The courtyard was alive in a way the mountains had not been. Voices overlapped, mocking laughter, murmured gossip, the scrape of boots across stone. Aria tightened her grip on her satchel and kept her head bowed, though she could feel the eyes sliding over her like knives.
The heirs of Alpha blood didn't bother to hide their judgment.
"Too small."
"Human-blood, probably."
"She won't last the week."
Their voices pricked at her ears. She kept walking. Each step felt deliberate, like crossing a battlefield, though her boots barely made a sound.
A girl leaned against a column nearby, her hair a wild tumble of chestnut curls, her smile wide and sharp. Unlike the others, she didn't sneer. She tilted her head as though curious. Her eyes, bright, quick, tracked Aria with something closer to interest than disdain. Aria looked away before their gazes could tangle.
The satchel thumped lightly against her hip with each step. It was the only sound she could trust as her own.
And then the air shifted.
It wasn't a sound at first; it was pressure. A weight pressing against her chest, subtle at the edges, then sharper, heavier, until every conversation in the courtyard faltered. The laughter cut short. The whispers dried on tongues.
Aria slowed, her blood turning to ice.
A figure crossed the courtyard with the ease of someone who owned it. Tall, shoulders broad beneath a black coat lined with silver. His dark hair fell carelessly across his brow, though nothing about him looked careless. Every stride carried the kind of confidence that didn't need to be spoken.
Kaelen Draven.
The Alpha Prince.
Even his name carried an edge, sharp as the fangs she glimpsed when his jaw tightened. His presence pressed heavier than the mountains themselves, a cold, merciless weight that made every other heir lower their eyes.
Aria forced her chin down further, praying his gaze would pass her by.
But the silence told her one thing: every eye in the courtyard might have lowered, but his had not.
The silence that followed his arrival was suffocating. Even the wind seemed to die, as if the very air obeyed him.
Kaelen's steps were measured, unhurried. He didn't need speed; his dominance carried him further than haste ever could. The crowd parted instinctively, a ripple of bodies moving aside without command. No one dared stand in his path.
Aria kept her head low, but every nerve in her body screamed awareness of him. The weight of his aura pressed against her skin like claws, testing, daring her to meet his gaze. She gripped the strap of her satchel so tightly her fingertips went numb.
Around her, whispers started again, hushed but fervent.
"Draven's here…"
"Look at him. Gods, he looks stronger than last year."
"He'll be Alpha before he's twenty-one."
The words scraped at her ears. She forced herself to breathe evenly, shallow but steady, as though the simple rhythm could hide her from him.
Kaelen moved through the courtyard like a storm disguised in human form. His coat flared slightly with each step, the silver embroidery along the hem catching the torchlight. His eyes, cold, pale gray, rimmed faintly with silver, swept across the gathering. A single flicker of them was enough to bow heads and silence tongues.
Aria risked the briefest glance. Just enough to confirm what her gut already screamed: his presence wasn't just feared. It was absolute.
Her mistake was looking too long.
For a heartbeat, his gaze brushed hers.
Cold shot through her veins, pinning her to the spot. He didn't stop walking. He didn't narrow his eyes or speak her name. He simply saw her, the way a predator sees movement in tall grass, an instinct, a flicker, nothing more.
But it was enough to steal her breath.
Aria dropped her eyes at once, chest heaving, praying no one else noticed the way her hands shook.
Kaelen passed. The tension in the courtyard eased by a fraction, though no one dared laugh or speak again until his back was to them.
Still, the echo of his gaze burned in her mind. If he looked again, if he looked closer, would he see through her lie?
A nervous hum returned to the courtyard after Kaelen passed, like bees stirring in the wake of a shadow. No one dared speak too loudly. No one dared stand too tall.
Except one.
A boy stepped forward from the cluster nearest the fountain, smirking as though he'd been waiting for his moment. His hair was pale as wheat, his eyes molten amber, burning too brightly, too quickly. The crest stitched across his shoulder marked him as Halden Rowe, heir of the Ashfang Pack. Loud, cocky, desperate to prove he wasn't afraid.
"You walk like you own the mountain, Draven," Halden called, his voice pitched high enough to carry. A few heirs gasped. Some leaned back, eager to watch but not be caught in the blast.
Kaelen didn't stop.
Halden's smirk widened, brittle beneath the torchlight. "But a crown isn't claimed by walking. It's claimed by fighting."
That earned a murmur from the crowd. A challenge, here, on the stones of Lunar Crest's courtyard.
Kaelen turned then. Slowly. Deliberately.
The weight of his gaze fell on Halden like an avalanche. The air thickened, heavy with an unspoken snarl. The fine hairs on Aria's arms rose, her lungs tightening as if unseen hands squeezed her chest.
Halden's smirk faltered.
