She Who Hunts Alphas

Cassian ripped his wrist from my hand.

The movement was so sudden that he struck Brantley's shoulder and forced him back a step. A murmur swept the hall, then broke into scattered laughter when Brantley's heel caught my suitcase.

The broken latch gave way again.

My clothes spilled across the marble at Cassian's feet.

"Static," Seraphina said loudly. "The stray shocked him with static."

Brantley laughed because she had, though unease pinched the corners of his mouth.

Cassian did not laugh.

He rubbed the inside of his wrist. No burn marked his skin, but the tendons stood out in his hand. He looked from the place I had touched him to my right palm.

The red crescent was gone.

"What did you do?" he asked.

"I told you to let go."

"That was not an answer."

"It's the only one you're getting."

The hall went quiet again.

Cassian turned toward the students. His face had settled into a calm mask, but I had seen the shock beneath it. That mattered. Men like him built power on the belief that nothing could surprise them.

"For the next seven days," he said, "Violet Hale is under my authority. No one else disciplines her. No one else lays a hand on her."

A few highborn students looked disappointed.

"She is mine to correct. Is that understood?"

"Yes, Alpha," the hall answered.

"I belong to no one," I said.

Cassian glanced over his shoulder. "Report to the abandoned training ground beyond the eastern ridge. The thorn pits are to be cleared before sunset. Barehanded."

"And if I refuse?"

His voice lowered. "Then the council will review Elena Hale's debt contract tonight. I doubt she can afford another penalty visit."

Cold spread through my chest.

He knew Elena's name. He knew exactly where to cut.

"Leave her out of this."

"Clear the pits."

I wanted to drive my fist into his mouth. Instead, I knelt and shoved my clothes back into the suitcase.

"Fine," I said. "But one day, Cassian, you're going to threaten the wrong person."

"I already have," he replied softly.

I looked up.

He had turned away.

An hour later, I stood at the edge of the eastern ridge with the academy rising behind me like a black castle.

The abandoned training ground had once been a series of obstacle courses. Now thorn vines strangled the iron frames and swallowed entire lanes beneath walls of black bramble. Some thorns were as long as my fingers. Others curved like hooks.

Jace Ward sat on a stump near the empty tool shed, eating an apple.

"The eastern pit by dusk," he said. "Those were the orders."

"There are no gloves."

"Barehanded means barehanded."

"Helpful."

He bit into the apple. "I'm not here to help."

I stepped into the first wall of vines and grabbed a branch.

The thorns tore through my sleeve and buried themselves in my palm.

Pain flared. I pulled anyway.

The vine resisted, then ripped free with a sound like cloth tearing. I threw it onto the dirt and reached for another.

By noon, blood slicked both hands.

By midafternoon, my right hand had locked twice. Each time I forced the fingers open against my thigh and kept working. The old fractures ground beneath the skin, sending sharp pain into my wrist.

Jace moved into the shade.

"You could ask for mercy," he called.

"From Cassian?"

"From anyone."

"Is that how you got the badge?"

He stopped chewing.

I turned back to the vines.

The sky darkened toward evening. Sweat stung the scar on my cheek. My uniform hung in torn strips at the sleeves, and the eastern pit still looked endless.

I wrapped both hands around a dead root and pulled.

Something scraped beneath the soil.

I paused.

The sound came again when I shifted the root, stone dragging against metal.

I dropped to my knees and dug with my bleeding fingers. The packed earth loosened around the edge of a black granite slab. I cleared more dirt, revealing a carved wolf with its jaws open beneath a crescent moon.

The design did not match any academy crest.

It looked older than Lunaris itself.

Jace had disappeared from the stump. I could not see him through the brambles.

I brushed mud from the carving.

The stone was warm.

"What are you doing out here?" I whispered.

Blood ran from my palm into the wolf's carved eye.

The world stopped.

Heat speared up my right arm.

I tried to pull away, but an invisible force pinned my hand to the granite. A crimson line ignited beneath my fingers, traced the wolf's head, and curved into a crescent moon.

The same symbol that had flashed against Cassian's wrist.

Only this time it did not vanish.

Light poured through the grooves, bright enough to stain the brambles red. Fire raced through my veins, not burning but rebuilding. The ache in my hand disappeared. The twisted joints loosened. For the first time in three years, I could feel each finger without pain.

A force like a second heartbeat woke beneath my ribs.

I gasped and tore my hand free.

The hold released.

I fell backward into the dirt.

The cuts across my palms closed as I watched. Torn skin drew together. Blood dried, flaked, and fell away. Even the scar tissue along my knuckles softened until my hand looked almost normal.

I flexed my fingers.

They obeyed.

"What did you do to me?"

The red crescent on the tablet pulsed once, then sank into darkness.

A twig snapped behind me.

I turned.

A boy with dark red hair leaned against an oak tree at the edge of the clearing. He tossed a silver lighter into the air, caught it, and smiled without warmth.

"Looks like Cassian's favorite stray found something she wasn't meant to see," he said.