No one had ever bested the Alpha heir. Until me.
The silence was deafening, pressing down on the training grounds like a physical weight. The moment her claws connected and Darius's blood stained the sand in bright crimson drops, the world seemed to freeze around them. Time suspended itself, caught between heartbeats, between breaths, between the moment when everything was normal and the moment when everything changed forever.
Elara stood in the center of the combat ring, chest heaving with ragged gasps that sent spikes of agony through her bruised ribs. Her wolf still blazed hot beneath her skin, golden fire flickering behind her eyes as adrenaline coursed through her veins like liquid lightning. The scent of blood—his blood—filled the air with metallic sweetness that made her wolf keen with confused triumph.
Around her, the assembled crowd remained frozen in stunned disbelief. Then, like a dam bursting, gasps broke out in waves that rippled through the stone amphitheater.
"She drew his blood!"
"No one's ever done that to Darius Fenrir."
"Impossible... the Bennett girl actually cut him."
"Look at all that blood—she really got him good."
"The Alpha heir is bleeding. The fucking Alpha heir is bleeding."
The words rolled through the crowd like a tide, carrying shock and disbelief and the kind of hungry excitement that came from witnessing the impossible. Students pressed closer to the ring's edge, craning their necks for a better view, phones recording every second of the aftermath that would be dissected and analyzed for weeks to come.
Elara forced herself to stand straighter despite the tremors wracking her battered body. She kept her expression carefully blank, a mask of stone that revealed nothing of the chaos raging inside her. Every muscle screamed in protest, every bruise throbbed with its own heartbeat, but she refused to let them see weakness. Not now. Not when she'd finally proven she wasn't just another victim to be crushed underfoot.
The mate bond pulled tight in her chest, carrying waves of emotion that weren't entirely her own—rage, shock, something that might have been pride mixed with fury. Darius's wolf was as stunned as the rest of them, she realized. He hadn't expected her to last thirty seconds, let alone draw blood.
Across the ring, Darius straightened slowly, each movement deliberate and controlled. His hand pressed flat against his side where crimson seeped through the gray fabric of his training shirt, the wound deeper than she'd intended. His storm-gray eyes burned with an intensity that made the air itself seem to shimmer with heat, darker than the thunderclouds gathering overhead as if nature itself sensed the shift in the supernatural world's balance.
For a long, tense heartbeat that stretched like eternity, he said nothing. Just stared at her with an expression that could have melted steel, his jaw working as if he were grinding words between his teeth before swallowing them whole.
Then, without a single word of acknowledgment or concession, he turned and stormed from the ring.
The crowd parted before him like water before a shark, wolves instinctively lowering their gazes as raw Alpha fury rolled off him in crushing waves. Even the most arrogant heirs suddenly found the ground fascinating rather than risk meeting his eyes when his pride was wounded and bleeding. The weight of his rage was too heavy to bear, too dangerous to challenge when his wolf was this close to the surface.
Whispers trailed in his wake like smoke, speculation already spiraling out of control as the Academy's gossip network began processing what they'd witnessed.
"Did you see his face? He looked ready to murder someone."
"She's so dead. He'll make her pay for this."
"I can't believe she actually fought back like that."
"Where did all that strength come from? She's supposed to be weak."
"Maybe the rumors about her bloodline were wrong."
Elara remained frozen in place at the center of the ring, refusing to collapse though her legs shook with exhaustion and her vision swam with pain. Her wolf panted inside her chest, both exhilarated by the victory and terrified of the consequences. She had stood against the most powerful Alpha heir in the territories. She had drawn his blood in front of half the Academy. And now she would pay a price she couldn't even imagine.
The instructor—Trainer Blackwood with his scarred face and missing eye—cleared his throat loudly, clearly rattled by what he'd just witnessed. His single good eye tracked between the blood-stained sand and Elara's defiant figure as if he couldn't quite process the evidence before him.
"That's enough for today." His bark lacked its usual conviction, the authority drained out of it by shock. "Class dismissed. All of you, get out of here before I decide to assign extra drills."
Students began trickling out in hushed clusters, their movements subdued by the weight of what they'd witnessed. But their eyes kept darting back to Elara like moths to flame, wide with disbelief, sharp with judgment and calculation. She felt every stare like knives pressing against her skin, dissecting her performance, cataloging her injuries, speculating about her future.
