Chapter 2
1141 Words
Cassian Vale
They said she was dangerous.
I watched her through the rain, the moonlight spilling across her face like silver fire, and I couldn’t decide if they were wrong or not wrong enough.
Aria Draven.
Daughter of the Draven Syndicate. Human-born, they claimed. But there was something in her eyes when she looked at me. Something feral. She stood there in front of the academy’s gate like she owned her fear. That was the first thing I noticed. Not the trembling or the rain, but the calm. Like she had already decided to die, and it didn’t matter anymore.
That kind of calm gets people killed here.
I closed the file the guards had given me. It said she’d threatened her own stepmother with a blade to earn her place here. It also said she had no wolf blood. A lie. I could smell it the moment she stepped from the car. Her scent was faint, buried deep beneath the human façade, but it was there, a whisper of moonfire and blood.
A wolf who doesn’t know what she is.
A sleeping threat.
The Headmasters wanted me to “observe” her, to see if she was useful or dangerous. But I already knew. In Nightbourne, anything that burns too bright becomes a target. She would be hunted before she even understood why.
I should have turned her away.
I didn’t.
When I looked at her, I felt something sharp under my skin, like my wolf was pacing just beneath the surface, restless, curious. I hadn’t felt that in years.
The east wing was quiet when I left her room. The storm outside had grown wilder, and every c***k of thunder seemed to shake the mountain itself. The wards shimmered faintly along the ceiling, holding the beasts at bay. Some nights, even the walls couldn’t contain what lived here.
I walked down the corridor toward the main hall. Two of my enforcers were waiting there, their uniforms soaked. One of them, Marius, straightened as I approached.
“She’s here, then?” he asked.
I nodded once.
“The Draven girl?” the other said, smirking. “Heard her family betrayed the Syndicate. Guess the rats finally started eating each other.”
“Watch your mouth,” I said quietly.
They fell silent.
No one ever understood why I took this position, why the heir to the Moonshade Pack would chain himself to an academy built to control wolves and criminals. They thought it was loyalty. It wasn’t. It was control.
Control over what I am.
Control over what I could become.
Because every monster here reflected the part of me I hated, the part that wanted to tear through bone and blood just to feel something real.
And now she was here. A human-shaped temptation walking right into my cage.
“Double patrols tonight,” I ordered. “No one goes near the east wing without my permission.”
“Yes, Lead Proctor.”
They left quickly, and I stood alone in the silence.
Her scent still lingered in the air, faint but distinct. I closed my eyes, and for a moment, I saw her again, her soaked hair clinging to her neck, her eyes defiant even when she was surrounded. She looked like she’d been born for ruin, but refused to let it touch her.
That defiance... it stirred something in me that I didn’t want to name.
I tried to push it away and focused on the Academy’s wards instead. They pulsed faintly along the walls, alive with old magic. My mother had helped build them before the wars. They were meant to protect us from outsiders, but lately, they’d been flickering, weakening. Something old was moving in the dark corners of the mountain.
And now there was a Draven inside our walls.
Coincidence? No. There were no coincidences in this world.
I turned toward my chamber, trying to bury the thought, but the sound reached me first. A faint cry, echoing down the hall.
Not human. Not wolf. Something in between.
I moved before I realized it. My feet were silent on the marble as I reached the east wing again. The air was colder here, sharp with the metallic scent of fear.
Her door was open.
I stepped inside, scanning the shadows. The window had been forced half open, the rain blowing in. Aria stood near the wall, her knife trembling in her grip. Her eyes flicked to me the second I entered, wide and bright.
“Stay back,” she hissed.
She was shaking, but she didn’t back away.
Behind her, the shadows shifted. A low growl rolled through the room. Deep, guttural, wrong. I didn’t hesitate. I grabbed her by the arm and pulled her behind me just as something lunged out of the darkness.
Its claws slashed across my chest before I drove my blade into its throat. It howled once, a sound that shook the air, then dissolved into ash.
Aria stared at it, her breathing ragged. “What the hell was that?”
“Something that shouldn’t be here,” I said, voice low.
She looked at me, eyes flicking to the blood on my shirt. “You’re hurt.”
“It’s nothing.”
She didn’t move. The rain blew harder through the open window, lightning flashing across her face. For a moment, our eyes met—and the world went still.
Her scent hit me fully this time. Not just human. Not just wolf. Something else. Something that didn’t belong in either world.
She didn’t know what she was. And if the others found out before I did, they’d tear her apart for it.
I stepped closer, closing the window with one hand. She didn’t step back. The knife was still in her fingers, trembling slightly. When I reached for it, she didn’t resist.
“You should sleep,” I said quietly. “You’ll need your strength.”
She looked up at me. “For what?”
“For surviving this place.”
Our hands brushed for half a second. Warm skin against cold. The air between us felt charged, like the moment before a storm.
Her pulse jumped under her throat. Mine wasn’t much steadier.
I turned toward the door, forcing my voice steady. “Lock it. Don’t open it for anyone.”
She hesitated. “Even you?”
I didn’t answer. Because if I did, I wasn’t sure what would come out.
I left before I could change my mind, before the scent of her drove me to do something I’d regret.
By the time I reached the end of the hall, I could still feel her eyes on my back.
And beneath the storm, beneath the walls and the wards, I heard something whisper my name.
Cassian.
The darkness knew me.
And now it knew her too.
- Writer
