Emberfall Academy: Claimed By The Alpha Circle

Chapter 2

WREN'S POV

"You need to leave."

Kade didn't move. "Your eyes—"

"I heard you the first time." I grabbed his sleeve and hauled him back a step, glancing down the hallway like that would somehow undo the fact that he was standing in it. "This is the girls' dorm. You can't be here."

"I'm aware of where I am."

"Then act like it and go."

A door opened three rooms down. Then another.

"Is that—"

"Oh my god, it's Kade Voss."

Two girls in pajama shorts were already crossing the hall, and behind them a third poked her head out, phone already lifting halfway to her face before she caught herself.

"What are you doing here?" the first one asked, already reaching for his arm like she hadn't actually expected an answer.

Kade's expression flattened into panic.

"I was just leaving," Kade bit out, already stepping back.

"You don't have to." Another girl had appeared. A fourth. I had no idea where they were all coming from.

Nobody was looking at me anymore.

I stepped back out of the crowd, then another step, and by the third nobody noticed I'd moved at all. Kade caught my eye once over someone's shoulder but I turned and walked before I had to decide what to do with that.

The cold outside helped clear my head, a little. My hand still throbbed under the bandage in a way that made no sense for a cut that had already closed, and the walk gave it time to settle into a dull, constant ache. I needed to tell someone, even if I didn't know what I'd say when I found the words.

Nessa was at the field behind the east dorms, where the pack kids sometimes gathered after hours when they wanted space the dorms didn't give them. I spotted her by the bleachers, and my relief lasted about four seconds before I registered who she was standing in front of.

Isolde Draven. Flanked by three others, all Draven or Draven-adjacent, were watching Nessa with the kind of interest that never ended well.

"—don't see what business it is of yours," Nessa was saying, arms crossed, chin up in the way that meant she was more scared than she was letting on.

"It's not business." Isolde's voice was smooth and almost bored. "I just don't like being lied to about where my things go missing."

"Nobody took your things."

"Someone did." Isolde's eyes slid past Nessa and landed on me before I'd even reached them. "And here's the wolfless girl, right on cue. Perfect."

"I don't know what you're talking about."

"I wasn't talking to you yet."

She tilted her head, slowly, and took one step closer, then another, closing the distance without hurrying at all — like she already knew neither of us would run.

Then she moved fast and had my wrist before I could pull back.

The same wrist.

Pain shot up my arm sharp enough to white out my vision for a second, and I must have made a sound, because Isolde's eyes narrowed.

"That's interesting," Isolde murmured, her grip tightening. "You're not supposed to still feel that."

"Let go of her." Nessa's voice cracked through the air, and she stepped in, hand closing around Isolde's arm.

Isolde didn't even look at her. She just shoved.

Nessa went down hard, and I was already moving before she hit the ground, but I didn't get two steps.

Isolde's hand closed in my hair and yanked, and the sky tipped sideways.

I hit the dirt on my hands and knees, grit biting into my palms, my scalp screaming where she'd pulled. Somewhere above me, phones were already out, screens lighting up from faces I didn't recognize, all of them laughing like this was something worth recording.

"Get a good angle," one of them said. "Nobody's going to believe this without proof."

I tried to push myself up and a boot planted itself in the dirt inches from my hand, close enough to be a warning.

Then a voice cut through all of it, low and furious, close enough that I felt it more than heard it.

"That's enough."