All Chapters of The Runaway Mate In The Wolf Academy : Chapter 1 - Chapter 5

The arena smelled like wet iron and fear. Three weeks of blood had soaked into the stone floor and no amount of sand could cover the stink anymore. I stood near the edge, my back against the rough bark of the old oak tree, watching my little brother Antonio throw the last punch of his semifinal.His opponent folded like paper. The crowd roared.Tony turned toward me with that look on his face, the one he learned from our father. That look that told me I was next and he planned to enjoy every second of it.My fingers found the silver pendant hanging around my neck. My mother's pendant. The metal was warm against my skin, always warm, like she was still in there somewhere, still pressing her hand over my heart."Seraphina," I whispered to the wolf curled inside my chest.I see him, she growled. He is nothing.She was right. Tony was fast and strong but he fought angry. He always fought angry. And angry fighters make mistakes. I had beaten every single opponent in this tournament without

The water was scalding but I stayed under it until my skin turned pink and raw. I wanted the heat to burn away everything. The humiliation. The betrayal. The image of my father standing on that platform and handing me off to a monster like I was nothing more than a piece of livestock at auction. Steam filled the bathroom and the mirror disappeared behind the fog. Good. I did not want to see my own face right now. I was afraid of what I might see in my eyes.Three weeks of grime and tournament blood swirled down the drain. I had fought twelve matches. Won every single one. Beat my brother unconscious in front of ten thousand wolves. And my reward was a cage dressed up as a wedding. I pressed my forehead against the wet tile and closed my eyes. The pendant pulsed against my chest. It had been doing that since the fight, a slow, rhythmic hum, like a second heartbeat sitting right beneath my own. Whatever had tried to claw its way out of me when.the chain broke, it was still in there. S

I left my father's estate like a ghost. The security was tight. Guards at every gate, patrol wolves running the perimeter in overlapping shifts, cameras mounted on the outer walls. But I had grown up inside those walls. I knew every blind spot, every gap in the rotation, every shadow wide enough to hide in if you pressed yourself flat and held your breath. Seraphina guided me through the dark, her senses sharper than mine, steering me away from the patrols before I could even smell them. We moved low and fast through the east garden, past the locked training yard, toward the massive ivy covered stone wall that surrounded the entire property. I paused near the servants' quarters when voices drifted out of an open window. My brothers. Tony and Marco, sitting inside with drinks in their hands, laughing about something. Three days," Tony was saying. "Three days and she's Falcone's problem. Not ours anymore." Marco snorted. "Can you imagine? Gia, married to that psychopath? She'll come