1.Rhea
761 Words
The last day of summer always tasted like disappointment.
Warm air clung to my skin as I shoved the final sweater into my suitcase. Golden evening light spilled across my bedroom floor, soft and pretty in a way my mood absolutely wasn’t. Tomorrow was Silver Ridge Academy—nine months of pretending that place didn’t quietly suck the soul out of me.
On paper, Silver Ridge was Lycandra’s pride. The jewel of the wolf realm. The “elite multi-realm boarding academy designed to shape the future leaders of the Accord.”
Reality? Silver Ridge was a battlefield wrapped in moonlight.
The hierarchy wasn’t carved into stone, but you learned it fast. At the top sat the bloodline elites—wolves with names that could open borders, fae dripping glamour and centuries-deep court etiquette, drakonics with scales like jewelry. Their dominance carried weight. Rooms went silent when they walked in.
And people like me? The bottom tier. The scholarship wolves. The “charity cases.” The ones everyone politely tolerated until they didn’t.
The Great Accord meant students from every realm sent their heirs here. Fae heirs with enchantment threaded into their skin. Dragon-bloods whose eyes glowed when their temper spiked. Siren-bloods who had to train with their voices muted by runes because the last girl who lost control charmed half the drakon cohort.
Everyone at Silver Ridge had power. Wolves shifted. Fae bent glamour. Drakonics wielded flame. All of it could be carved into sigils—runic boosts, wards, protections, and sometimes, weapons. The academy walls were thick with them. Valorian glamour anchors stitched beside wolf-carved wards, each one humming faintly in the bones of the place.
They kept out external danger.
Nothing protected you from your classmates.
I caught my reflection in the mirror. Bum-length silver hair. Blue eyes too bright to hide anything. Curves that refused to be subtle. Definitely not stick-thin, not drenched in enchanted couture the way half the elite girls were. Just… me.
Rhea Morgan. Seventeen-going-on-eighteen. Adopted. Abandoned as a newborn. Still wondering why.
And if I shifted on my eighteenth birthday and didn’t feel the mate-tether snap into place—if even the Goddess decided I wasn’t worth choosing—I wasn’t sure what pieces of me would be left.
My adoptive parents loved me fiercely. They gave me a home, a life, a future. But the ache never stopped whispering: someone left you. Someone didn’t want you. Someone knew your name—the real one—and still walked away.
My phone buzzed. Only one person blew it up this early.
“Hey, Rhee!” Lila Caine practically screamed through the speaker. “Ready for senior year?”
“Over the moon,” I deadpanned. “Can’t wait to get publicly executed on the social ladder again.”
She snorted. “It’s not going to be that bad.”
“That’s what you said before Maeve Blackthorn kicked my legs out from under me and blamed gravity.”
“Okay, Maeve’s a demon in a crop top,” Lila corrected. “Anyway, positives: we’re suite-mates this year. Plus Nora. Plus Bree. It’s going to be perfect.”
Our little found-family pack. Nora Sinclair, a soft-spoken menace when underestimated. Bree Hale, sweet and dreamy until she wasn’t. Then there were the boys: Finn, who lived for chaos; MJ, sarcastic with a death wish; Evan, the scholarship wolf with ninja-level invisibility.
We weren’t royalty or legacy wolves. But we were loyal. That counted for something at Silver Ridge.
“Also,” Lila continued, “you’re coming to dinner tomorrow. No excuses.”
I groaned. “Li—”
“Nope! It’s my official mate dinner. Family event. Theo wants you there and so do I.”
Theo Hayes—her mate, the future Beta, and walking proof that sometimes the Goddess actually got the match right.
“I’ll think about it,” I muttered.
“Great! Love you! Wear something cute—actually, don’t worry, I’ll handle it.”
Which meant I should definitely worry.
When we hung up, I looked back at the half-packed suitcase. At my familiar little room. At the moonlight pooling on the floorboards.
Silver Ridge Academy waited. Its wards already hummed faintly at the edges of my awareness—like they recognized me. Like they remembered something I didn’t.
Maybe I wasn’t ready.
Maybe I’d never be.
But the Goddess set my story in motion the night I was abandoned.
The only thing left was deciding whether I’d let Her keep writing it… or whether I’d finally start rewriting it myself.
- Writer
