The silence in the shed after Kane's departure was absolute. Lia stood for a full minute, the only sound her own measured breaths and the distant, fading echo of his final words. Wear your hair down.
A hysterical laugh threatened to bubble up in her throat. Hair. As if that were the most pressing concern. She had just entered into a binding, dangerous pact with a wolf, and his first instruction was about her hairstyle. The absurdity of it was almost comforting.
The practicalities, however, crashed down immediately. The alumni reception. The Chancellor's Gallery. She had seen it in passing—a long, opulent room on the second floor of the main hall, all dark wood, portraits of stern-faced former headmasters, and leaded glass windows overlooking the formal gardens. It was a world away from the scholarship hall, from the dusty shed, from everything that defined her cover identity.
She gathered her things, her movements automatic. The glasses went back on her face, the final piece of the mouse's armor snapping into place, though it felt flimsier than ever. The blazer, still smelling of sawdust and sweat, was shrugged on. She left the storage annex, closing the door quietly behind her, and made her way back across the campus. The late afternoon light was long and golden, casting deep shadows from the Gothic spires. Students moved in laughing groups, their conversations a distant murmur. No one looked at her. Corbin and his friends were nowhere to be seen. The world had, for the moment, returned her to invisibility.
But it was an illusion. Kane's words echoed in her head. You could make the vacuum disappear. By seven o'clock tonight, she would be forcibly visible.
Back in the monastic cell of room 312, she locked the door and leaned against it, closing her eyes. The adrenaline from the fight and the confrontation had fully drained, leaving behind a hollow, shaky exhaustion. She needed to think. To plan.
The bargain was a double-edged sword of unimaginable sharpness. Proximity to Kane meant potential access to the Restricted Archives, to his resources, to the circles of power where whispers about Elena's death might still linger. It was an opportunity she could never have engineered on her own.
But the cost… The cost was her autonomy. Her safety. Her secrets. She would be living under a microscope, her every move watched not just by Kane, but by Elara, by the entire predatory social ecosystem of the academy. One misstep, one crack in her performance, and the wolf who offered protection might decide she was more trouble than she was worth. Or worse, he might peel back her layers himself, driven by that cold, intellectual curiosity.
And then there was the physical reality of it. Being "seen with him." The memory of his gaze in the shed—clinical, assessing, but undeniably intense—sent an unwelcome shiver down her spine. It hadn't been desire, not in any normal sense. It had been the look of a man who has found a complex and potentially useful tool, and is calculating its weight, its balance, its breaking point. Being the object of that focus, in public, was a terrifying prospect.
A sharp knock at the door jolted her from her thoughts. It was only five o'clock.
Cautiously, she opened it. It wasn't Kane. It was a girl she didn't recognize, perhaps a year or two older, with a severe black bob and an expression of perfect, blank efficiency. She wore the uniform of a senior prefect.
"Lia Black?" the girl asked, her voice toneless.
"Yes?"
The girl held out a large, plain black garment bag, the kind used by expensive boutiques. It was heavy. "From Mr. Wolfe. He instructed you to be ready at seven. The car will be at the west service entrance." She thrust the bag into Lia's arms, turned on her heel, and walked away without another word.
Lia closed the door, her heart thumping. She carried the bag to her narrow bed and unzipped it slowly.
The scent that wafted out was subtle and expensive—clean linen and faint citrus. Nestled inside was not one, but several items. First, a dress. She lifted it out, the fabric whispering against itself.
It was deceptively simple. A slip dress in a deep, midnight-blue silk so dark it was almost black. The straps were slender, the neckline a conservative but elegant square. It was cut to drape, not cling. It looked… modest. Until she held it up to the light and saw the hidden detail. The silk was subtly shot through with threads of a metallic silver, so that it would shimmer faintly with movement. And the back—the back was where the simplicity ended. It plunged in a deep, open V from the shoulders to just above the waist, held together by a single, delicate silver chain.
It was a masterpiece of calculated revelation. From the front, a study in understated elegance. From the back, a statement.
Beneath the dress was a shoebox. Inside, a pair of high-heeled sandals, also in midnight blue, with slender silver straps. They looked lethal and impossibly expensive. There was a small, black velvet pouch as well. She opened it and tipped the contents into her palm.
Earrings. Simple, flawless teardrop sapphires set in platinum, dark as the dress, catching the dim light of her room with a deep, inner fire. And a matching, delicate necklace, just a single sapphire on a fine chain.
No note. No explanation. Just the items, selected and delivered with an impersonal, devastating precision. He hadn't chosen something garish or overtly sexy to humiliate her. He had chosen something that would transform the mouse into something else entirely—something that would fit seamlessly into his world while silently screaming that she belonged to him. The dress was armor and vulnerability in one.
Lia sat on the edge of the bed, the cool silk pooled in her lap. A strange, hollow feeling settled in her chest. This was part of the performance. The costuming. She was to play a role, and Kane was providing the wardrobe. She had no choice. Rule two: you maintain the fiction.
At ten minutes to seven, clean from a hurried, cold shower in the communal bathroom down the hall, Lia stood before the small, tarnished mirror above her desk. She had washed her hair, letting the mousy brown fall straight and damp around her shoulders as instructed. She hadn't styled it. She applied a bare minimum of makeup—a touch of mascara, a faint stain on her lips. The glasses were a problem. They shattered the illusion the dress was trying to create. After a moment's hesitation, she took them off and placed them on the desk. The world softened at the edges, but her reflection came into a different kind of focus.
