ARIA VALEN POV
I shouldn't have walked into the lecture hall expecting normal, not here, not anymore. My footsteps echoed on cold stone, each tap a reminder that I was moving through strangers, wolves in human clothing. The benches were filled with students in sharp uniforms, voices buzzing about classes, rumors, and pack politics. I slipped into the back row, hood up, shoulders tense.
Today's class was Lycan History, Forbidden Lines. The professor droned on about lost bloodlines, old prophecies, extinct wolves, stories meant to chill the blood of hopeful Luna candidates. Each word landed heavy in my chest, like the bones of the past knocking against mine, I kept my gaze forward, fingers tightening around the edge of my tablet, I didn't belong here, and yet I was sitting in this hall.
Half-way through the lecture, just when the professor began describing the ancient "Moonblood Purge," a page in the big ledger on the desk flipped over by itself. The lights flickered, gasps, students exchanged nervous glances, the professor's voice rattled, trying to regain control, but I felt a faint pulse beneath the wards, too subtle for casual students to sense, but it sang to every nerve in me.
My own pulse jumped, my wolf stirred, I pressed hard on my inner wrist, the side where the scar lay under cloth and tried to breathe slowly. It was just a ripple but I knew danger was no longer a rumor, It was a visitor.
As the class ended in a flurry of rustling robes and murmured fears, I gathered my things too slowly, making sure no one brushed past me. The rumor of the flicker would spread fast, not that I wanted attention but with this kind of magic stirring, I felt like prey whose scent was in the air.
I took the long way out of the hall, hugging walls and half-light corridors. The castle-like structure of Lycanridge loomed around me, arches, obsidian columns, runes etched into stone. Somewhere in its bones, the ancient packs hid their secrets, somewhere under its roof, history waited to bite.
That's when I saw him, a tall, hooded figure, leaning against the wall at the far end of the hallway. His cloak was dark, edges frayed, footsteps light, he looked like a student, but he moved like something older, predatory, calculated.
Our eyes met for a fraction of a second under torchlight. The halls narrowed, the air tightened, and I felt an itch under my skin, a warning. I didn't move, I didn't breathe, the figure didn't step forward, didn't reach out. Instead, like smoke dissolving at sunrise, he melted back into the corridor and vanished.
I exhaled, my knees threatened to buckle, I backed against the wall, breathing quickly, listening to my heart thump in the silence, the wolf in my chest growling low not quite outrage, but awareness. Danger didn't always roar, sometimes it whispered.
A few steps past him, I froze again, something on the floor caught the torch-glow. A scrap of paper, folded small, wordless, blank but somehow heavy. I picked it up, fingers trembling, the paper was thin, ragged at the edges, stained with rust-red smudges, no words, no seal, nothing to tell me who dropped it.
I tucked it into the pocket of my blazer, I couldn't risk holding it in my hands any longer. The hallway felt wrong, every shadow shifted, every sound echoed like footsteps behind me. I pulled my hood lower and double-checked my blinds, then slipped into the wings of the dorm building where the lamps burned weak and the walls breathed hush.
By the time I reached my room, the castle had hushed again, students asleep, wards humming, the distant breath of safety, I sat on the edge of my bed, breathing slow. I unpinned the scrap and smoothed it flat against my palm, watching the discoloration in the paper twist under the flame of my lamp.
It reminded me of a warning, not a promise. A threat.
My fingers closed around it, I didn't know who left it, or why but it meant one thing, I was no longer safe, not tonight, not ever.
I pressed my back to the wall and closed my eyes. The silence of my room felt like fragile glass. I wondered which stone in this academy hid the truth about my past. I wondered who was hunting ghosts and I wondered if I'd just walked into a trap I couldn't escape.
I stayed awake until the crows outside sang, shadows shifting on the wall in time with their caw.
Tomorrow I will pretend, I would walk through halls, sit in class, blend in.
But inside, I would remember the flicker, I would remember the cloak, I would remember the scrap and the warning.
Because the wolf in me remembered and when wolves remember, they hunt back.
