Chapter 3. Unseen, Unheard

Aria spent the entirety of her first full day at Crescent Ridge attempting to become one of the shadows that pooled between the massive, centuries-old stone arches of the academy’s architecture. She moved with desperate, self-effacing stealth, hugging the walls and avoiding open spaces, but the task proved utterly impossible.

The physical fever from Kade’s brutal rejection still clung to her like a contagious illness—a low, persistent burn under her skin that radiated an unnaturally dry, intense heat. It was enough to make her skin feel painfully taut, and her clothes feel heavy and restrictive. This internal temperature was not just uncomfortable; it was enough to make her feel profoundly conspicuous in the frigid, controlled environment of the Alpha campus. Worse still, it was enough to make her feel dangerously fragile, like a cracked vase holding an explosive fluid.

She had managed, through sheer frantic effort, to clean up the physical evidence of the previous night’s magical discharge—the broken window in her room—before Leah had even stirred. She'd attributed the jagged hole and the lingering chill to a “badly thrown rock” and a clumsy cover-up job, banking on Leah’s general apathy. But the experience had cemented a terrifying, undeniable truth: her inner turmoil, the tearing of the mate bond, now had a physical, destructive, and unpredictable consequence. The mate bond wasn't just an emotional or instinctual tie; it was a magical live wire connected directly to the Alpha who refused to touch it, and every spike of rejection sent power wildly flaring.

Aria located the General Studies classrooms—a drab, low-ceilinged wing tucked far away from the main Alpha and Beta training grounds, almost an afterthought in the sprawling campus design. She slipped into the back row of Introduction to Lycanthropy, pulling the high collar of her uniform tight around her neck in a vain attempt to contain her tell-tale scent and the dry heat emanating from her.

The classroom was a study in acceptable mediocrity. Even without looking up, she could feel the casual, ingrained dismissal of the surrounding students. They weren't Alphas—they were Gammas and lower Betas, but they were certainly better than her. Their scents carried the easy, accepted weight of proper lineage and established rank. They smelled of expensive, controlled power and easy assurance; she smelled of smoke, desperate fever, and the feral instability of the wild.

She was struggling to memorize the five painfully basic stages of wolf transformation—information she had learned firsthand years ago in the feral valley—when a shadow fell heavily over her desk. The air above her suddenly became sweet, heavy, and cloyingly feminine.

“Well, well. If it isn’t the attic mouse, actually attempting to learn something.”

Cassandra. The voice was sweet, smug, and edged with calculated cruelty, like a velvet whip. She was a high-ranking Beta, and her contempt for Aria, the “charity case,” was a campus-wide performance.

Aria did not look up. She gripped the worn edge of the desk, focusing all her energy on the rough wood grain, trying to appear utterly invisible.

“What’s wrong, Aria?” Cassandra continued, her voice dropping to a theatrical whisper designed to carry. “Still running that little fever? It makes you look rather sweaty. Maybe you should’ve stayed in the valley with the rest of the ferals, where the infirmary doesn’t have to waste resources on your kind.”

Aria’s wolf, which had been whimpering silently in a corner of her mind since the terrifying incident with the shadow the night before, let out a low, challenging growl. The sound was internal, a rumbling vibration in her chest, but it gave her a momentary, dangerous burst of strength. She slowly raised her head, meeting Cassandra’s crystalline blue eyes with cold, unyielding silence.

“You should really watch that temper, little one,” Cassandra said, leaning closer, her clean, powerful scent overwhelming the stale classroom air. “It makes you look dreadfully ugly, and frankly, pathetic.”

“At least I don’t look like I’m wearing last night’s regret,” Aria replied, her voice flat and utterly devoid of inflection. She let the words hang there, knowing full well the Beta girl's reputation for casual hookups.

Cassandra’s practiced smirk finally faltered, her mask cracking. Her wolf, a petty, entitled thing, snapped a territorial warning. “Everyone knows why you’re here. Your old Guardian, Gerald, only brought you back because he needed the stipend from the Council. You’re a charity case, little shame wolf. A stain on the Ryloth name.”

Aria stared at her, maintaining eye contact, refusing to give her the satisfaction of a reaction. The silence became heavy, amplified by the sudden attention of the surrounding students. Finally, Cassandra, sensing that the moment of cruel triumph had passed, flounced off with a dramatic, disgusted huff, her perfect hair swinging. Aria didn’t move until the sound of her expensive shoes had vanished down the hall.

The dining hall was an auditory and olfactory assault—loud with the roar of a hundred conversations, the clattering of dishes, and the layered, complex scent of wolves from every rank and lineage. Aria chose a seat near the kitchen entrance, hoping the continuous commotion and the powerful smell of steam, frying grease, and industrial cleaner would help her stay hidden.

She managed two dry, flavorless bites of a sandwich before a different shadow fell across her tray. This one was broader, more crudely imposing.

“Look what the sewage truck dragged in.”

Derek. A Gamma with an overabundance of muscle, too much confidence, and clearly too little supervision. He leaned a meaty elbow on her table, ignoring the food, grinning widely. “Heard you cracked a window last night, Mouse. What happened? Magic burp? Did your little feral powers finally wake up and hate the view?”

Aria said nothing. She had learned long ago that silence was often the only viable form of safety.

“Don’t ignore me, low-rank,” he growled, the challenge in his scent spiking. He moved quickly, grabbing the strap of her shoulder bag and yanking it from the back of the chair.

