All Chapters of The Girl the Alpha Academy Couldn't Break: Chapter 51 - Chapter 60

Neris's POV"Stay back."I say it before she's taken more than three steps through the academy gates, my wolf rising instinctively despite the ancient recognition still humming beneath my skin."Neris." Her voice carries an ache I don't want to trust, warm and familiar in a way that terrifies me more than any threat I've faced this month. "It's been eighteen years. I understand you don't recognize me.""I don't recognize you because my mother is dead." My voice shakes despite every effort to steady it. "I have a report. A containment order. A confirmation of elimination, signed and filed the same night my parents died.""Paperwork isn't truth, daughter. You of all people should understand that by now.""Don't call me that." I step back despite myself, Cassian's hand steady at my shoulder, Evren tense beside me, Lucien watching the entire exchange with careful, methodical attention. "I attended a memorial. I remember it, vaguely, through everything else from that year. There was a serv

Neris's POV"Something's wrong with my memory."I say it before I fully understand why, sitting across from my mother in a borrowed room within the academy's rebuilt east wing, hours after Gideon's confession left all three of us reeling."What do you mean?" she asks carefully."I've spent eighteen years believing my memories of early childhood were simply thin, the way anyone's memories from that age tend to be. But since you arrived, fragments keep surfacing that I don't remember ever having before." My hands tighten in my lap. "A woman's voice, singing something I can't quite place. A house I don't recognize, hidden somewhere in trees I've never consciously visited. A pendant, silver, shaped like nothing I've seen since."Something shifts in my mother's expression, careful and pained at once. "Describe the pendant.""Small. A crescent, but not like the mark. Simpler. I remember it catching light whenever I moved.""That was mine," she says quietly. "I gave it to you the night befor

Neris's POV"Tell me the truth. All of it. Right now."Cassian meets my eyes steadily, though something in his posture has shifted since the recording ended, careful in a way that feels different from his usual composure."I've never lied to you, Neris.""You've never volunteered everything either. There's a difference." I fold my arms, keeping distance between us despite every instinct that's spent weeks trusting him without question. "My father specifically warned about someone using me for a legacy they felt obligated to fulfill. That's not a coincidence, Cassian. That's a warning aimed directly at you.""I understand how it sounds.""Then explain how it actually is."He's quiet for a long moment, something working behind his careful expression before he finally speaks. "My family has served on the Council, in various capacities, for four generations. My great-grandfather helped draft portions of the current territorial charter. My grandfather sat on the original Bloodline Oversigh

Neris's POV"You need to see this before you decide anything further about either of them."Lucien's voice is tight when he finds me in the archive room, several ancient texts spread across the table in front of him, his expression carrying the particular grimness I've learned to associate with discoveries that reshape everything I thought I understood."See what?""A record I found while researching the purge itself, trying to understand exactly why the Kaelith and Virel lines were targeted so specifically three centuries ago." He slides a brittle, yellowed page toward me, careful not to damage it further. "It's a founding charter. The original agreement between the twelve houses that eventually divided territorial authority among themselves.""What does it have to do with Cassian and Evren?""Read the signatories."I scan the page, ancient script difficult to parse at first until my eyes catch on three family names, listed among the twelve founding houses who apparently orchestrated

Neris's POV"I'll hear your evidence. That's all I'm agreeing to."Vashcross studies me for a long moment, something calculating behind her composed expression as I remain standing near the chamber's entrance, Cassian and Evren tense at my shoulders, Lucien watching with careful, methodical attention."That's considerably less than what I proposed.""It's considerably more than you're entitled to, given everything this Council has already done to my family." I meet her eyes steadily. "I won't pledge loyalty in exchange for information you should be willing to share regardless. My father deserves the truth about his own death, and that truth shouldn't come with a political price attached."Something that might be reluctant respect flickers across Vashcross's expression. "Your mother taught you well, it seems, even in absence.""My mother taught me nothing about negotiating with the people who killed my father. I learned that from watching exactly how little trust this Council has earne