By the time she managed to slip from the ring on unsteady legs, her limbs were screaming for rest and her head was spinning with exhaustion. But her pride—that stubborn, unyielding core of steel that had kept her alive through the worst moments of her life—forced her to keep her chin high and her steps steady.
She made it to the edge of the courtyard before her knees finally buckled against the ancient stone wall that bordered the training grounds. The cold granite felt blessed against her overheated skin as she pressed her palm flat against its surface, gripping hard enough to leave marks, breathing through clenched teeth as pain radiated across her ribs where Darius's devastating strikes had landed.
Each breath felt like fire, but she ground her teeth and forced herself to straighten again. The Academy's walls had witnessed centuries of battles, victories and defeats carved into their very stones. She wouldn't be the one to show weakness here.
Don't show them anything. Don't give them the satisfaction.
She thought she'd escaped notice, blending into the shadows cast by the towering architecture. But she should have known better. In a place like this, nothing went unobserved, and her victory had marked her as either prey or predator—she just wasn't sure which yet.
Later, as twilight bled purple and gold into the Academy's ancient halls, she walked alone toward her dormitory. The corridors had thinned as most students gathered in the great dining hall for dinner, though whispers still echoed faintly from alcoves and study rooms whenever her footsteps passed. The sound followed her like ghosts, carrying fragments of her name and speculation about what would happen next.
Her books pressed against her chest felt heavier than lead, and every step sent fresh waves of agony through her battered body. But she'd survived worse than a brutal sparring match. She'd survived the Silverfang Massacre, had walked away from flames that devoured everything she'd ever loved. She could survive this too.
She had just turned a corner into one of the Academy's quieter passages, flanked by portraits of long-dead Alphas whose painted eyes seemed to follow her movement, when a hand shot out from the shadows.
Strong fingers wrapped around her wrist like a steel manacle, yanking her off balance before she could react. Elara spun with a gasp, her enhanced reflexes still sluggish from exhaustion, and slammed into the solid wall of Darius's chest.
The mate bond exploded between them like a live wire, sending electricity racing through her veins and making her wolf whine with desperate longing. His scent—earth and smoke and iron, tinged now with the copper of spilled blood—flooded her senses until she felt dizzy with it.
Her pulse jolted painfully against her throat. His grip on her wrist was tight and unyielding, pinning her arm to her side with casual strength that reminded her exactly how much he'd been holding back during their fight. His other hand braced against the wall beside her head, caging her in shadow and heat and the overwhelming presence of an Alpha whose pride she'd just shattered in front of half the school.
Those storm-dark eyes bored into hers with a fire that nearly stole what little breath she had left, pupils dilated with emotions too complex to untangle. Rage. Shock. Something that might have been respect if it weren't wrapped in so much wounded pride.
She tried to pull free, her fingers clawing at his iron grip. "Let me go."
He didn't. His jaw worked as if words were catching on the edge of his teeth, fighting to escape while his human mind battled his wolf for control. The mate bond pulsed between them, carrying undertones of possession and fury and something deeper that made her stomach flip with unwanted heat.
The scent of him flooded her senses—earth and smoke and iron, now tinged with the copper of spilled blood that her claws had drawn. Her wolf pressed eagerly against her skin, desperate to close the distance between them despite everything that had happened.
Her pride screamed even louder.
"What do you want now?" The demand came out sharper than she felt, drawing on reserves of defiance she didn't know she still possessed. "You made yourself clear yesterday. You don't want me. You think I'm weak and worthless and beneath you. So why can't you just leave me alone?"
His gaze flicked down to her lips for just a moment—long enough to make her breath catch—then snapped back to her eyes. His chest rose and fell too fast, like he'd been running instead of simply cornering her in an empty hallway. When he spoke, his voice came out low and rough, carrying undertones that were more wolf than human.
"You're not as weak as I thought."
The words hung between them like a confession, heavy with implications she wasn't ready to process. His eyes blazed when he said it, golden fire flaring in the depths of storm-gray irises, transforming his features into something far more dangerous than merely human.
And despite everything—the rejection, the humiliation, the brutal fight that had left them both bloodied—her traitorous heart skipped a beat at what might have been the closest thing to praise she'd ever heard from his lips.