For the first time in his life, Xade saw colour and he is confused.
Xade
They said I had ASPD — antisocial personality disorder, according to the human diagnosis. That was something my parents had gone through a lot of trouble to confirm, dragging me to the mortal world to sit in a quiet office while a soft-voiced man told them what they already knew: their son didn't understand emotion the way other people did.
I never felt empathy. Not once, not for anyone.
I remembered when someone fell and broke his arm, the limb twisted at a strange angle while blood spilled across the ground, and I watched with quiet fascination while everyone else stared at me in horror.
It always had been and I didn't see the need to pretend otherwise.
Even as a werewolf, even among a species built for instinct and aggression, I was considered different. Too disconnected. My wolf had always been quiet inside me, barely stirring, existing more like a shadow than the primal part of me.
Maybe because we are the same.
I was sitting at my desk staring out of the window, zoning out, when the professor was explaining something. I had stopped caring about it before the second sentence, and the rest of the students were either pretending to listen or not bothering with the pretense.
I didn't even know why I was here… Oh, this academy is compulsory for all heirs.
I was watching the sky. Blue and clear, birds were crossing it in flocks, moving like they owned the space between clouds. I had a thought about what it would be like to catch one of them on the next hunt, dissect it to understand what made them move like that, so freely.
My attention drifted down toward the academy grounds without much thought. Students were moving across the paths below like insects scattering between buildings, their scents and movements blending into the same meaningless background they always had.
That's when I saw a fallen bird.
No. I mean, a human girl, crouched down near the path below, lacing her shoe.
She looked different. She didn't have the features of a wolf or any other species I recognized, and from three floors up I couldn't explain why that mattered except that something in me stirred in a way nothing had ever stirred before.
I saw color for the first time in my life, so bright and warm, different from the grayscale I always see. My lungs drew in air as blood ran through my veins with a heavy thump I had never felt.
I blinked. What was that? I hate not having answers to questions or not being in control of my expression as
I stood up.
My chair scraped back loudly, and every student in the classroom went rigid. The teacher turned immediately, tilting his head in submission, exposing his neck the way people did when they remembered who they were dealing with. I stared down at him for a moment, said nothing, and walked out of the room.
The hallway hit me with a scent before I reached the bottom of the stairs. Lavender.
Soft and warm, completely out of place in a building that usually smelled like sweat, metal lockers, and the faint lingering musk of too many supernatural bodies packed into one space. This scent was clean. I felt something I could only describe as alive. The confusion that lashed out through me was unfamiliar. I didn't like confusion.
I reached the hallway and stopped to look at her properly. She was at a locker a few steps ahead, pulling something from her bag. Her scent, lavender, grew stronger and… Human
She was different from the way I had seen from the window, but up close it was something more than that. Everyone else in this school was nothing to me—they existed the way furniture existed, present, functional, easy to move around like a pawn.
But she had a face. I noticed her face. The way her dark hair fell, the curve of her jaw, the line of her shoulders, small and rounded. She was shorter than I had realized from the window, shorter and… curvy.
My wolf, who had been silent in me for as long as I could remember, stirred and pushed toward the surface with an agitation it had never shown before.
I grunted under my breath and walked toward her, hands in my uniform pockets. People parted out of my way as usual, but why won't they?
I stopped at the locker she was using and leaned my forearm against the row above hers, crowding her with my body and height. She was so small up close.
Plump and small, and I thought briefly that I could probably crush her in my hands if not careful. Why should I be careful? I should just crush her…
She raised her head to look at me, and my wolf came to the surface fast, pushing one word forward.
Mate.
Her eyes were wide—rainy forest green—as she stared up at me, and I watched the confusion and wariness moving across her face.
I smirked. Could she feel the pull?
"You," I started, watching her, "belong to me," I said simply because she was mine, and the hallway went completely silent, and I heard the collective intake of breath of students around us.
She recoiled a little, her brow pulling together as her fingers tightened around the strap of the bag as she opened her mouth and said, in a smaller voice, "No."
The collective gasp from the hallway was almost louder than the word itself.
She rejected me?
I stood there for a full second, and then the emotion that flooded through me was one I didn't have a name for, something blinding and sharp that turned my vision dark at the edges. My hands clenched, and I drove my fist into the locker beside her head. The metal dented inward with a crack that split through the air, and she flinched hard.
"You reject me?" I growled. My wolf was pressing at the surface of my skin, wanting her to understand what we were and wanting her to take it back.
She squeaked and was trembling.
I stepped closer in a predatory way, stalking her as her shoulder tensed. "You're going to regret it," I told her. "I'll make sure you regret saying that. I'll make you regret your first day in this school. I'll make this school a living hell for you. You'll wish for death, but it'll never come." I threatened; my voice was low.
I watched her cower in fear, and I had a complete urge to strangle her and watch her fight for breath and die, but that would be too easy.
I bent to her level and whispered in her ears, and I didn't miss how she shivered, "And little mate, I always get what I want."
I turned and walked away and did not look back to see how petrified she was. The dark promise was already hanging in the air between us, and she would spend a very long time learning that I had meant every single word of it.