Bound to My Enemy's Alpha

Her first Dinner

Ivy did her best to ignore the tug. She pushed the door into the hall and walked in.

The whole hall turned silent as everyone turned their gaze toward her. Ivy’s eyes scanned for somewhere to sit down, but she didn’t really find any empty spaces. And those she saw were immediately covered up by the students before she could get there.

She turned toward the girl that had brought her, only to notice that she stood there alone. Ivy slowly began to move into the hall. She saw where she could get her food.

After being served, she moved within the crowd in hopes of finding an empty space. Ivy finally spotted a lonely spot that seemed deserted.

She sat down to eat, her eyes avoiding the gaze of the other students, who all seemed to be hostile toward her.

I’m still injured. I can’t afford to get into any squabbles or be hated on my first day, she thought to herself.

It got to a point that Ivy couldn’t take it anymore. Ivy let her spoon go. The spoon’s collision with her plate caused a loud ring within the hall. Ivy stood up abruptly and left.

Ivy walked out in silence and got into the corridor. The noise from the hall faded into silence as she left the hall behind.

She didn’t want to be here. She didn’t want any of this. Not the training. Not the attention. Not even him. All she wanted was to live a quiet life and one day grow old.

But all that was a thing of the past now. All she wanted now was to run. To breathe. To just be alone. She just needed to be away from all this.

Ivy grabbed onto the pendant as she raced down the hall. Her grip on it tightened by the second.

Ivy moved toward the clearing at the outer courtyard.

She could still see the guards as they patrolled. Ivy sneaked past them as she found her way into the backyard of the Keep. Ivy began to run, and before she knew it, she had gone down on all fours. Her paws in place of feet, a snout in place of a nose.

Ivy ran through the backyard until she came in front of a pond. The pond reflected the moon and its rays. She sat in front of it as she looked at her reflection.

“Not a bad night for a run,” a voice spoke from behind.

The voice was familiar. The scent was one she was already used to by now. Ivy didn’t need to turn to know who it was.

Beside her reflection, that of a big black wolf came into view. His deep red eyes reflected too in the water.

Why did you leave?

Kael sent a thought to her.

Well, maybe because I wanted some air and to be alone.

Ivy sent her thought back to him.

You didn’t finish your food either?

I also didn’t feel like eating.

Tomorrow is going to be your first combat training class, and you are going to need your energy.

Kael said to her as he pushed a wrap toward her. Ivy could tell what it was from the scent. It was roasted meat.

Also, don’t stay out too late. There’s a curfew here. Kael sent his thoughts to her before he finally left.

Ivy was left under the moonlight, with the thoughts of her mother, the meat, and the Moon Goddess.

After she felt better, Ivy tried to sneak back into her room. As she was now naked due to having her clothes ripped when she shifted.

The dormitories were quiet as most of the students had slept. Ivy snuck through the corridors to arrive at her room when she saw a bag in front of her door.

It was a bit dirty and torn, but she knew whose bag it was. Ivy opened the door and pulled the bag in with her. She jumped onto the bed and called it a night.

The next day didn’t really start on a good note for Ivy because of the shredded clothes she had. Ivy took something from within her bag to wear as she got ready for her first day at the Seven Crowns War College.

Ivy dressed quickly, still half-convinced she'd hear the horn any moment and find herself sprinting through corridors half-laced.

She didn't hear a horn at all. That, she would realize far too late, was the problem.

The Keep's dormitory halls looked entirely different in daylight than they had the night before, stone corridors branching off in directions she hadn't had the presence of mind to memorize while stumbling toward her room half-asleep on her feet.

She took a turn she was fairly certain led back toward the dining hall, then a second turn when the first one dead-ended into a storage corridor stacked with training gear. By the time she finally pushed through the right set of doors, breathless and irritated with herself, the dining hall stood completely empty.

No plates. No noise. No wolves.

Just long, silent tables and the cold, grey light of full morning already well underway.

"No," Ivy muttered to no one, and turned in a slow circle as if the room might offer up an explanation she hadn't already guessed.

She was late. Badly late, by the look of things, and she had no earthly idea where anyone had gone.

She found her answer by following sound rather than instinct, a low, distant roar carried faintly through the stone, the unmistakable rhythm of many voices raised at once, orders and responses layered over each other in a way that could only mean one thing.

Ivy followed it through corridor after corridor, down a wide stone stairwell, out through a side door that let out into blinding daylight and open air.

The training grounds spread out before her, vast and churned with mud, ringed by low stone walls and packed, from end to end, with rows of wolves already standing in careful, disciplined formation.

Every single one of them had arrived before her.

Ivy's stomach dropped somewhere near her boots. She scanned the rows quickly, desperately, and spotted a thin gap near the back of one formation, close enough to slip into without drawing too much attention, she hoped, though hope had rarely served her particularly well since she'd arrived at this mountain.

She moved fast and low, sliding into the empty space just as the formation shifted, and kept her eyes forward, chin level, praying whatever had held everyone's attention until now would stay held a moment longer.

It didn't.

"Well." A voice cut across the training ground, dry and carrying, the same voice that had found her broken and bleeding on the mountainside yesterday.

"Look who's finally decided to join us."

Every head in the formation turned at once.

Ivy's gaze found the front of the yard, where the instructor stood exactly as unimpressed as he'd been the day before, arms crossed, expression carved from something colder than the morning air, his eyes finding hers across the entire length of the training ground with an ease that made it very clear he'd known precisely where she was standing before she'd even finished slipping into the row.

"I did say combat training starts at dawn," he continued, addressing the rest of the yard now, though his gaze hadn't left her.

"Apologies, everyone. I forgot to specify that dawn means a different hour entirely for our future Luna."

A ripple of quiet laughter moved through the ranks, not everyone, but enough.

Ivy kept her spine straight and her expression carefully blank, the way she'd learned to hold herself through every hostile room since the Great Hall, though the heat crawling up the back of her neck made that considerably harder than usual.

"Since you're here," the instructor said, "you can start where everyone else already has. Today's exercise is simple."

He gestured toward a rack of blunted training weapons lined along the near wall, then toward a wide, muddy stretch of open ground beyond it, already scored with the marks of bodies hitting earth.

"Pair off. First one to yield loses. Losers run the perimeter twice before breakfast. Winners get to watch them do it."

The formation began to break apart around her, wolves peeling off in twos, already sizing up opponents with the easy, practiced calculation of people who'd clearly done this a hundred times before.

Ivy stood frozen for half a second too long, trying to find an opponent.

“You?” the instructor's voice boomed into the field again, his eyes fixed on Ivy.

“I have someone special for you,” the instructor said with a smile.