I lingered in the corridor after the lecture, hood low, cloak tight around me. The hallway's torches glowed dimly, walls echoing faint footsteps and whispers from students hurrying to their next class. Moonlight filtered in through high windows pale, silent, watching.
I walked slowly, letting the echo of the lecture fade, but the memory of that flickered ledger page stuck to me like a breath I couldn't shake, Moonblood Purge. The name clung to my bones, I felt something shift under my skin, not the shift I once feared, but a recognition, a warning.
Then I saw the figure again at the far end of the hall, leaned against a pillar, the cloak was dark, frayed at the hem, unremarkable except for the way the shadows swallowed it whole. One foot tapped the stone floor slowly, the face was hidden by the hood, but the posture spoke of sharp hunger. Not a predator, exactly more like a trap waiting patiently.
My breath caught, I should move, I should pass him by, drop off schedule, pretend I took a wrong turn but the wolf pulsed in my back and curiosity, sharp as razors, drove me forward.
The closer I got, the more the doubt slithered beneath my skin. That paper in my bag, I fingered it, the red smear, the jagged letters. Remember, not a message but a summons.
"Hey."
The word was soft, but it echoed bigger than a shout. The hooded figure paused, the hall stretched, I stood still but the torchlight shifted, restless.
No answer, only silence, waiting.
My wolf growled, low, but alive. Instinct, not human reason, urged attack, I clenched my fists beneath my cloak, but I didn't move.
From the corner of my vision, movement. Smooth, quiet, I turned and saw him, a student I vaguely recognized from breakfast. Storm-gray hair, steady gray eyes, he moved toward me, slow, uncertain.
Before I could think, he placed a hand on my elbow. "You dropped this."
He offered me a scrap of parchment clean, corners folded, a different tone than the one already buried in my pocket. I stared, speech caught in my throat.
He didn't wait, he turned and walked on, leaving me with the paper burning in my fingers.
I opened it, only one word:
RUN
Three letters scratched in black ink, edges blurred, my chest hollowed, the corridors pressed in, ward stones overhead flickered as if afraid.
I crammed the scrap inside my pocket, muscles taut, senses alert. The hooded figure was gone, the hall was empty, no other footsteps, no whisper. Only silence thick like velvet.
I moved, careful, deliberate, like water slipping past a stone, to a side door leading outside. It opened with a groan, letting out a cool breeze, moonlight, and the scent of pine from the forest beyond campus walls.
My hands trembled once I closed the door. I checked the sky, the moon hung slim, half-hidden behind clouds, there was still time. Time to vanish, to run.
But for going now, I needed a plan, I needed to know who meant "RUN." And why.
I slipped on my cloak, chest cold, heart pounding. My boots made soft prints in the dewy grass as I moved away from the castle, each step felt like shedding skin, each breath tasted like a warning.
Behind me the wards would hum. Inside me the wolf would wait, quiet, hungry.
I didn't stop until branches and shadows hid the academy's shape from sight. Then, but only then, I let myself exhale.
I pressed my back against a tall pine and rested my head on the cool bark. The scraps of paper in my pocket weighed heavy, two warnings. The first proof someone knew who I really was, the second command: A threat.
Why?
I closed my eyes, the forest breathed around me, wind, silence, possibility, the forest also remembered, perhaps more than I did.
I understood then that Lycanridge wasn't just a school, It was a trap. Built for heirs, yes, built for bloodlines, power, prestige. But also built to hide what they feared, built to bury.
And now I had dug a grave for myself by coming here, by shifting, by waking the wolf.
I slid down the tree, letting the damp earth press against my back. I closed my eyes and memorized every sound, the distant rustle of leaves, the call of an owl, the warning hum of wards miles behind.
When I opened them again, I saw only darkness, but inside, something clicked a vow.
They had warned me: "Dead girls don't shift." They had warned me. "Run."
But I thought, and whispered to the forest in a voice like broken steel and moonlight. Dead girls don't run, not anymore.
I rose, my mind settled into cold clarity. I would return, not as a ghost, not as prey, but as something dangerous, awakened, wolf-blooded, unbroken.
And I would survive.