BOUND BY MIDNIGHT BLOOD

"Clean that up properly, you stupid bitch." I was already on my knees before Liora finished the sentence. Red wine sat in a wide circle on the white floor, spreading out from where she had thrown her own glass at me. My uniform was soaked through, and it was cold against my skin, but I did not say anything about that. I never did. "I'm sorry," I said. "I'll fix it." "Sorry doesn't fix my dress." She held up her sleeve so everyone could see the stain. "Look what she did to me." Someone laughed, then more people started laughing. A girl behind me called me the help, a boy said I would never be a real Harlan, no matter how many years I spent trying. I kept scrubbing, without looking up, because If I looked up, they would see my face, and I could not let them see my face. My name is Lyra Emberly. Six years ago, my parents died, and Alpha Harlan took me in. Not out of love. I understood that even then, young as I was. He brought me first to his mansion, a huge, cold place with more rooms than people to fill them, and told me I would live there now, that I should be grateful. I was seven and I did not know yet what grateful was going to cost me. For six years, that mansion has been its own kind of hell. I was never given a room in the family wing, I slept in a small space near the kitchens, the kind of room built for staff, not children, I learned to cook before I learned to read properly, I learned to disappear before I learned much of anything else, and when I turned old enough, Alpha Harlan sent me here too, to Alpha Academy, so his real daughter would never have to walk these halls alone. So now I have two places to survive instead of one. The mansion, where I am furniture, and this academy, where I am nothing at all. No one at the mansion ever told me how my parents died. I stopped asking a long time ago, because every time I did, the room went quiet, like my question was something dirty that needed to be swept under a rug. Today is my birthday. I am eighteen, but no one at the mansion remembered, no one here did either. I did not expect a cake or a gift, not anymore, not after six years of learning better. I only wished, quietly, just once, that someone would notice. No one did, and by lunch, I had already stopped hoping they would. The stain took a long time to clean. By the time it was gone, my knees hurt and my hands shook from scrubbing so hard, my fingers had turned red and raw. Liora did not check my work, because she did not need to, she just walked away with her friends, already talking about something else, already forgetting I existed at all. That was the part that hurt the most. Not the cruelty itself, it was how fast they forgot it, like I had not even been standing there at all. I stayed on the floor a little longer, listening to the hall empty out around me. No one looked at my direction on the way out. I picked up the wet cloth and stood, and that was when something strange happened. My chest tightened, hard and sudden, like someone had grabbed it from the inside. I grabbed a chair to keep myself from falling. For one second, the shadows on the wall looked like they were moving on their own, curling like smoke, though there was no fire anywhere near me. Then it stopped. I blinked, and it was gone, as if it had not happened at all. I pressed a hand to my ribs and tried to breathe normal again. Eighteen. I had heard stories about what happens to some wolves on their eighteenth birthday, but those were always other people's stories, never mine. Nothing at the mansion or this academy had ever really felt like mine, and I did not expect that to change just because a number did. The side door slammed open before I could think about it any longer. "Oh good, you're still here." Liora was back, two friends beside her, walking in like they owned the room, which, in a way, they did. None of them were smiling now. "We need to talk about what you did to me." "I already said sorry." I stood up straight, even though my legs felt weak under me. "What else do you want?" "I want you to remember what you are." She walked toward me fast. "You are not my sister. You never were. You are the stray my father felt sorry for. And I am tired of pretending in front of people." "Liora, please don't do this." "Don't tell me what to do." One of her friends grabbed my arm hard enough to leave a mark, while the other one grabbed my other arm. "You embarrassed me today. In front of everyone. Do you know how that feels?" I did not fight them. I had learned a long time ago that fighting back only made things worse, back at the mansion, long before I ever set foot here. The last time I tried, I lost my meals for a whole week as punishment, and I did not make that mistake twice. Liora pushed me, both hands against my chest, and my back hit the metal railing along the edge of the hall. Below me was the ravine that ran behind the academy, deep and full of sharp rocks. I looked down without meaning to, and It was a long way to fall. "Liora, stop." My voice was shaking now. "This isn't a game anymore." "Do I look like I'm playing?" She pushed me again, harder this time. My foot slipped on the wet floor where her drink had spilled earlier. For one long second I hung there with nothing to hold onto, both arms out, grabbing at nothing but air. Then I fell. The wind was loud in my ears. The rocks below were coming closer and closer, and I had one small, calm thought before the fear took over completely. This is it, this is how I die, after six years of surviving everything else. But It wasn't. Something inside me broke open, and it did not feel gentle. It felt like every bad year I had lived through, at the mansion and here both, finally had somewhere to go. Dark shadow poured out of my skin and wrapped around my body like arms holding me up. I twisted through the air in a way that should not have been possible, the shadow pushed outward in one strong wave and knocked Liora and her friends flat on the ground above me. I landed on a small ledge cut into the side of the ravine. My knees hit hard, but nothing broke, black shadow moved slowly off my fingers like smoke rising from something burning underneath my skin. I stared at my own hands strangely, because I did not recognize them. Above me, someone was watching. A dark shape stood at the top of the ravine, still and silent, before it slipped back into the trees. Then I heard footsteps. Fast ones, coming closer instead of running away like everyone else always did. Something old woke up inside my chest, something that had been asleep for six long years, and it lifted its head and howled. A voice cut through the air above me, loud enough to reach the bottom of the ravine. It sounded deep and angry, the kind of voice that had never once had to ask a question twice. "What the hell is this?"