The Alpha Academy Never knew My Name

CHAPTER THREE

I did not sleep that night.

Every time I closed my eyes I felt Kai's breath against my ear again, that low voice telling me whatever I was hiding was not staying hidden much longer, and my wolf would slam against my ribs so hard I had to sit up just to breathe through it.

By the time the sun came up I had convinced myself he was bluffing. And was testing me. Wolves like him, ranked bloodline, heir to an entire pack, probably tested every unranked student just to see who flinched.

I was not going to flinch.

I told myself that right up until I read the schedule pinned to the dorm bulletin board and saw the words Combat and Shifting Fundamentals, mandatory, ground floor intake, first period.

My stomach dropped straight through the floor.

I had spent eighteen years making sure nobody ever saw my wolf do anything more impressive than a half shift during required pack ceremonies. I did not know how to fake weakness in front of an instructor whose entire job was measuring strength.

The training yard was already full by the time I got there, a wide stretch of packed dirt surrounded by stone bleachers, students in academy issued gray shifting gear stretching and talking in tight little clusters. I spotted Selene near the front row, laughing with the same girls from lunch, already glancing back toward the entrance like she was waiting for an audience.

She saw me and smiled the way a cat smiles at something it has already decided to play with.

Instructor Bram walked out a minute later, an older man built like a wall, scars crossing one side of his face in thick pale lines that told a story nobody had to ask about.

“Pair up,” he barked. “Unranked intake goes first. I want to see baseline control before I waste my time with anyone who thinks they are already good at this.”

Pairs formed fast. I ended up across from a girl I did not know, thin and nervous looking, clearly as unranked as I was.

“Half shift only,” Bram called out. “Control, not power. I want claws and nothing else. Anyone who loses control past that gets written up.”

I had done this exact drill a hundred times at home, alone, in the woods behind the Cole property where nobody could see me actually try. I knew exactly how much of myself I could let out before it became a problem.

I let out less than that.

Claws came slow, uneven, my hand shaking on purpose in a way that looked like fear instead of restraint. My partner did the same, actual fear this time, hers real where mine was performance.

“Weak,” Bram said, walking past both of us without slowing down. “Next pair.”

Selene's laugh carried across the yard loud enough that I felt it in my teeth.

I kept my eyes down and told myself it did not matter what anyone here thought of me. I had survived eighteen years of worse than this.

Then Bram stopped walking.

He turned back toward me, studying my hand where the claws had already retracted, and something in his expression shifted from bored to curious in a way I did not like at all.

“Do that again,” he said.

My stomach twisted.

“Sir,” I said carefully, “I do not think.....”

“Again,” he said, sharper this time.

I did not have a choice. I let the claws come out again, keeping them just as slow, just as shaky, hoping he would get bored and move on.

He crouched down instead and grabbed my wrist, turning my hand under the light.

These are not baseline claws, he muttered, almost to himself. This is a girl actively fighting herself.

My blood went cold.

“I don’t know what you mean,” I said, echoing the same lie I had given Kai the day before, except this time my voice cracked slightly on the way out.

Bram straightened up and looked at me for a long moment, the kind of look that made me feel like he was peeling back a layer of skin just by staring.

“What is your name?” he asked.

“Maren Cole,” I said.

“Cole,” he repeated, and something in his face flickered, recognition maybe, or something closer to suspicion. “Adopted into the pack. I remember the paperwork crossing my desk years back. Strange circumstances, that adoption.”

I did not know what to say to that, so I said nothing.

He did not push further, not out loud, but he made a note on the clipboard tucked under his arm, and I did not need to see what he wrote to know it was not going to help me disappear.

“Next pair,” he called out finally, moving on.

I let out a breath I had been holding since he grabbed my wrist.

Selene's whole table watched the exchange with obvious interest, but nobody had heard the actual words exchanged, which meant the rumor that would come out of this later was going to be whatever was most fun to invent.

The rest of the drills went the same way, me performing weakness with every ounce of control I had left, my wolf clawing at the inside of my ribs like it resented being caged that badly. By the time the class moved to sparring pairs, I was exhausted in a way that had nothing to do with physical effort.

