Emberfall Academy: Claimed By The Alpha Circle

Chapter 5

WREN'S POV

Marcus Draven let the silence stretch before he spoke again, long enough that I could hear my own pulse over the crowd's held breath.

"The old accord is clear. The bonded vessel of the Shadow Wolf is mated, by blood and by law, to the heirs of the three ruling packs sworn to its protection."

He lifted one hand toward the steps.

"Kade Voss. Theo Marchetti. Callum Reyes."

The three of them stepped forward together, and the courtyard's murmur spiked sharper. Whoever the bonded girl was, she'd just been handed three of the most powerful names in the territory, whether she wanted them or not.

"My daughter," Marcus continued, and the word landed harder than I expected, "was raised believing this bond belonged to her."

Isolde didn't flinch. Beside her, a woman I hadn't noticed before went very still — sharp-featured, composed in a way that looked practiced rather than natural. Her eyes weren't on Marcus. They were fixed on the crowd, scanning row by row like she was hunting for someone specific.

"The bond will be found tonight," Marcus announced, and the search began.

Elders spread through the rows, scenting, cutting, moving with the same unhurried precision as the one who'd caught me in the stairwell. Students shifted, some cooperating, some holding still. I forced my own body to do the same, though my legs itched to run toward gates that were already shut.

An elder reached my row and stopped. Went stiller than he'd been for anyone else, head tilting, nostrils flaring twice.

His hand closed around my wrist.

The world narrowed to that grip, to the cold shock of it, and for one frozen second I couldn't breathe at all. Every plan I didn't have collapsed at once. There was nowhere left to be small.

"Alpha Draven." His voice cracked across the courtyard. "I have her."

Every head turned. My knees went weak enough that I had to lock them just to stay standing, heat rushing up my neck as hundreds of eyes found me at once. I wanted the ground to open and swallow me whole.

Marcus came down the steps himself this time, slow, and the crowd parted without being told to.

He stopped a few feet from me, and whatever he'd expected to see, it wasn't this. His eyes moved over my face feature by feature like he was matching it against a memory. His breath caught, audible even from where I stood.

"What's your name?" His voice wavered on the last word.

"Wren." My voice barely held. "Wren Calloway."

His face went through three expressions in as many seconds — shock, disbelief, then a grief so raw it frightened me more than the elder's grip had. Behind him, the sharp-featured woman had gone rigid, one hand pressed flat against her own collarbone like she was holding herself together by force.

"Calloway." He repeated it like the name itself was wrong. "Who are your parents?"

"I don't—" My voice cracked. "I don't know. I grew up in the system. There's no record."

"There wouldn't be." He murmured it, almost to himself, and shut his own face down a second later, like he'd caught himself feeling something he wasn't ready to.

The woman beside him spoke, sharp and too fast. "Marcus. This isn't the time."

"No," he agreed, but he didn't look away from meNot yet. "Later. This is far from over."

That was when Isolde moved.

She crossed the courtyard fast, faster than anything should move, claws lengthening before she'd covered half the distance.

"No." The word tore out of her, raw. "She doesn't get to have this—"

Theo stepped into her path first, easy and unbothered, like he'd been expecting exactly this.

"Whoa. What exactly are you doing to our mate?"

"Your mate?" Isolde's laugh came out sharp, disbelieving. "This is mine. I was raised for this. She's nothing — a scholarship nobody who doesn't even know what she is."

"She knows exactly what she is." Callum's voice was quiet, but it cut cleaner than Isolde's shout had. He glanced at me once then shrugged. "Not our problem what you were raised to expect."

Kade stepped forward and put himself directly between her and me.

"No one touches Wren Calloway. As of tonight, she is under our protection. Ours to guard. Ours to answer for." His eyes didn't leave Isolde's. "Anyone who raises a hand against her answers to all three of us."

Isolde's chest heaved, claws curling back one furious inch at a time.

"This isn't over."

"It is tonight," Kade told her.

I stood frozen between them, wrist still throbbing, and looked past them all to where Marcus still hadn't moved from the base of the steps.

He was staring at me like a man who'd just seen something he'd spent years telling himself he'd never see again.

"You look—" he started, voice unsteady.

The woman beside him cut him off with a hand on his arm, quiet and fast. "Marcus. Not here."

He stopped. Swallowed whatever he'd been about to say.

Her eyes moved to me then, and there was nothing warm in them at all — just calculation, cold and immediate, like she was already three moves ahead of everyone else in this courtyard.

She stepped down toward me before anyone could stop her, faster than a walk should be, and reached out and gripped my chin, tilting my face up into the floodlight like she needed to see it clearly.

"Selene." Kade's voice, sharp, a warning.

She didn't let go. If anything, her grip tightened, nails pressing crescents into my jaw hard enough to sting.

She leaned in close, voice dropped so low it barely reached me at all.

"You have your mother's eyes," she said. "Too bad she's not here to see this. She'd be disappointed."

My stomach dropped straight through the floor.

Then she smiled, released my chin, and stepped back into the crowd like nothing had happened at all.