starts before the sun clears the towers. They herd us into the main hall in ranked lines while an instructor with silver at his temples reads the rules like a list of ways to fail. Strength rankings post Monday at dawn. Combat three days a week, mandatory. Wolf evaluations on the full moon, and anyone who can't shift on command drops three ranks automatically. Political rivalries are "discouraged but expected." He says the last part with a thin smile that

Neris POV The flare is gone.I know it the second my hand goes into the side pocket and closes on nothing. No cylinder. No safety pin. Just the rough seam where it should be sitting.Night has already come down. The Pursuit has started. All around me first-year teams fold into the tree line in fours, voices low, flashlight beams cutting short and white through the dark. Laughter drifts back from somewhere left of me. Someone tells their partner to keep up. A girl at the supply table is still arguing for a second water flask.I'm standing at the edge of the western forest by myself. Ysolde is nowhere.I turn a slow circle. Check the ground. Check the pack again. Check inside my jacket, then the dirt at my feet, as though a metal cylinder could have quietly buried itself. It was in that pocket after the final equipment check this afternoon. Somebody took it, and somebody knew exactly which minute I'd stop paying attention."Looking for this?"I spin. One of the boys who has been circli

Neris's POV"Say that again."Evren's voice cuts through the clearing like a blade dragged across stone. He hasn't moved from the tree line, but every line of his body says he wants to.I don't answer. My knees are still in the dirt. My hands are still shaking."I said." He steps forward. "Say it again. Tell me what I just watched wasn't a full shift. Tell me a servant girl didn't just level that thing with her bare hands.""I don't know what you saw.""Liar.""Evren." Cassian's voice, low, doesn't rise, doesn't need to. "Stand down.""You're joking.""I said stand down." Cassian steps into the clearing, and where Evren burns, Cassian is ice: controlled, assessing, his eyes moving over the scorched crater, the broken stone, me. "Get up.""I can't.""You can. Get up."I get up. My legs barely hold me, but something in his tone makes it clear this isn't a request I get to refuse. Behind him, Lucien hasn't spoken, hasn't moved either. He's just watching me with an expression I can't read

Neris's POV"You've been avoiding me."Evren's voice catches me before I've even cleared the arena doors, and I don't need to turn around to know he's blocking the exit on purpose."I've been going to class," I say. "That's not the same thing.""It is when you take the long way around every hallway I'm standing in." He falls into step beside me, unbothered, hands loose at his sides like this is a friendly conversation and not an ambush. "Three days, Neris. Three days since the forest, and you've said exactly eleven words to me. I counted.""That's a strange thing to count.""I have a strange amount of free time when the person I want to talk to keeps disappearing." He steps sideways, cutting into my path just enough that stopping is the only option left. "Fight me.""No.""That's it? Just no?""That's it."He studies me like I've said something in a language he doesn't recognize. Around us, the last of the combat class filters out of the arena, a few curious glances thrown our way bef

Neris's POV"Tampered."I repeat the word like saying it again will make it make sense. "You think someone tampered with the barrier.""I don't think it," Cassian says. "I know it. The question was never whether the seal weakened on its own. It didn't. Ancient wards don't fail from age in a single night. They fail because someone makes them fail.""That's not possible. The instructors said-""The instructors said what the official report tells them to say." His voice stays level, but there's an edge under it now, the same edge I heard through the strategy room door weeks ago. "I've seen the raw sensor logs. Someone accessed the ward chamber six hours before the Pursuit began. Someone with clearance high enough that the system didn't flag it as unusual.""Why would anyone do that? Students could have died.""Students did almost die. Several were injured badly enough to need real healers, not the academy infirmary." Cassian studies me in that careful, cataloguing way he has, like he's s