9
911 Words
Alex’s POV
The Academy never slept. It stays awake; sometimes it feels like even the walls have ears here.
It breathed, slow, heavy, ancient beneath layers of iron, stone, and secrets. Even now, past curfew, when most wolves were locked behind their doors and darkness ruled the halls, it pulsed with the kind of quiet you only heard when everything else had died.
I stood at the edge of the training field, boots rooted in gravel rimed with frost, the wind threading icy claws through the seams of my jacket. The night wrapped itself around my shoulders, black and sharp, but the cold barely registered.
My thoughts were louder than the wind.
Rowan Dean.
He gnawed at the edge of my thoughts like a splinter just under the skin, too small to rip out, too deep to forget. Not loud. Not reckless. Not even remarkable at first glance. But persistent. Constant. Like the sound of dripping water in a locked interrogation room.
He didn’t belong here.
And yet... he moved like he had nowhere else to go.
That boy didn’t fight to win; he fought like the world was trying to devour him, and all he had left were broken teeth and bad luck. Fast, tight movements. The kind of instincts born from survival, harsh training.
He reacted like someone who’d learned pain intimately.
And the fear, that was the part I couldn’t stop replaying.
The way he froze when Cael grabbed him. Not like a rookie expecting a hit. No, this was deeper. Older. Like muscle memory triggered by trauma buried so far down, it still bleeds when touched.
Then there was the photo.
I’d seen his face the moment he opened the envelope. Seen the blood drain out of his skin, the way his hand trembled just once, barely, like he hadn’t meant to move at all. His mask cracked at that instant.
Not panic.
Devastation.
Like someone had taken the thing he’d worked hardest to bury and pulled it into the light.
Whatever was in that photo wasn’t just a threat. It was a knife aimed at the hollow behind his ribs. But then again, there wasn't anything out of the ordinary in the photo. It was simply taken when he was fighting. This simply meant someone was stalking poor Rowan, but that photo alone shouldn't have ashened his face.
I should’ve turned it in. Taken it to the Headmaster or Marwen. That would’ve been protocol. Clean. Right.
But I didn’t.
Because I wanted to see what he’d do next.
Wanted to see how far he’d go before he crumbled.
And maybe, just maybe, because part of me was hoping he wouldn’t.
That part of me? I didn’t trust it.
It sat like static in my blood. A low thrum behind my ribs. Rowan Dean wasn’t special, physically, he was underdeveloped, undersized, and weak. He spoke softly. Walked like a ghost. Flinched before contact.
And yet...
Every time he entered a room, my eyes found him.
Every time someone brushed against him too hard, my instincts sharpened.
I didn’t like it.
Didn’t like the way he curled inward when no one was watching. Didn’t like the bruises blooming under his collar, the ones he never explained. Didn’t like the fact that I was starting to recognize his pain patterns more intimately than my own reflection.
It made no sense.
And I didn’t care for things that didn’t make sense.
That night, I leaned against the window frame of our dorm, arms crossed, gaze drawn once more to the other side of the room.
He lay curled on his side, facing the wall.
Blanket pulled tight to his chin. Shoulders rigid. Legs slightly bent.
He wasn’t asleep.
His breathing was wrong, too shallow, too measured. Like he was trying to fake it. Trying to become still enough that I’d stop looking.
But I didn’t stop.
I watched the small flinches he couldn’t control. The delayed swallow. The tightness in his jaw. The wince he gave when he shifted too far onto his ribs.
Cael had done more damage than he let on.
And Rowan was hiding it.
Hiding everything.
He didn’t know I’d seen who delivered the note. Didn’t know I’d watched the figure vanish down the hall just before dawn, leaving only cold air and threat in his wake.
Whoever it was, they knew Rowan’s secret, which even I didn't know.
And they weren’t just threatening him.
They were testing him.
That was the part that made my fists clench.
Not the exposure. The game.
Because someone out there wasn’t trying to destroy Rowan Dean. Not yet. They were waiting to see how he broke.
And I...
I wanted to know too.
But for different reasons.
I wanted to know if he’d fight. If he’d claw his way back. If that fragile frame could carry the kind of fury he kept sealed behind his eyes. But it irked me that I was taking so much interest in a fragile-looking guy. What was wrong with me?
I wasn’t built to protect. I wasn’t trained to care.
But as I stood there in the dark, watching him shake beneath a borrowed blanket, listening to him pretend he wasn’t falling apart...
Something inside me growled.
Low. Protective. Primitive.
Rowan Dean had secrets buried under his skin.
And I wasn’t sure if I wanted to unearth them or guard them with my life.
Either way, I wasn’t looking away. Not anytime soon.
- Writer
