All Chapters of Alpha school : Chapter 1 - Chapter 6

The first thing you learn at Crestmoor Alpha Academy is where to stand.Not in the middle of the hallway. Never there. The middle belongs to the ones whose last names are carved into the pack council's stone. You stand against the wall, eyes low, shoulders in, and you make yourself so small the air forgets you're taking up any.I had been standing against walls for four months. I was very good at it."Mara." Her voice cut across the courtyard like a dropped plate. "My bag."I was already moving. I had the bag before she finished the word, her leather satchel, the one that cost more than my pack's entire winter grain order. I'd carried it up three flights of stairs, down two, and across the whole east lawn, because Cassia Vale did not carry her own things.Cassia was the Alpha's only daughter, nineteen years old and beautiful in the cruel, polished way that makes people forgive her before she's even done anything. She lounged on the fountain's edge with her friends fanned around her li

The handle stopped turning.Not because the man outside had changed his mind. Because something on the other side of the wall had shifted, and whoever was out there could feel it too."Interesting," said the voice, and the silk in it thinned. "I wasn't told you'd brought company."Mara, my wolf said. Get behind the shelf.I was already moving. I wedged myself between the mop buckets and the wall, heart slamming, and a second later the door didn't open. It came off. One clean, brutal crack, and the whole thing flew inward off its hinges and hit the opposite wall.Light flooded the closet.Rhys Calloway stood in the doorway with one hand still raised, like he'd done nothing more than push a curtain aside.Behind him, Kieran lounged against the corridor wall, cracking his knuckles one at a time. Sable stood a few feet back, silent as ever, with a look on his face that I can only describe as patient murder.And between them and me, in the middle of the narrow corridor, stood a man I had n

There are howls that mean come home, and howls that mean stay away. Every wolf learns the difference before they learn to walk.This one meant neither.It rolled over Crestmoor from somewhere beyond the walls, long and low and wrong. It didn't rise and fall the way a howl should. It waited. Like a hand held out in the dark, palm up, patient as a grave.Every student in the stairwell froze."That's not a pack call," someone whispered."That's not any call," said someone else.The lockdown bell tolled again, slow and heavy, and the howl answered it, note for note, as if mocking it. A girl near the notice board started to sob. Two of Cassia's friends grabbed each other's arms. Cassia herself stood utterly still with her father's letter crumpled in her fist.Mara, my wolf said.Her voice was small. I had never heard it small before.What?I know that sound.Cold ran all the way down my spine. How? You've been awake for four months.I don't know. A long, shivering pause. But I know it. I k