The Lycan Princess and The Four Cardinals

Chapter Two: Wolfless

POV: Malia Moon

The gates of Blackridge Academy are taller than anything I have ever stood beneath, iron wrought into the shape of snarling wolves, jaws open like they might swallow anyone who doesn't belong.

I clutch the strap of my bag and remind myself that I earned this. Scholarship. My name on a list of names that matter, even if mine is the only one nobody will recognize.

Students pour past me in clusters, sharp and well-dressed, laughing in ways that carry the ease of people who have never once had to hide what they are. Their voices carry easily across the courtyard, confident, unbothered, the kind of noise that only comes from people who have never had to measure how much space they're allowed to take up. I keep my head down and my steps small, the way I have been taught since I could walk. Don't be seen. Don't be remembered. Just make it through the gate.

The academy itself rises behind them, all dark stone and high windows, banners in four colors snapping in the wind above the entrance, one for each kingdom, one for each pack that has sent its strongest here to be sharpened into something the crown will eventually have to reckon with. I wonder, absurdly, which banner belongs to which alpha, and whether any of them have any idea that the girl walking beneath their colors right now is the reason all four of them were sent here in the first place.

I am halfway across the courtyard, telling myself that the fastest way through is to keep moving, when I see him.

Reyes stands near the fountain at the center of the yard, surrounded by a small crowd already gathering around him like moths drawn to something bright. He looks different here. Sharper. Sure of himself in a way that feels almost unfamiliar, though I tell myself it shouldn't. Of course he looks different surrounded by his own kind instead of hidden in the woods with me.

My heart does something foolish and hopeful. Despite everything I promised myself about staying calm, about not making a scene, my feet carry me toward him before I can think better of it.

"Reyes."

The crowd around him quiets, heads turning toward me with the kind of curiosity reserved for something unexpected. Reyes turns too, and for one breathless second I let myself believe the smile is about to break across his face the way it always has under our oak tree.

It doesn't come.

His eyes flick over me, my worn boots, my patched sleeves, the bag slung over one shoulder that has clearly seen better years. Something shutters closed behind his expression, quick and final, like a door I didn't know existed slamming shut.

"Sorry," he says, voice smooth, carrying easily across the courtyard. "Do I know you?"

The words land like a physical blow. For a moment I can't find my own voice, can't reconcile the boy who tucked hair behind my ear and promised to find me first with the stranger standing in front of me now, looking at me like I am nothing more than an inconvenience interrupting his morning.

"It's Malia," I say, quieter now, aware of every eye that has turned toward us. "From the woods. You said to find you."

A ripple of laughter moves through the small crowd, and I feel my face heat with a shame I have never let myself feel before, not like this, not in front of strangers.

"I think you have me confused with someone else," Reyes says, and the cruelty of it isn't in his volume, it's in how easily the lie slides out of him, like he has rehearsed indifference the same way he once rehearsed his own name for me. "I don't know any girls from the woods."

"Reyes." His name comes out cracked, more question than accusation.

Something flickers behind his eyes, brief and almost apologetic, gone before I can be certain I saw it at all. Then it's replaced by something colder, something deliberate.

"Whoever you are," he says, loud enough now that it carries, "I don't sense any wolf on you at all. You sure you're even supposed to be here?"

The word wolfless moves through the courtyard like smoke, passed from mouth to mouth before I've even had the chance to steady myself. I feel it settle over me the way it always has, the same weight I have carried my entire hidden life, except this time it comes from someone I let myself trust, delivered in front of an audience like a performance he has decided is worth the applause.

I want to scream that he knows exactly who I am. I want to grab him by the collar and remind him of every stolen afternoon under that oak tree, every promise he made with his fingers warm against my skin. But some instinct older than my anger, some quiet voice trained into me since childhood, tells me that giving him that reaction here, in front of witnesses, in front of people who could carry word of a wolfless girl with a temper straight back to places that might start asking questions I cannot afford them to ask, would be far more dangerous than swallowing this humiliation whole.

So I say nothing.

I turn instead, spine straight despite the burn crawling up the back of my throat, and I walk away from the fountain, away from the laughter, away from the boy who apparently decided somewhere between the woods and these gates that I wasn't worth remembering after all.

I don't get far before I hear it, low murmurs trailing behind me like a current I can't outrun. Wolfless. Scholarship girl. Did you see her face. I keep walking, jaw tight, eyes forward, refusing to give anyone the satisfaction of watching me break apart in the open.

It isn't until I've rounded the corner of the main hall, putting stone and distance between myself and the courtyard, that I finally let my steps falter.

I press my back against the cool stone wall and force air into my lungs, the kind of breathing my mother taught me for exactly this sort of moment, though she likely never imagined the moment would look quite like this.

"That was quite the performance back there."

The voice is unfamiliar, low and even, coming from somewhere just to my left. I straighten immediately, every instinct snapping back into place, and find a boy leaning against the wall a few feet away, arms crossed, watching me with an expression I can't begin to read. Dark eyes, dark hair, the kind of stillness that makes me think he has been standing there far longer than I realized.

"I don't know what you're talking about," I say, because admitting anything else feels like handing him a weapon I don't yet understand the shape of.

"You walked out of that courtyard like someone who's had a lot of practice keeping her face still." He hasn't moved from the wall, hasn't uncrossed his arms, but his eyes track me with a focus that makes me feel like I'm being read rather than looked at. "Most people would have cried, or shouted, or at least let something show. You didn't."

"Maybe there wasn't anything worth showing."

"Maybe." He doesn't sound like he believes me, but he doesn't push either, which somehow unsettles me more than if he had. "Torin."

It takes me a second to realize it's his name, offered plainly, without the flourish Reyes always gave his own name like a gift he expected me to be grateful for.

"Malia," I say, before I can think better of giving it away twice in one day to people who clearly don't deserve it.

Something shifts behind his eyes at that, brief and unreadable, gone as quickly as it appeared. "The scholarship girl."

"Word travels fast."

"Word travels fast for anything that gives people an excuse to feel superior." He finally pushes off the wall, and even that small movement feels deliberate, measured, like everything about him has been considered before it happens. "For what it's worth, I don't put much stock in what people can or can't sense."

"Why not?"

"Because sensing isn't the same as knowing." He studies me a moment longer, long enough that I have to fight the urge to look away first. "And I've learned not to trust the difference."

I don't know what to say to that, so I say nothing at all, which seems to be becoming a habit of mine within my first hour here.

"You should get to the housing hall before curfew," he says finally, nodding toward a corridor I hadn't noticed branching off from where we stand. "First years who show up late get remembered for the wrong reasons. You've already had enough of the wrong reasons for one day."

I have no idea who he is. I have no idea how much he saw, or how much of what he just said was warning or observation or something else entirely.

But the way he is looking at me, like he already knows I'm hiding something far bigger than a bruised heart, tells me my first hour at Blackridge is already far more dangerous than I prepared for.