The Girl the Alpha Academy Couldn't Break
I slide the photograph beneath the loose board under my mattress, the same one Lucien apparently already knows about, and sit there a long time with my back against the wall, listening for footsteps that don't come.
The academy archive doesn't get visitors this late, which is exactly why I'm here.
Three hours into the intake records and my eyes are starting to blur at the edges, but I keep going, because something about the way Neris said I don't have a wolf* to my face, twice, without her pulse ever spiking the way a normal lie would spike, has been sitting wrong in my chest since the clearing.
She wasn't lying about not understanding it. She was lying about everything else.