Her breath caught in her throat. Inside the worn satchel was everything she owned that truly mattered—her few borrowed books and the single, faded photograph of her mother.

“Give that back,” she managed, the low volume of her voice belying the sheer panic rising inside her.

Derek laughed, a booming, arrogant sound. “What are you gonna do, set me on fire, Mouse? Where’s your Alpha to defend you, huh? Oh, wait—he wouldn’t even look at you.”

He dropped the bag carelessly. It hit the floor with a thud, and the single, precious, creased photo slipped out and landed face-up on the polished stone floor.

That was the breaking point. The insult to her mother, the threat to her only possession, the public humiliation—it snapped the tight cord of her control.

The terrible, volatile heat surged from her chest, down her shoulder, and into her arm. Her hand, which she had flattened on the wooden table, flared with a violent, instantaneous release of power.

A flash of fierce, orange-red light. A sudden, acrid sizzle.

A black, smoking, perfectly palm-shaped scorch mark instantly spread beneath her fingers, burning deep into the ancient wood. The table smoked faintly, smelling of carbonized sugar and fear.

Derek stumbled backward with an inarticulate shout. “What the hell are you?”

All conversation in the vast hall died instantly. The hundred noises vanished, replaced by a terrible silence. The entire room turned, drawn toward the sudden, sharp scent of burnt wood and uncontrolled power.

Aria stared at the mark. Her skin was miraculously unscathed, but her whole body was trembling violently from the force of the magical discharge.

Then the oppressive silence was broken.

A powerful, ice-cold scent swept into the space like a sudden, unexpected storm front: Cold iron. Ozone. Lightning.

Kade.

He wasn’t sitting with the high-ranking Alphas at the head table. He had come in from somewhere else entirely—perhaps drawn by the scent of her magic, or by the involuntary, instinctive alarm of the bond itself.

He strode toward her with lethal, economic calm. His boots were silent on the floor.

Derek practically dissolved, stammering some pathetic excuse before bolting out the nearest door. Kade didn’t spare the Gamma a glance.

He stopped in front of Aria, towering over her, his presence a suffocating pressure. His eyes, the color of molten gold, dropped to the smoking, scorched handprint on the tabletop.

His jaw tensed, a muscle jumping in his cheek.

Everyone was watching, absolutely still, waiting for his rejection, his punishment, his definitive denial of the chaotic girl who was apparently his.

Kade’s gaze lifted slowly to meet hers—golden, hard, and utterly unreadable. He did not ask what happened. He did not acknowledge the photograph on the floor. He said nothing about the burned table.

But his presence said everything: The flare. The instability. The threat she represented to the controlled order of the Academy.

She waited for the expected, crushing rejection—the second severing of the link.

But instead, his voice came—cold, low, and vibrating with suppressed power.

“Don’t embarrass me.”

That was all. Two words. A clear, stark claim of dominance. Of ownership, yes, but not affectionate; purely containing. A leash, not an embrace.

Then he turned to the rest of the dining hall, his golden gaze sweeping over the silent wolves like a physical force.

“Return to your meals.”

He walked out, just as silently as he had arrived, and the frozen air around Aria slowly, unevenly, began to thaw.

Aria stared at the blackened table. Marked.

The mate bond was still a violent, insistent pull. Every moment Kade Ryloth was on campus, she felt his presence like a massive magnetic north, and the effort to resist his orbit was physically exhausting.

Later that afternoon, needing a refuge and answers, she risked the main library. It was a labyrinthine space, large, ancient, and blessedly quiet. She found a corner tucked between high, dusty stacks and tried to disappear into the yellowed pages of obscure wolf history.

She had just found a fascinating, half-obliterated passage about Blood Court mating rites and the political use of bonded pairs when two familiar scents approached the aisle behind her.

Kade. And Liam, his calm, serious Beta.

She stilled instantly, breath held.

Their voices came clearly through the partition of books.

“The instability is getting worse, Kade,” Liam muttered, concern heavy in his tone. “That discharge in the dining hall was reckless. And you’ve seen the reports from the surveillance detail.”

“It’s nothing,” Kade snapped, his voice sharp with annoyance. “A fluctuation in power levels. It will pass.”

“Three discharges, Kade, culminating in property damage, in one week?” Liam countered, his voice firm. “You’re barely maintaining separation. You’re almost losing control.”

Aria barely breathed, her hand frozen above the page she was reading.

“I crushed the bond,” Kade said coldly, with definitive finality. “That is the end of it. The connection is inert.”

Liam paused, a long, telling silence. “Then why is her fever burning through walls? Why is she spontaneously generating plasma?”

A profound, tense silence followed.

Kade’s voice returned, quieter now, a dangerous, defeated confession. “Acknowledging the bond would ignite a fire that would consume the terms of the treaty and everything I’ve worked for. I am under orders. I must maintain absolute separation. No matter the cost to her. No matter the cost to me.”

They moved off down the aisle, the sound of their footsteps fading into the dust. Aria stayed utterly frozen, her hand flat on the ancient, fragile page.

Slowly, without a conscious thought, a small, black scorch mark bloomed under her fingertips—burning through the yellowed history.

The truth hit her with the force of a magical blast:

She was not just an embarrassment to be rejected.

She was not just an unwanted mate.

She was a threat.

And he was under direct, political orders to deny her, even if it meant denying a primal, consuming force.