Tous les chapitres de : Chapitre 1 - Chapitre 10

Every word Rhett had written cut into my heart like a dull knife.Asterfall Academy had the best territorial planning program on the continent.Rhett and I had trained together for twelve years. We had prepared our applications side by side, planning to leave Northwood for three years of study.Now he had changed his choice without telling me.Someone in the channel asked: [What if Avery doesn't log into your account? The final selection locks tomorrow at midnight.] Rhett answered almost immediately.[Impossible. Since applications opened, she's checked everything several times a day. She's more serious about it than the academy instructors.] The others began teasing him, saying that no one understood his future mate better than he did.After a while, someone else ventured a question. [But Asterfall's territorial planning program is the best fit for Avery. She's worked toward that admission for years. Shouldn't you at least discuss it with her?]The channel fell silent for a moment. Rh

"Avery, don't you have anything to say to me?"I turned and found Rhett standing behind me, as expected. His gaze landed first on Nolan's application page, then shifted to me. His expression immediately darkened.I said nothing and started to turn back toward Nolan, but Rhett caught my arm and pulled me out of my chair. "We're talking outside."Ignoring the eyes around us, he led me to the far end of the hallway before releasing me. "How long are you planning to keep this up, Avery?" Anger tightened his voice. "You blocked me, left the group, and now you're deliberately sitting beside Nolan. Is this your way of forcing me to apologize?""No." I rubbed the wrist he had gripped. "I don't want to argue, Rhett. I have an application to finish."Rhett had clearly not expected that answer. His expression froze for a moment. "Unblock me." He spoke as if issuing an order during training, but his eyes kept searching my face. "You haven't answered a single call. I came to find you, Avery. You co

When I went downstairs the next morning, Rhett was already sitting in the living room. He had clearly not slept. His eyes were bloodshot, yet beside him sat my favorite cinnamon roll and a glass of warm milk.My mother did not know what had happened the night before. She assumed Rhett and I had simply fallen into another ordinary argument. "Talk it through calmly," she said, patting my shoulder before leaving us alone.Rhett pushed the breakfast toward me. "Eat something first. Then come to the academy with me.""Why?""To withdraw your acceptance from Asterfall." He said it so naturally, as though it were a matter of no consequence."The final portal is already closed.""I know." Rhett pulled a late-admission form from a folder. "Greyford Institute is still accepting students from within the territory. I asked an instructor to hold a place for you. They have a territorial planning program too. Its ranking is only a little lower than Asterfall's."A little lower was a generous descript

Life at Asterfall was busier than I had imagined.During the first week of border training, we were assigned to redesign the warning system on the academy's northern perimeter. The area bordered an unclaimed forest. The old equipment could identify the scent of an intruder but could not distinguish between an ordinary werewolf who had lost the trail, an authorized patrol, and a rogue approaching with violent intent.I proposed combining scent recognition with changes in body temperature and movement patterns, allowing the system to assign different threat levels before an intruder reached the barrier. At first, some members of the group thought the plan was too complicated. Nolan pushed his tablet toward me. "She'll handle the overall design. I can build the operating model. Give us three days."Three days later, the system's false alarm rate had fallen by sixty percent. Professor Lane, who supervised the project, immediately decided to submit our work to the annual Inter-Territory Def

The Inter-Territory Defense Trial began two weeks later.Asterfall, Northwood, and five neighboring territories each sent a team to establish a temporary defense line in an abandoned industrial district. The trial simulated rogue attacks, equipment failure, and large-scale civilian evacuations. I was responsible for Asterfall's overall plan. When I entered the site, I saw a familiar structure on Northwood's defense map.It was the three-layer warning network I had designed two years earlier. The original blueprints had remained in the cloud storage Rhett and I once shared, and I had never published them. Now the design bore another name. Blaire Voss. Blaire had clearly noticed me as well. Wearing the uniform of Northwood's core team, she approached and lowered her voice."The structures only look similar. You never formally submitted your design, so you cannot prove it belongs to you." "The digital underlay preserves the serial number of the original device." I reminded her calmly."On