The Alpha Academy Never knew My Name

The floor was cold under my knees. I did not stop scrubbing. 4:30 in the morning. That was the only time this house belonged to me. Selene never woke before seven. Alpha Cole never came downstairs before six. For two and a half hours, the kitchen tile and the hallway mirrors were mine to fix without anyone watching me do it. My phone buzzed on the floor beside me. Six messages. A group chat full of girls I was technically in the pack with and had never once spoken to in person. Photos of outfits for a party I was not invited to. I turned the screen face down. Something under my skin had been humming since midnight. Not nerves, it's lower than nerves. A pull in my chest that tightened every time I clenched my jaw too hard. It had been getting worse for months, since my birthday. I told myself it was stress. I had gotten very good at lying to myself. By 6:15 breakfast was on the table. Coffee exactly the way Alpha Cole liked it. Selene's protein shake blended and sat in the fridge, because god forbid she blended it herself. I was still tying my hair back when his voice came from the study. “Maren, In here.” I did not run. I stopped running for him years ago, back when I figured out that hurrying just made him wait longer before he told me whatever he wanted to tell me, like my panic was something he enjoyed watching. I walked in normally and stood in front of his desk with my hands folded. He did not look up right away. “You are being enrolled at Alpha Academy,” he said. Starting this week, alongside Selene. I heard the words, but they did not make sense. “I am going to the academy,” I repeated, like saying it out loud would make it true. “You are going there, to keep an eye on my daughter,” he said. “That is what you are going there to do, and make sure you report to me if anything happens to her. Anything at all. Do you understand what I am telling you?” I understood exactly what he was telling me. He was not sending me to school. He was sending me to work. “Yes sir,” I said. He finally looked at me, and for one second something moved across his face that I had never been able to name. Not suspicion, and not fear. Something colder than both. “Try not to embarrass this family,” he said. “Do not draw attention to yourself. You are there for Selene, nothing else.” “Yes sir,” I said again, and left before he could see whatever was happening on my own face. Selene found out an hour later and made sure the whole kitchen heard about it. “You want her to babysit me at the academy,” she said to her father, like I was not standing three feet away holding her shake. “Are you being serious right now? “I won't embarrass you,” I said, because someone had to say something and it clearly was not going to be him. She spun on me so fast her ponytail hit her own shoulder. “Who the hell gave you permission to talk,” she snapped. “ Kindly shut up your damn mouth and carry my bags. That is literally your entire job description.” Neither of us was wrong. That was the part that used to keep me up at night, back when I still let myself feel it. I was not her sister. I had never been her sister. I was a girl her father found somewhere and dressed up in a family name he let me borrow when it was convenient. We got to Alpha Academy two days later. The gates alone were taller than our whole house, black iron twisted into wolves mid howl. Selene walked ahead like she owned the driveway, waving at people who actually knew her name. I stayed three steps back, carrying both our bags, because that was easier than arguing about whose job that was. That was when I felt it. A pull low in my stomach that had nothing to do with nerves, sharp enough that I stopped walking and had to catch my breath. Three guys stood near the main steps. You could feel the difference in the air around them before you even looked twice, that low current powerful wolves carry without meaning to. One of them, dark hair, sharper features than the other two, was not laughing at whatever the loud one beside him was saying. He was just watching the crowd move past him, unreadable. And then, for one full second, he was watching me. My wolf, the thing that had been humming under my skin since midnight, went dead silent and then slammed against my ribs so hard I nearly dropped Selene's bag. I looked away first. I always looked away first. That was the rule I had built my entire life on. Do not be noticed, do not be interesting, and do not give anyone a reason to look twice. Something in my chest already knew that rule was not going to survive this place. Selene noticed me stumble and rolled her eyes. “What the hell is wrong with you now," she muttered. “Don’t you dare embarrass me on day one here.” “I won't do such," I said again, quiet, and automatic. But my eyes went back to him anyway, but just for a second, and long enough to see that he was still looking. I did not know his name yet. I did not know that in a few weeks he would be the one asking me questions I had no answers to, about a name I had never heard, about a version of me that had apparently existed before I was ever born into this house as somebody's charity case. I just knew that whatever this feeling was, it did not care that I had spent eighteen years learning how to disappear. For the first time in my life, something wanted to find me.