Chp 10
960 Words
Dael POV
I knew something was wrong the second she walked into the classroom.
Not because she disobeyed me, many have done that before and were dealt with accordingly.
Not because she dared to sit beside me again, most wouldn’t even breathe in my direction without permission.
Not even because she met my eyes, steady and unflinching, as if my threats were nothing but air.
No.
What snapped inside me was much older. Older than her, older than this academy, older than the thin leash I had on my own self-control.
It was that single silver strand of hair.
The one she failed to hide.
The one that exposed everything.
My blood reacted before my mind boiling, roaring, pulling at my veins like a beast finally recognizing its prey.
Silver wolf.
The very thing our ancestors swore to erase from the world.
The curse that once brought our pack to its knees.
The bloodline that slaughtered ours in cold rebellion and left our lands in ash and our people starving.
I had grown up hearing those stories before I could even read.
I was raised on the oath to destroy them.
Conditioned to feel hatred deeper than marrow.
And now she walked beside me.
Breathing the same air.
Sitting in my orbit as if she belonged here.
Her presence scratched at me from the inside, wrong, familiar, provoking.
My wolf surged to the surface, snarling for me to finish what generations before me started.
But then another pull, infuriating, magnetic struck through my chest, countering the instinct to kill with something far more destabilizing.
Attraction.
Not simple interest.
Not curiosity.
Something sharp and unwanted that made my breath come harsher and my hands curl against the desk until my knuckles burned.
That was the worst part.
That she could be the one thing I was meant to destroy…
and the one thing my body reacted to like heat to a spark.
I hated her for that.
Hated her for walking into this room with her chin slightly raised as if she hadn’t cried herself empty in the library.
Hated that even broken, she didn’t bend.
Hated that she stayed.
She should have run.
She should have taken the hour I gave her and vanished before I found an excuse to end her. But no, she returned.
And every step she took toward me was a challenge. When she approached my desk, the room seemed to narrow around her.
Students turned their heads, sensing the tension, sensing the difference even if they didn’t understand it.
Her heartbeat wasn’t fast.
Not like someone terrified.
Not like prey.
It was steady. Controlled.
A warning disguised as calm.
Then she sat next to me slowly, deliberately placing less than a handspan of space between us.
My wolf lunged against the inside of my skin.
Why isn’t she scared?
Why isn’t she running?
Why does she smell like that? Like… forbidden memory.
I tried to force my attention to the lecture, but it was impossible. Every few seconds my gaze dragged back to her.
Her hair, now obviously dyed at the ends but hiding nothing anymore.
Her neck, exposed when she lifted her chin. Her posture, rigid but refusing to fold.
Her skirt too short, revealing too much, making my jaw clench.
She kept shifting away, inch by inch, her discomfort rolling off her in cold waves.
Her knee brushed mine once, accidentally and she jerked back like she’d touched fire.
Good.
She should have feared me. But then the anger returned twice as strong. Because she didn’t fear enough. Because she dared sit there and pretend she belonged.
Because she made my chest tighten in ways I despised. And because every time her scent hit me wild, grieving, stubborn, I remembered those old stories.
Silver wolves weren’t supposed to feel.
They weren’t supposed to cry.
They weren’t supposed to survive.
So why was she here?
Why was she haunting me?
Why did the sight of that single silver strand ignite hatred so old it tasted like blood?
And why, damn it, why?
did I keep imagining what her throat would feel like under my hand again…
not breaking, but trembling?, My pen snapped between my fingers.
She flinched. For a heartbeat our eyes met. Hers were full of quiet defiance, exhaustion, and something else, something wounded but burning.
It struck me harder than any blade.
I forced myself to look away, to sketch something in the margin of my notebook to release the pressure choking me.
Lines turned into shapes.
Shapes into something darker.
A wolf’s jaw.
Teeth.
Red eyes.
A threat she would understand, even without words. I angled the notebook slightly toward her. She swallowed hard. Her fingers tightened around her pen.
Good.
Fear meant instinct.
Instinct meant truth.
But still she didn’t move away.
And that, more than anything, was what made me hate her. Because she should have run.
Because she stayed.
Because she made my wolf snarl and my pulse react and my spine burn with the urge to destroy or claim or both.
Because she was a silver wolf.
And because deep, deep down..
a part of me had known from the first moment I saw her.
I knew she was different.
Knew she was, danger.
Knew she was everything I’d been raised to wipe from the earth.
Yet here she was, sitting beside me, breathing beside me, testing the limits of my control.
My vision edged with red as I leaned back in my chair.
I should kill her.
I should finish the oath.
I should…
But I didn’t move.
Because another truth hit me with brutal clarity:If I touched her again, it wouldn’t be to kill her. And that realization was the most unforgivable of all.
- Writer
