Everyone said I was born to be prey.
In Lunaris Academy, humans are nothing but toys for the ruling alpha werewolves, destined to be broken and discarded.
I was adopted by a disgraced prostitute, told that attending this academy was my golden ticket to a better life.
Instead, I found myself in a gilded cage, surrounded by the Terror Four: the absolute rulers of the academy, alphas who kill with a glance and destroy with a smile.
They expected me to bow. They expected me to beg for their mercy.
But they didn't know I wasn't just another human lamb.
When they cornered me on the night of the Blood Moon, demanding my submission, I didn't cower.
I looked the Alpha of the North in the eye and smiled.
"You think you're the predator here?" I whispered, my true power humming beneath my skin for the first time in eighteen years.
"Let's play a real game."
***
"Get your filthy shoes off the marble, mutt."
I kept walking.
One wheel of my battered suitcase squealed with every turn, the sound bouncing off the vaulted ceiling of Lunaris Academy's entrance hall. The floor beneath my boots was white marble threaded with gold, polished so perfectly that the chandeliers reflected in it like captive stars. My suitcase looked like it had been dragged through a war. I probably did too.
A tall boy in a black uniform stepped into my path. Gold braid edged his collar and cuffs, the academy's way of advertising old blood and expensive breeding.
"Are you deaf?" he asked. "I said stop."
"I heard you." I tightened my grip on the duct-taped handle. "I just didn't care."
The blonde girl beside him laughed. Her uniform had been tailored to fit her like a threat, and a diamond wolf pin glittered at her throat.
"Brantley, she speaks," she said. "I thought F-Class strays only knew how to whimper."
"Move," I told him.
Brantley Mercer looked over my patched coat, scuffed boots, and single suitcase. Whatever he saw pleased him. People like him needed someone beneath them, and I had arrived with the rank printed neatly on my admission letter.
F-Class. Human. Unshifted. Unclaimed.
He shoved my shoulder.
Pain flashed down my right arm. I hid it before it reached my face.
"You don't give orders here," Brantley said. "The main hall is for students. Service entrances are around the back."
"My letter says to report to the main hall."
"The letter was a courtesy," the girl said. "I'm Seraphina Ashford. Remember that name. You'll hear it whenever someone needs a floor scrubbed or a tray carried."
"Then I hope you enjoy disappointment, Seraphina."
Her smile vanished.
Brantley kicked my suitcase.
The rusted latch snapped. Two shirts, a pair of worn jeans, and a folded photograph spilled across the marble. The photograph landed facedown near Brantley's polished boot.
A few nearby students stopped to watch. Their laughter came easily. Cruelty was free entertainment when no one expected the victim to fight back.
I stared at the photograph.
It was the only picture I had of Elena Hale, the woman who had found me shivering behind a bakery in Lowtown and raised me as her own. Three years ago, a highborn patron had ordered her whipped for spilling wine on his carpet. I had thrown myself over her before the first lash fell.
The silver-tipped whip shattered the bones in my right hand.
The healer reset them badly. They ached in cold weather and locked whenever I held anything too tightly, but Elena had lived. That had been enough.
Until now.
"Pick them up," I said.
Brantley glanced at the clothes around his feet. "Excuse me?"
"You made the mess. Pick it up."
He stepped closer until his shadow swallowed mine. "Make me."
"Assembly begins in three minutes," a new voice said.
A prefect approached, silver badge pinned over his heart. His name strip read JACE WARD. He looked at Brantley, then at me, and made the safest possible choice.
"Leave the trash," Jace said. "Everyone inside."
Brantley smirked. "You heard him."
He and Seraphina walked away with the crowd.
I knelt, gathered my clothes, and picked up the photograph. Elena smiled up at me from a summer afternoon four years ago, flour dusting her cheek. I wiped a boot mark from the corner with my sleeve.
My hand trembled.
Not from fear.
I forced the broken latch closed, wedged the case beneath my arm, and followed the others into the grand hall.
Hundreds of students stood in tiered rows beneath banners bearing the crests of the four great territories. Gold for the North. Iron gray for the West. Deep blue for the Coast. Green for the Vale. The front rows glittered with family pins and inherited rank. The back rows held everyone the academy preferred not to acknowledge.
A prefect pointed me toward the last line.
Whispers followed me.
"That's the human from the entrance trial."
"I heard she has no wolf at all."
"Cassian cut her and she still wouldn't kneel."
The doors behind the podium opened.
Silence dropped over the hall.
Cassian Thorne entered alone.
He wore no crown. He did not need one. The gold wolf embroidered on his black jacket marked him as heir to the Northern packs, but the students bowed because of the man, not the thread. He moved with the stillness of a blade resting against skin.
I had met him once before.
A month ago, during the entrance trial, he had cornered me in a sand-covered training ring while the council watched from behind smoked glass. He had pressed a jagged silver knife to my cheek and told me to kneel.
I had said no.
He had drawn the blade down my face slowly enough for me to understand that mercy was a choice he was refusing to make. The scar still cut a pale line beneath my left eye.
Cassian stopped behind the podium.
"Welcome to Lunaris," he said.
His voice was quiet, but the hall had been built to carry authority. Every word reached the stone arches.
"You were summoned because the council believes you possess value. Some of you will prove them right. Others will serve as reminders of what happens when bloodlines decay."
His gaze crossed the front rows, passed over Brantley and Seraphina, and found me at the back.
The air seemed to tighten.
"Violet Hale."
He did not raise his voice. He did not have to.
The students between us shifted apart, opening a path from my scuffed boots to the podium.
"Come forward."
Seraphina turned in her seat. "He's going to make an example of her."
"Good," Brantley whispered. "She needs one."
I set my suitcase against the wall and walked down the center aisle.
Every step brought the entrance trial back in pieces. The silver blade. The blood on my mouth where I had bitten through my lip. Cassian's expression when I refused him, not angry, not surprised, but interested.
That had frightened me more than the knife.
He descended from the platform and met me halfway.
Up close, his eyes were colder than I remembered, a pale blue that made warmth seem like a rumor.
"You survived the journey," he said.
"Were you expecting the carriage to throw me off a cliff?"
A few students inhaled sharply.
Cassian's mouth almost curved. "You look as unimpressive as you did during the trial."
"I didn't come to impress you."
Brantley stood in the front row. "Show the Alpha respect."
Cassian lifted one hand.
Brantley sat down.
"She doesn't understand respect," Cassian said, watching me. "She mistakes defiance for strength."
"And you mistake fear for loyalty."
The silence that followed had weight.
Cassian stepped closer.
"You were not invited here, Violet. You were collected. The council could have left you in Lowtown with your debts and your broken little life. Instead, I signed the order that brought you inside these walls."
"I know."
"Then you know who owns your future."
"No one owns me."
His fingers closed around my jaw.
The grip was precise, hard enough to bruise without looking uncontrolled. His thumb settled over the scar he had given me.
"You learned nothing from our first meeting," he murmured.
"I learned you like an audience."
Something dark moved behind his eyes.
"You will break here," he said. "Lunaris was built to strip weakness down to the bone. When it is finished with you, there will be nothing left."
"Then you brought the wrong girl."
His grip tightened. Pain climbed into my temples.
He was waiting for me to flinch. Waiting for the hall to see what he had already decided I was.
I brought up my injured right hand and wrapped my fingers around his wrist.
For one heartbeat, nothing happened.
Then heat tore through my palm.
A red spark snapped between our skin.
Cassian's eyes widened.
The spark became a thin crescent of crimson light.
