THE LOST PRINCESS OF THE WOLVES.

CHAPTER 3

ARIA POV

Three weeks into the semester and I had somehow managed to escape Celeste and her girls. No confrontations, no hallway run-ins, nothing. I was starting to think maybe she'd decided I wasn't worth the energy.

Then Professor Mercer walked in and handed out the pairing sheet for the term project and just like that my luck ran out completely.

I stared at my name next to Alexei's for a good ten seconds. A strange, brief pull settled low in my chest.

Not fear or annoyance, something else. I ignored it immediately. Wondering if my eyes were playing a prank on me or the universe.

"This is a joke, it has to be," I said out loud.

"I assure you it isn't," Professor Mercer said without looking up.

I looked across the room. Alexei was already looking at me, his gaze held for a half second longer than it should have.

Like he was trying to place something.

Like I wasn't entirely unfamiliar with that same flat expression he always had, like the world perpetually owed him something. He held eye contact for exactly one second then turned back to his phone like I was already boring him.

Fantastic.

After class, I caught up with him in the hallway.

"So when do you want to meet to start on this," I said.

"I'll handle it."

I stopped walking. "Excuse me?"

"The project," he said, not slowing down at all, "I'll handle it and put your name on it."

"That's not how partnerships work."

"It's how this one will be."

"No," I stepped around him and stood in his path and he actually stopped, looking down at me with those sharp grey eyes, "it really isn't" I don't need you to carry me, I pull my own weight, so figure out a time that works for you and let me know."

"You're serious right now."

"Completely.”

There was something different in his tone, not dismissal.

That was new.

He looked at me for a moment, that same look he always gave me, like he was trying to find the angle.

"Tomorrow," he said, "library, five o'clock."

"Perfect," I stepped aside, "don't be late."

"I'm never late."

"First time for everything."

I walked away. Behind me, I heard something that could have been a quiet laugh but when I glanced back he was already gone.

Hanna was waiting around the corner, practically bouncing.

"Okay, I heard all of that, and I need you to explain to me how you just talk to him like that."

"Like what."

"Like he's nobody."

"He is nobody, Hanna, he's just a boy with a title."

"A title and a father with more power than our entire hometown combined."

"Good for his father," I said, and she grabbed my arm.

"Aria."

"I'm not going to shrink every time he's in the room, that's not who I am, if I let him steamroll this project from day one he'll do it the whole six weeks."

She looked at me for a long second, "You know Celeste is going to lose her mind when she finds out you're partnered with him."

I hadn't thought about that.

"That's her problem," I said.

Hanna did not look convinced.

The next day, I got to the library at four fifty-five, sat down, spread my notes out and started organising. Five o'clock came and went. Five oh five. Five ten.

I was pulling out my phone to send him something sharp when he walked in at five twelve looking like he had nowhere else to be and hadn't checked a clock once in his life.

"You said you're never late," I said.

"I said I'm never late for things that matter," he dropped into the seat across from me, shrugging his jacket off, "Project-starting meetings are a formality."

"So your word only counts when you personally decide something is worth it, noted."

"Are you going to be like this the whole six weeks?"

"Are you going to show up twelve minutes late for the whole six weeks?"

He looked at my notes spread across the table, then back at me, something shifting in his expression.

"You actually prepared," he said.

His eyes lingered on me for a second.

Not impressed.

Assessing.

Like he was recalculating something.

"I always prepare."

He didn't respond to that, just reached into his bag and pulled out his own folder. I glanced at it. It wasn't empty either, he'd done work, actual work, outlines, some research already printed out. I hadn't expected that.

I didn't say so.

We worked for two hours. Thirty words between us that weren't strictly about the project, twenty of those were disagreements.

"That angle is too broad," he said, pointing at my outline.

"It's not broad, it gives us room to develop the argument."

"It gives us room to ramble, narrow it down."

"Narrowing it down this early boxes us in."

"Narrowing it down this early keeps us focused."

"Those are not the same thing."

"They are in this case."

I looked at his reasoning on the page. I didn't like that it made some sense.

"Fine," I said, "but we keep my secondary point as a fallback."

"Fine."

We went back to working in silence.

At the end, when we were packing up, he closed his folder and just sat there for a second, not reaching for his bag yet.

"What," I said, not looking up.

"Nothing."

"You're just sitting there."

"I'm allowed to sit."

I zipped my bag and looked at him, "say whatever you're thinking so we can both go home."

He looked at me in that measuring way he had, "You're difficult."

There was no irritation in it.

If anything, it sounded like a conclusion he hadn't expected to reach.

"You're insufferable," I said, standing up, "so we're even."

"I didn't say it was a bad thing."

"I didn't ask."

I pushed my chair in and picked up my bag. He still hadn't moved, just watching me with that expression I couldn't ever fully read.

"Same time Thursday," he said.

"I'll be here at five," I said, "actually at five."

"I'll keep that in mind."

"You do that."

I walked out at first and didn't look back, which I was proud of because something about the way he'd said it, not a bad thing, was sitting in the back of my head in a way I didn't particularly appreciate.

I pushed it out before I hit the door.

He was still insufferable. That hadn't changed.

I pushed through the library door into the evening air and stopped.

It lasted less than a second.

A sky that wasn’t the sky. Red, deep and wrong, the color of something burning, and below it a sound, not quite a sound, more like the memory of one: metal, screaming and something falling that couldn’t be stopped. And then running. Arms holding something. Something small and warm and alive that had to stay alive.

It felt real, too real, but I didn't understand it.

Not like a memory.

More like something breaking from somewhere I couldn't reach.

Movement. Urgency.

The overwhelming need to protect something…. Someone.

And fear but not mine.

But close enough that I felt it was.

Like if I stopped moving for a second something terrible would happen.

Then nothing.

The silence that followed was worse.

Everything went back to normal like it never happened.

Just the normal dark sky, the lights along the path and two students walking past me with a takeaway bag, laughing about something.

I stood very still for a moment.

It wasn’t a memory. I knew that. I’d never been anywhere like that, never seen a sky that color, never run from anything. It wasn’t a thought either. It was more like something that had been pressed behind my eyes for a long time had shifted, just slightly, and let a crack of light through.

I started walking.

By the time I reached the dorm, I had almost convinced myself it was nothing but tiredness.

But something in me knew it wasn't.

That night I didn’t sleep well, and when I did, I dreamed of red.