Kaelen took one step closer.
Power rolled off him, invisible but undeniable. It pressed against Aria's knees, urging them to bend, to break. She locked her legs, fighting the urge to collapse, though her vision blurred at the edges. Around her, others bowed their heads or looked away, their bodies trembling under the force.
Kaelen didn't raise his voice. He didn't bare his teeth. He only said, quiet enough that silence had to lean in to hear:
"Fight me, and you won't walk away."
Halden swallowed hard. His amber glow flickered, dimmed. His fists clenched, then slowly unclenched. The challenge withered from his face.
Kaelen's eyes lingered on him for one more punishing moment before he turned away, dismissing him like smoke.
The pressure in the air loosened by degrees, enough for Aria to drag in a shaky breath. But her relief was short-lived, because as Kaelen scanned the crowd again, his gaze snagged on her.
Not long. Not deep. But enough.
Her heart slammed so hard against her ribs she thought it might burst through.
The courtyard's air still crackled from Kaelen's display when the sound of boots on stone cut through the silence. Sharp, measured, deliberate.
A woman approached from the steps of the Grand Hall, her cloak sweeping the flagstones like a spill of midnight. Silver embroidery glimmered along its edges, catching the moonlight with each stride. Her hair, pale as ash, was bound in a braid coiled over her shoulder.
"Enough."
The single word rang clear, low, and commanding. The remnants of Kaelen's dominance folded back like a tide obeying a greater moon. Even he didn't move against her.
Aria felt the shift instantly. If Kaelen was storm and ice, this woman was the mountain itself, unyielding, immovable, ancient in her strength.
The Headmistress of Lunar Crest.
Her eyes, pale silver and unblinking, swept the gathered heirs. "Welcome back," she said, her tone more warning than greeting. "Some of you return seasoned. Others arrive green and untested. All of you are here for one purpose: to survive long enough to prove yourselves worthy of your bloodlines."
A ripple of unease stirred the crowd.
"You will fight," she continued. "You will scheme. You will obey. There is no law within these walls but strength. Fail, and you will crawl home disgraced, if you crawl home at all."
Her words landed like blows. Some heirs smirked at the challenge. Others shifted nervously, trying not to show it. Aria kept her chin down, her hood shadowing her face, though every muscle in her body tightened like a drawn bowstring.
The Headmistress lifted a scroll from her cloak. "New blood. Step forward as your names are called. Be seen. Be judged."
One by one, names rang across the courtyard. Each new student emerged, their confidence or fear displayed before the watching eyes of wolves.
Aria's stomach twisted tighter with each name.
Then,
"Aria Gray."
Her false name cut the air like a blade.
Her breath caught, her hand clenching the satchel strap until her knuckles whitened. There was no hiding now. No shadow deep enough to cover her.
The crowd shifted, hungry eyes searching. The Headmistress's silver gaze swept the courtyard, waiting.
Aria forced her boots to move. Step by step, she walked forward, every heartbeat loud as thunder in her ears.
Each step echoed too loudly against the flagstones. Aria kept her chin bowed, her hood hiding as much of her face as she dared, but the courtyard stretched wide and merciless. Dozens of eyes followed her, hungry for weakness, eager for blood.
She reached the front line of students and stopped. Her heartbeat thudded against her ribs so hard it almost drowned out the Headmistress's voice.
"Aria Gray," the woman repeated, her silver eyes raking over her as though stripping her bare. "Daughter of… no registered line." The words dripped with disdain. "Yet somehow, you stand among us."
A ripple of laughter slid through the heirs. Low chuckles. Snorts of contempt.
Aria's jaw clenched, though she kept her gaze fixed on the ground. Better that they think her weak. Better they sneer and dismiss her. Invisible was safer than remarkable.
But invisibility shattered under the weight of one stare.
Kaelen Draven stood among the older heirs, his pale-gray eyes fixed on her with unnerving steadiness. He hadn't looked twice at any of the others, but now, he was watching.
Not with open curiosity. Not with mockery. But with something colder, something unreadable that made her stomach twist. As if he had already sensed the tremor beneath her skin.
Heat crawled up her neck. She forced her breath shallow, careful.
The Headmistress's voice cut the silence. "Stand in your place. Be ready to bleed for it."
Aria stepped back into the line, relief washing over her for an instant, until the gates behind them boomed again.
The sound rolled through the courtyard like thunder. Wolves answered, howls rising in a chorus from somewhere deep within the academy grounds.
Not welcoming. Not warning.
Laughing.
Aria froze, her hands trembling where they gripped her satchel. For the first time since she crossed the mountains, she realized her disguise might not just fail, it might already be failing.
Because Kaelen Draven was still watching her. And his gaze promised only one thing:
Her secret would not stay buried for long.