Emberfall Academy: Claimed By The Alpha Circle

Chapter 3

WREN'S POV

"Walk away, Isolde."

The boy who'd spoken stepped past me into the light spilling off the dorm windows — tall, broad through the shoulders in a way that said hockey before anything else did, dark hair pushed back like he hadn't bothered with it all day. I didn't know his name yet, but I knew the type. Confident in a way that had never once been questioned.

Isolde held his stare a beat too long, testing it, then let go of my hair like it had never mattered to her at all.

"This isn't over," she said, brushing dirt off her sleeve that hadn't touched her. "Tell your friend to watch where she puts her hands next time."

Her circle peeled off after her, phones lowering, the laughter gone as fast as it had started. The boy crouched in front of me, and whatever easy confidence he'd walked in with dropped for a second.

"You good?"

"Nessa's not," I said, already crawling toward her.

She was curled on her side where she'd landed, one arm wrapped tight against her ribs, breath coming in short, uneven pulls that didn't sound right.

"Nessa." I got a hand under her shoulder. "Hey. Look at me."

Her eyes found mine, glassy, unfocused for a second too long before they sharpened.

"I'm fine," she said, voice shaking on its way out.

"Theo Marchetti," the boy said, already pulling his phone out. "Timberwolves captain. I'm calling this in — don't move her."

That was the first time I'd heard his name all night, and it barely registered over the sound of Nessa's breathing.

Campus medical arrived fast, gloved hands checking her ribs, a stretcher unfolding across the grass. I trailed behind them all the way to the infirmary doors, refusing to be sent back to my dorm even when a nurse tried twice.

"Family only past this point," she said the third time.

"I'm not leaving her."

Theo appeared at my shoulder, still there, still watching this play out like it was his problem too. "She's not family," he told the nurse. "She's the one who called it in. Let her wait by the door if nothing else."

The nurse relented, muttering something about liability, and disappeared behind the doors.

I sat down hard in one of the plastic chairs and put my head in my hands.

Theo dropped into the seat beside me, close enough that his knee brushed mine, and didn't move it away.

"You don't have to sit here," I said. "You did your part. You can go."

"Could." He didn't. He leaned back, studying the ceiling like it was the most interesting thing in the building, but his knee stayed exactly where it was. "Not really in the habit of leaving people mid-crisis, though. Bad look for team captain."

"That's what this is to you? A look?"

He turned his head, and for the first time all night the easy confidence dropped into something quieter. "No. That's not what I meant."

I didn't have anything to say to that, so I didn't say anything, and the silence between us stretched long enough that I became very aware of exactly how close his knee still was.

"You're shaking," he said, low.

"I'm fine."

"You said that about your friend too, before we knew it wasn't true."

That landed harder than it should have. I pulled my arms tighter around myself instead of answering, and he didn't push, just sat there, present in a way that felt deliberate.

It was almost forty minutes before a doctor came out, mask pulled down, expression already telling me this wasn't going to be simple.

"Two fractured ribs, which is straightforward enough," she said. "But there's a laceration along her side that isn't responding the way it should. We've cleaned it, closed it — it's not closing back."

"What does that mean?" I asked.

"It means whatever caused it wasn't just blunt trauma." The doctor's eyes flicked toward the east wing of the building, just for a second, like she was deciding how much to say. "I'd want a specialist to look at this. The kind we don't exactly keep on staff."

"So call one," Theo said.

"It's not that simple." She hesitated. "There used to be resources for this. Before the old wing was sealed."

The old wing.

The chain on the stairwell door flashed behind my eyes, that junior's half-finished story cut off the second a teacher rounded the corner.

"I need to see her," I said.

"She's stable and resting. You can see her in the morning."

Theo walked me back toward my dorm after, hands in his pockets, quiet in a way that didn't suit him. Halfway there he stopped walking entirely, and I stopped too, because it felt rude not to.

"For what it's worth," he said, "you got to her fast. Faster than I did, and I was standing right there."

"That's not something to be proud of."

"Wasn't trying to be proud." He looked at me a second too long, the same way Kade had the night before, like he was cataloguing something he hadn't expected to find. "Just an observation."

I didn't know what to do with that, so I said goodnight and walked the rest of the way alone, telling myself the warmth still sitting under my ribs was just adrenaline wearing off.

It wasn't, and some small, exhausted part of me knew it.

The east wing was dead quiet at this hour, the kind of quiet that had weight to it. The stairwell door was exactly where I remembered, chain rusted through the handles, padlock hanging loose enough that someone — Nessa, probably, I realized with a lurch in my stomach — had already worked it open once before.

I slipped the chain free and pushed the door open before I could talk myself out of it.

The stairs went down farther than they should have, the air turning colder with every step, until I reached a door at the bottom that wasn't locked at all. It didn't need to be. Nobody sane would have gone looking for it.

Inside, the room was empty except for a single sealed cell built into the far wall, old stone and older iron, carved symbols worn smooth with age circling the frame.

Something behind it was breathing.

I took one step closer, and the air in the room changed completely….. It felt heavier and colder.

A voice rolled out of the dark, low enough to shake the floor under my feet.

"Who's there?"