The dean’s words clung to me like burrs under skin.
Do not fear being known.
Right. Easy for her to say. She wasn’t the one walking around with four Alpha signatures humming under her ribcage like live wire. She wasn’t the one who’d just been told her bond wasn’t a thread but something older than Lycandra—older than the realms themselves.
By the time the oak doors closed behind me, the Academy felt too tight. Every rune hummed with attention, every brick seemed to lean in, listening. I forced myself down the corridor before I could choke on it.
I didn’t stop walking until the air stopped vibrating.
Silver Ridge’s outer path gave way to the forest—quiet, shaded, woven with faint ward-light threading the branches. Wards brushed my arm as I passed, static warning me I was crossing the bo