Without the bulky frames, her face looked… different. Younger, but also more stark. Her eyes, a plain hazel behind the lenses, looked larger, greener. Her cheekbones seemed more pronounced. She looked like a stranger. A beautiful, anxious stranger wearing a fortune in silk and sapphires.
She stepped into the dress. The silk slid over her skin like cool water, settling against her body with a whisper. It fit perfectly. Of course it did. He would have known her size; the encounter in the shed had been assessment enough. The square neckline was demure but somehow drew the eye. The fabric skimmed her curves without clinging, the hidden silver threads catching the light as she moved. She fastened the delicate chain at the back. The open back exposed her skin from shoulder blades to the dip above her tailbone, the air cool against it. It felt dangerously exposed.
The shoes were a new kind of torture. She rarely wore heels. These were high, narrow, and forced her posture into something unfamiliar—back straight, shoulders back, a subtle arch to her spine that made the open back feel even more dramatic. She put on the jewelry. The sapphire nestled in the hollow of her throat felt like a brand.
She looked at the final result in the mirror. The mouse was gone. In her place stood a young woman who looked like she belonged in the Chancellor's Gallery. It was a lie, but it was a convincing one. The realization brought no pleasure, only a cold, sinking dread.
She had no purse. She transferred her room keycard and a single, folded tissue to a small, hidden pocket inside the dress's side seam—another piece of elegant design. Then she took a deep, steadying breath, wrapped herself in her old, worn wool coat to conceal the dress for the walk, and left her room.
The west service entrance was a world away from the grand front doors. It was a plain, steel door in a dimly lit stone corridor near the kitchens. A sleek, black town car with tinted windows idled silently at the curb. A uniformed driver stood beside it.
As Lia approached, the driver opened the rear door without a word. She slipped inside, the warmth of the car's interior a shock after the evening chill.
Kane was already there.
He occupied the far side of the spacious back seat, a dark silhouette against the window. He had changed into a tailored black tuxedo that fit his powerful frame like a second skin. The stark white of his dress shirt contrasted sharply with his silver-grey hair and tan skin. He held a crystal tumbler containing an inch of amber liquid. He wasn't looking at her; he was staring out the window, his profile etched against the passing lights of the campus.
The car pulled away smoothly.
"Take off the coat," he said, his voice quiet but filling the silent space.
Lia's fingers fumbled slightly with the buttons of her old coat. She shrugged it off, letting it pool on the seat between them. The chill of the car's air conditioning touched her bare arms and back.
Kane finally turned his head. His gaze swept over her, from the top of her damp hair, down the line of the dress, to the shoes. It was the same assessing look from the shed, but refined, sharper in the dim interior light. He took his time. Lia forced herself to sit still, to not fidget, to meet his eyes when they finally rose to her face.
"Better," he said, after a moment that felt like an hour. "The glasses?"
"I left them."
"Good. You don't need them." It wasn't a compliment. It was an order about her disguise. He took a sip of his drink. "The rules for tonight are simple. You stay by my side. You speak when spoken to. You smile when appropriate. You do not engage with anyone unless I introduce you. If Elara approaches, you say nothing. You look at me."
"What if she speaks to me directly?"
"She won't. Not in a room full of alumni and donors. She's too well-trained for a public scene. Her moves will be subtler." He studied her face. "You're nervous."
"I've never been to anything like this," she said, which was true.
"You're wearing a dress that costs more than your annual scholarship. You're riding in a car most people will never sit in. You're about to walk into a room on the arm of the heir to the Wolfblood legacy." He leaned forward slightly, the movement bringing him closer. The scent of him—clean wool, expensive cologne, that underlying wildness—enveloped her. His eyes held hers, pale and unblinking. "The key, Lia, is not to pretend you belong. The key is to know that, for tonight, because I say so, you do. Everyone in that room operates on that principle. Remember it."
It was a lesson in power. In the reality of this world. Your worth was assigned, not earned. And tonight, he had assigned value to her.
The car glided to a stop at the grand front entrance, under the porte-cochère. The driver opened Kane's door first. He unfolded himself from the car with a lazy, predatory grace. Then he turned and offered his hand to Lia.
This was it. The first public test.
She placed her hand in his. His grip was firm, warm, completely enveloping. He didn't pull her; he simply provided an anchor as she navigated the high heels and the step out of the car. Once she was standing, he tucked her hand into the crook of his arm, his other hand covering hers, trapping it there. The gesture was possessive, proprietary. A clear signal.
Together, they ascended the broad stone steps. The massive oak doors were held open by staff in formal attire. Light, music, and the murmur of sophisticated conversation spilled out.
As they crossed the threshold into the glowing warmth of the Grand Hall, on their way to the Gallery stairs, Lia felt dozens of eyes turn toward them. She saw the flickers of recognition, surprise, calculation. She heard the conversations falter for a split second before resuming, a note higher.
And from across the expanse of marble floor, near the base of the grand staircase, she saw a flash of emerald green silk.
Elara stood with a group of older alumni, a perfect smile fixed on her beautiful face. But her eyes, those brilliant green eyes, were locked on Lia. They widened almost imperceptibly, then narrowed, turning cold and hard as chips of jade. The smile never wavered, but the promise in that look was as clear as a knife held in the light.
Kane's hand tightened slightly over hers, a silent, warning pressure. Look at me.
Lia dragged her gaze away from Elara and looked up at Kane's impassive profile. He was staring straight ahead, acknowledging no one, his expression one of bored indifference. He led her forward, through the gauntlet of stares, as if she were the most natural thing in the world.
The wolf, for the moment, was holding her close. She had no idea if it was to protect her, or to make sure she couldn't run.