MasukElara's POV Ravin came back on a Thursday morning, slipping through the front gates of Draven Academy the way he always did, like he never left at all.I fell into step beside him before he made it ten feet past the entrance."They know." I kept my voice low even though no one around us was paying attention. "Everything. I told them exactly the way you said to, all of it, and they know."Ravin glanced at me sideways, still walking. "How did they take it?""Freya spent a solid five minutes telling me everything that could have gone wrong and didn't." I matched his pace. "Leo looked like every answer he ever wanted about you just clicked into place at once. Nyx just nodded, which somehow made it worse because she clearly already suspected something."The corner of his mouth moved. "And now?""Now they know," I said, and I felt the relief of it settle properly as I said it, the weight sitting differently on my shoulders than it had since the dance. "And they want to meet you. Properly.
Kol's POVI looked down at her, She was standing close enough that I could see exactly what the encounter with Ravin had done to her body regardless of how she was choosing to carry herself.The faint discolouration at her collarbone, the way her left shoulder sat just slightly higher than her right to compensate for the bite, the careful stillness in her torso that told me breathing through her full range of motion was still costing her something she wasn't admitting.She said it so quietly, and yet the words landed with more weight than most things said at full volume.I looked at her for a moment before I let myself respond."I've missed you too." I kept my voice low, measured, the same way I kept everything when it came to her, because she was one of the very few things in my world that required care rather than calculation. "More than I let you know."Something shifted in her expression, brief and quickly contained, which was also very her.I reached out and let my hand rest agai
LyrisKol was quiet for a moment after I finished speaking, the kind of quiet that meant he was turning every part of what I laid out over in his mind rather than simply accepting it. That was always how he worked. He didn't react, he processed, and by the time he spoke, he already looked at the idea from every angle he could find."The strategy isn't the problem." He moved away from the chair slowly. "The strategy is sound, bring her in, draw him out, end it on our terms." He looked at me steadily. "The problem is Ravin himself. You stood across from him in that clearing you know what he is capable of. Ending him is not going to be a simple thing, no matter how well we set the conditions.""No," I agreed. "It won't be simple.""Then you understand my concern."I shifted upright on the cot and met his gaze directly. "I understand it completely, and I'm telling you it doesn't change the core of what I'm proposing." I kept my voice measured. "Ravin is dangerous. I will never argue ag
Lyris POV Kol turned from the window and looked at me with something that wasn't quite surprise but wasn't entirely far from it either.He crossed back toward me slowly, his expression already shifting. "Explain that. Because from where I'm standing, every route we built into that school just closed.""Not every route." I shifted carefully against the cot, pushing through the pull across my ribs. "We don't need a route back into the school. We never needed the school, we needed Elara, and Elara is still very much accessible."Kol stopped at the foot of the cot and watched me, waiting for the rest."Ravin loves her." I kept my voice level. "Not the way students at that school think they love people. I watched him for months. I watched the way he tracked her movements without her knowing, the way he positioned himself every time something felt off around her, the way he reacted when she was even slightly distressed." I held his gaze. "He is completely in over his head with this girl.
Lyris POVThe pack doctor finished wrapping the last of the wounds across my side and stepped back without a word, which was the polite way of saying there was nothing left to do but wait for the body to catch up with everything done to it.I flexed my fingers once against the edge of the cot and stayed quiet.The injuries were significant. I knew that without being told.The bite at my shoulder ran deep enough that turning my head too far to the left sent a sharp pull up through my neck. The claw marks across my ribs made breathing at full capacity something I was working back toward rather than something I could do freely.Rough recoveries were nothing new to me. This one sat in a different category entirely, and I knew it.The door opened.Alpha Kol stepped into the room and closed it behind him with the kind of quiet that was more deliberate than accidental. He was not a man who did anything without intention, and the way he moved through a space communicated that without him nee
Elara's POV Silas dropped me at the front gates exactly as Ravin said he would, gave me a single nod that communicated everything and nothing at once, and then turned back the way we came without another word. I watched him go for a moment, then turned around and walked through the gates of Draven Wolf Academy like I hadn't been gone for two full days.I made it approximately thirty seconds before they found me.Freya reached me first, and the look on her face landed somewhere between relief and the particular kind of fury that only came from someone who cared about you deeply and was currently deciding whether to hug you or shake you by the shoulders."Where," she said, her voice low and pointed, "have you been."Nyx was right behind her, arms folded, her expression considerably more controlled but her eyes doing everything Freya's voice was doing. Leo came last, hands shoved in his pockets, looking at me with the quiet, searching look he used when he was trying to work something o
Ravin's POVThe pull hit me without warning, right in the middle of watching two of my warriors settle a dispute on the training ground.My hand was at my chest before I understood why, and my wolf went completely still inside me, the way it only did when something had its full attention. I had fel
Elara's POVThe lunch hall was loud the way it always was on Fridays. I was staring at my food and not eating it when Professor Aldric walked to the front and clapped twice.The noise dropped."The annual forest camping trip begins today. Buses leave at four. Attendance is mandatory."The hall erup
Elara's POVI noticed him during second period.He was sitting three rows ahead of me and two seats to the left, not doing anything particularly noticeable. Just sitting there, head slightly angled toward the front of the class, pen moving across his notebook. But there was something about the way
Ravin's POVI told myself I was gathering information.That was what I called it the first night I stood in the treeline beyond the academy fence and watched the students move between buildings. I came back the second night. And the third.By the fourth I had her routine mapped. She left the dormit







