The Silver Mark

Chapter Two — The Boy Everyone Wanted

Elara's POV

By seven the next morning, I had almost convinced myself that the strange glow from my mother's pendant had been nothing more than a trick of the light. Almost.

The problem was the mark beneath my collarbone. It remained exactly where I had seen it the night before, a delicate crescent crossed by three thin lines that seemed to exist beneath my skin. The pain was gone, but whenever I touched it, a faint warmth travelled beneath my fingertips. I covered it with a small bandage before getting dressed, although I wasn't entirely sure who I was hiding it from. My father, perhaps. Or myself.

I stood before the mirror fastening the final button of my school uniform, studying the reflection staring back at me. My hair was tied into a loose braid, most of it still dark enough to appear ordinary from a distance. The silver strands were another matter. There seemed to be more of them, scattered through my black-brown hair like threads someone had carelessly woven into it. At thirteen, there had been only a few. Now, they were impossible to miss beneath bright light. I pulled my braid over my shoulder and examined it with the same critical expression I reserved for school assignments I knew I could have done better.

You're hiding the mark, Vesper observed. “I don't know what it is,” I murmured, adjusting my collar. Then find out. Vesper urged.

“Brilliant suggestion. Shall I ask my father why a mysterious symbol appeared on my body in the middle of the night?”

Vesper fell quiet. She knew exactly why I didn't want to do that. My father had never been cruel in the obvious ways. He didn't strike me, scream at me without reason, or throw things across rooms. His cruelty was quieter, buried beneath long silences, disappointed looks and the strange heaviness that appeared whenever his eyes lingered on me for too long. Especially when I reminded him of my mother. I knew very little about her beyond the fact that she had died giving birth to me. I had never heard her voice, never known her favourite food, never learned what made her laugh. I had only a few photographs and the silver pendant my father had given me when I was six. Whenever I asked him about her, something closed behind his eyes. Eventually, I stopped asking.

The academy stood at the eastern edge of the Everhart territory, surrounded by thick forests and distant mountains that formed natural borders around the pack. Its old stone buildings had been renovated over the years, so the place looked like an unusual mixture of ancient pack architecture and modern school facilities. There were ordinary classrooms, laboratories, a massive library, and open courtyards alongside extensive training grounds where students learned shifting, combat, tracking, and the fundamentals of pack defence. Children from several allied territories attended, which meant the academy was as much a social hierarchy as it was a school. Everyone knew who belonged to which family, whose parents held influence, which children were expected to become future leaders, and which ones were unlikely to matter.

I had grown up somewhere between those categories. Being the Gamma's daughter meant I was respected on paper, but my family's reputation had never quite translated into the protection people assumed came with it. I had learned that a powerful surname could get you through a door, but it couldn't make people like you once you were inside.

I had barely crossed the courtyard when the first whisper reached me.

“She's got more.”

I kept walking. Another voice followed, amused and deliberately loud enough for me to hear. “Maybe she's sick.” “Maybe she was born wrong.”

The laughter that followed was quieter, but somehow worse. I kept my shoulders straight and continued toward the main building, refusing to give them the satisfaction of turning around. I had learned that acknowledging cruelty only encouraged people to repeat it. If I pretended not to hear, eventually they became bored.

Ignore them, Vesper advised.

“I am.”

Your hands are clenched.

I glanced down and forced my fingers to loosen around the strap of my bag.

A girl from my history class stepped into my path before I reached the stairs. She was one of those people who never seemed to have a hair out of place and had somehow managed to turn being pretty into a full-time occupation. Her eyes travelled over my braid with open curiosity, followed by the small smile that meant she had found something entertaining.

“Does it hurt?”

I frowned. “What?”

“The silver.”

She gestured toward my hair, her expression becoming falsely concerned. “It keeps spreading, doesn't it? My mother says unusual colouring can mean something is wrong with your wolf.”

A few students nearby laughed. For a second, the old instinct returned—the desire to lower my head, apologize, and escape before the embarrassment became unbearable. Instead, I looked directly at her and forced my expression into something resembling amusement. “Then I suppose we'll all have to wait and see,” I replied.

Her smile disappeared. I walked past her without looking back.

I like you when you do that, Vesper said, amusement curling through her voice.

“You like me all the time,” I snarked, unable to stop the small smile tugging at my mouth.

True.

A familiar scent reached me before I saw him, warm cedar mixed with something faintly citrus beneath the unmistakable presence of Alpha blood. I turned and immediately regretted it because Alaric was walking directly toward me. He had grown considerably over the past year, with broad shoulders from constant training and dark brown hair that never seemed willing to stay in place. His grey-green eyes were what most people noticed first, particularly because he had a habit of looking directly at whoever was speaking to him. He carried himself with the natural confidence of someone who had never needed to wonder whether he belonged somewhere.

