Claimed By The Banished Alpha

Chapter 10: The Unexpected Warning.

Sylvia Fenris’ POV

I kept out of his way for a week, tried never to have anything to do with him even though a part of me still desired him. It was not as easy as I expected.

He seemed to be avoiding me as well, we would appear at the edges of classrooms, and never quite look me in the eye, like he was giving me room to hate him properly.

Part of me was thankful for the distance because it will help in quenching whatever burning desires I once had for him, but another part, more stubborn and less sizable, kept scanning the crowded hallways for a glimpse of dark hair and stormy eyes, and each time I caught myself doing it, I hated myself a little more.

So, I trained instead, harder than ever, forcing my body until my muscles cried out and my wolf was finally responding to my call without question.

Coach Aldric told me I was improving faster than anyone he had taught in a decade, and I clung to that praise like it was the only solid thing in a world that kept shifting under my feet.

Some mornings, the only hour of the day I didn't think about my mother's face or the way Thoros had looked when he had confessed, or the horrible cocktail of grief and longing that lived in my chest now like an unwelcome tenant, was the hour I trained.

I practiced my footwork and shifting drills until I was too exhausted to hold on to anything else.

Rand and Morgana were inseparable now, parading through the academy halls like a coronation in progress, matching smug smiles, matching proprietary hands entwined like they had been official for years instead of days.

I told myself it didn’t matter. I almost believed it most days, and the days I didn't, I trained until I was too tired to feel anything at all. It was easier like that.

Heartbreak had no place in exhaustion.

Edwina was the first to spot the men.

One night, she whispered to me, pulling me away from the window before I could look for myself, her voice low enough so that Nina, already asleep, wouldn't stir.

"There's someone watching the dorm,two times I've seen him,he does not look like a student, but he has been watching you, Sylvia.” Her fingers dug into my wrist, harder than she knew how.

“You're imagining things.” I said it with more confidence than I felt, mostly because the alternative was too scary to sit with.

But I hadn’t been sleeping well anyway, and that night I lay awake listening to every creak of the old building, every gust of wind against the glass, my wolf pacing restless circles inside my chest as if she could sense something I couldn’t name yet.

By the time the sun rose, I talked myself into believing Edwina was just tired and edgy, like we all were these days.

Two days later, I was walking home from evening training on my own. I was alone in the dark when I heard footsteps behind me that didn't match my own: thicker, more deliberate, keeping just far enough back to stay out of easy sight.

I turned around. Just an empty path and trees bowing, moonlight tracing silver shapes on the grass. My heart beat against my ribs so hard I could hear it in my throat.

"Hello?" The single word cracked embarrassingly in my own voice, betraying how much braver I sounded in my head a second ago.

No answer. But when I headed back toward the dormitory, there was a man at the end of the path, standing still, watching me with a stillness that was the predator's, not a person's. He didn’t wear the academy colors. His eyes weren’t the shape of any wolf I had trained beside, something colder, something professional in them.

I ran and ran and continued running without looking back.I didn't stop until I was in the lit courtyard outside my dorm, my chest heaving. I looked back and the man was gone, as if he had never been there at all, as if the whole encounter had been some trick of moonlight and paranoia.

Except I knew what I had seen. Still out of breath, still shaky, I told Coach Aldric the next morning. He went white, not the stranger's white, but the white of a man who had just lost his last fight. His weathered face turned white.

“Describe him again,” he said. I did, and the stillness, the eyes, the way he had just disappeared, set his jaw into a grim line.

“That sounds like a hired hand, not security for the school nor a crowded enforcement but a mercenary,” he said.

"Why would a hired gun be looking at me?" I asked.

Coach Aldric didn’t say anything right away, and the silence said all that his words would not, lasting long enough for dread to pool cold and heavy in my stomach, settling there like a stone I couldn’t shake loose.

“I want you to be careful, you should be extremely careful this time, Sylvia. The most careful you’ve ever been. Someone with resources wants eyes on you, and in my experience, eyes come first.” He said it as if he had seen that pattern before, played out more than once, and knew exactly what was coming.

I recalled the expression on Rand's face during the assembly, cold and satisfied, when he called me unworthy in front of the entire school. I wondered what such a man might do if he decided that a living reminder of his broken engagement was hindering his political ambitions, a loose end that needed tying before it could unravel something more important.

It was not a pleasant thought, but once it had taken root, I could not uproot it.

On the night of that day, while Nina and Edwina were sleeping, a note slipped under my dorm room door. No signature but just seven words, written neatly in neat handwriting, the sort that came from someone who had taken their time.

“You would have been turned down quietly.”

I read it and then I sat for a long time on the edge of my bed, the words burning themselves into my mind whether I wanted them there or not.

Whoever wrote it knew precisely where my room was, knew just when to slip a note under the door without waking anyone up. Which meant they had been watching more than one night.

This must have been carefully orchestrated by someone who wanted me to know they could get to me any time they wanted