Sparring pairs were picked by rank proximity, which meant I ended up matched against someone from the middle tier instead of the bottom, a broad shouldered guy named Derek who looked thrilled at the idea of an easy match.

“This should not take long,” he said, grinning at his friends before we even started.

Bram blew the whistle.

Derek came in fast and sloppy, overconfident, expecting me to fold the second he swung. Every instinct I had screamed at me to duck under his arm and put him on the ground in under three seconds, the way I had trained myself to do a hundred times alone in those woods.

Instead I let him catch my shoulder, staggered back on purpose, went down hard enough to bruise.

The crowd laughed.

“Get up,” Bram called, unimpressed, already looking at his clipboard instead of me.

I got up. Derek came at me again, faster this time, clearly enjoying himself now that the crowd was watching, and for one terrible second his fist came close enough to my face that instinct nearly overrode training. My wolf surged toward the surface so hard my vision sharpened, colors going strange and bright, and I barely, barely managed to shove it back down before it broke free completely.

I hit the ground again instead, on purpose, chest heaving, claws digging into my own palms hard enough to draw blood just to keep myself grounded.

“That is enough,” a voice said.

Not Bram's voice.

I looked up, breathing hard, and found Kai standing at the edge of the sparring ring, arms crossed, watching me with an expression that had gone completely unreadable again.

Derek froze mid step, clearly not expecting a ranked heir to interrupt a beginner drill for any reason.

“She is done for today,” Kai said, not looking at Derek at all. Still looking at me.

Bram glanced between us, something calculating crossing his face, but he did not argue with a Draven heir standing in his training yard.

“Fine,” Bram said. “Cole, sit out the rest of the period.”

I stood up slowly, humiliated in a completely different way now, aware of every set of eyes in the yard watching Kai Draven personally intervene on behalf of the unranked girl everyone already thought was a joke.

Selene's expression had gone from amused to something colder, something calculating, like she was recalculating exactly how much of a threat I actually was.

I walked past Kai without looking at him, my whole body still trembling from how close I had come to losing control in front of everyone.

He fell into step beside me anyway.

“You are not weak,” he said quietly, once we were far enough from the crowd that nobody else could hear.

“I do not know what you are talking about,” I said, exhausted, the lie coming out flatter than I meant it to.

He stopped walking. I stopped too, because something in his tone made it impossible not to.

“I watched you hold back today,” he said. “Twice. Maybe three times if I count what almost happened just now with Derek. Whatever you actually are underneath what you are showing everyone, it scares you more than it scares them.”

I did not answer, because there was nothing safe to say.

He studied me for a long moment, close enough again that my wolf reacted the same way it had the day before, that low, humming pull that felt dangerously close to wanting something I did not have a name for.

“I am not going to tell anyone what I saw,” he said finally.

Relief hit me so hard my knees actually weakened.

“But,” he added, voice dropping lower, almost intimate, “that does not mean I am done watching you.”

Before I could respond, his phone buzzed in his pocket, and whatever he read on the screen made his whole expression shut down instantly, that unreadable mask sliding back into place harder than before.

“I have to go,” he said, already turning away.

“Wait,” I called, before I could stop myself. “What was that?”

He paused, glancing back at me once, and for a second I saw something flicker across his face that looked almost like worry, gone as fast as it appeared.

“My father,” he said. “He wants to meet the new intake student personally. Apparently there is a name on tonight's list that caught his attention.”

My stomach dropped straight through the floor for the second time that day.

“Whose name?” I asked, already knowing, somehow, exactly what he was going to say before he said it.

“Yours,” he said. “Cole. He specifically asked for you by name, and he never asks for unranked students.”

Then he walked away, leaving me standing alone in the middle of the training yard with my claws still faintly aching from being forced back under my skin, and one single thought pounding through my head loud enough to drown out everything else.

Why would the head of the Draven pack, the most powerful family at this entire academy, already know my name before I ever said a single word to him.