Everyone knew Alaric was the Alpha's son, the future leader of our pack, and probably the most admired boy in the academy. Girls found excuses to pass by his training group and teachers expected him to excel. I had known him since childhood, which should have made my stupid little crush easier to manage. It hadn't.

He's coming here, Vesper pointed out.

I resisted the urge to check my reflection in the nearest window.

Alaric stopped in front of me, his attention immediately settling on my face. “You're late,” he said. “You usually arrive earlier.”

I raised an eyebrow. “You noticed?” He shrugged, but there was a faint smile on his face. “Of course I noticed.” Vesper practically exploded inside my head. He noticed.

I looked away before my face could betray me, but Alaric seemed to catch the change anyway. His attention shifted toward the students behind me, and his expression hardened slightly.

“Did someone say something?” he asked.

His eyes moved briefly toward the girl from history before returning to me. He didn't ask again, perhaps because he knew I wouldn't answer. Instead, he simply fell into step beside me as we headed toward class. That small gesture affected me more than it should have. Alaric had always been like that. He noticed things. He had somehow become one of the few people who could make me feel visible without making me feel exposed.

The history classroom overlooked the eastern training fields, and sunlight poured through the tall windows onto rows of wooden desks. Beyond the glass, older students practised controlled shifting under the supervision of instructors, their wolves racing across the grass before returning to human form. I loved watching them. I hated being part of it. Vesper's size had become an unfortunate subject of conversation during practical lessons. While most wolves grew considerably after their first shift, she remained smaller than average, and although the instructors insisted that wolves developed at different rates, that explanation had never stopped the whispers.

Runt.

Weak.

Defective.

The words were rarely spoken loudly enough for teachers to punish anyone. They didn't need to be.

By lunch, the morning had passed without anything particularly terrible happening, which I considered an achievement. I carried my food toward the far edge of the courtyard and settled beneath an enormous oak tree whose branches stretched over the grass like a protective canopy. It was one of my favourite places in the academy because the noise from the central courtyard faded beneath its leaves, leaving only distant conversation. I had barely opened my lunch when Alaric appeared and dropped into the space beside me. He looked entirely too comfortable there as he stole a piece of fruit from my plate before I could stop him, and I gave him an offended look that only made him laugh.

“You have your own,” I told him. “I didn't want mine,” he replied.

“That sounds like a personal problem.”

He smiled and leaned against the tree. For several minutes we ate without speaking, and I found myself appreciating the quiet. With most people, silence felt like something I had to fill. With Alaric, it didn't.

Eventually, his expression changed.

“You haven't been sleeping,” Alaric said.

I looked down at my food. “I've been fine.”

“You've been having nightmares again.”

There was no accusation in his voice, only concern, and somehow that made lying harder. I nodded.

He didn't press for details. Instead, he watched the students crossing the courtyard for a moment before looking back at me. “You can tell me things, Elara.”

“I know.”

“I mean it.” Alaric replied.

“I know,” I repeated, quieter this time. His expression softened. “You don't have to handle everything yourself.”

The words settled somewhere deep inside me.

I didn't know then how much I would eventually hate that sentence. Not because he had been wrong, but because there would come a time when I would have no choice but to discover exactly how much I could survive alone.

That evening, I returned home to find Seraphine waiting in the hallway. Her eyes immediately caught the edge of the bandage beneath my collar, and she asked what had happened. I told her I had scratched myself and changed the subject before she could ask anything else. She studied me for a moment with that peculiar little smile she wore whenever she thought she knew something I didn't, but eventually let me pass.

I went upstairs and cleaned my room until midnight before I fell asleep. The dream came almost immediately.

The forest was darker than the one from the previous night, its enormous trees rising beneath a silver moon while mist curled between their roots. I stood barefoot on the cold earth, unable to remember how I had arrived. Then she appeared—the white-haired woman from before, dressed in pale fabric that seemed almost to glow beneath the moonlight. There was something painfully familiar about her face, despite the fact that I knew I had never seen her before.

“You have awakened,” she said.

I tried to ask what she meant, but the words caught in my throat. Her gaze moved toward the pendant around my neck, then to the silver strands in my hair.

“The blood remembers.”

A howl echoed beyond the trees.

The woman's expression changed.

Fear entered her eyes.

She stepped closer and lowered her voice. “There are people who will call you weak because they are afraid of what you might become. Do not let them decide who you are.”

I tried to reach for her.

“Who are you?”