The black, palm-shaped burn mark on the dining hall table was still etched in Aria’s memory, a terrifying scar of her power, long after the first whispers began to circulate through the campus.

She didn't return to lunch that week. She didn’t return to the bustling quad, or the expansive training fields, or anywhere that the eyes of her peers could easily find her. But it didn’t matter. Her carefully maintained absence only served to make the ensuing rumors louder, more vicious, and strangely fixated on her.

Wolves didn't forget what they smelled—the acrid, unmistakable scent of scorched oak and smoke, a smell that spoke of violence and magic. They didn't forget what they saw—an unranked, unpedigreed girl, flaring with raw, elemental power she had absolutely no right to possess. And worst of all, they didn't forget who came to silence it.

Kade.

That was the jagged point that twisted the campus gossip into something dangerous and personal. It wasn’t just that she’d burned the table; unstable wolves were common enough. It was that the future Alpha Prime had reacted, stopped her, and claimed control. He had silenced the eruption with nothing but a voice like tempered steel and eyes like absolute, merciless judgment.

The moment had been brief, quiet, and brutal, but it had irrevocably changed everything about Aria’s status. It marked her. It branded her not with his affection, but with his cold, possessive control.

The library became her essential hiding place.

It was a vast, cavernous space, drafty and wonderfully ignored by the dominant, action-oriented students. No one who wanted to prove their prowess or their ambition spent time in the dusty, quiet stacks. Aria could wander for hours without seeing a single soul, and still, the ancient books whispered to her like old, scholarly ghosts—full of secrets, lineage records, forgotten treaties, and arcane rites.

She preferred the second floor. The southern wall was nothing but antique, leaded glass, overlooking the sprawling, gray-blue treetops of the Crescent Forest. She could sit cross-legged between the soaring stacks, letting the pale sunlight cut across her arms, and pretend—for a precious, fleeting while—that no one was watching her burn from the inside out.

Her initial, volatile fever had finally begun to fade, retreating from a searing flame to a dull, persistent ache in her core. But the bond remained.

She could feel it when she tried to sleep—that magnetic ache toward the Alpha who had so clinically walked away. It was a gravitational pull, a constant, silent demand for equilibrium.

It wasn’t fair.

She hadn’t chosen any of this. She hadn’t wanted to be noticed or judged. She hadn’t wanted a mate, especially not one shackled by political duty. She hadn’t wanted to be claimed or denied. All she had ever wanted was to survive the semester, disappear into her coursework, and quietly get out.

But now, she was something else entirely. Something unpredictable.

Something that made reinforced windows crack and polished oak smolder. She was a liability.

She was sitting cross-legged on the cold stone floor, back pressed into the narrow space between the bookshelves, her hand hovering over the worn, obscure page of an old text on Arcane Elemental Theory, when she heard them.

Two distinct voices. Low. Measured. Confident. The voices of those who expected to be alone.

They didn't belong in this dusty wing.

She froze instantly, every muscle locking.

Kade. And Liam.

Their footsteps were soft over the stone, but their powerful presence sucked the clean air right out of the room. She could feel the heavy, electric weight of the Alpha and Beta before she could make out the words. Her body reacted before her mind did—shoulders locking, the wolf inside her rising from its pain-induced stupor into an alert, anxious vigilance.

She pressed herself tighter into the narrow aisle, becoming one with the shadows. Her breath was shallow, held in her chest.

They stopped near her section, the heavy leather scent of Kade’s jacket overwhelming the scent of old paper.

Liam’s voice was a low, urgent murmur. “The Council’s sniffing around. They sent a query through the Watchers. That flare in the dining hall wasn’t subtle, Kade. It broke cover.”

“She didn’t do it on purpose,” Kade muttered, his tone instantly defensive, layered with frustration.

“No, but it doesn’t matter,” Liam snapped, clearly exasperated. “That table is marked. Everyone saw it. Felt the magical surge. The Court knows exactly what she is now. They have enough confirmation.”

There was a heavy, pregnant pause, filled only by the whisper of dust motes settling.

Then Kade answered, quieter this time, his voice a low, gravelly confession. “Her power is too loud, Liam. Too unrefined. One mistake, one emotional spike, and we all burn. The treaty burns. My lineage burns.”

Aria swallowed hard. Her throat felt raw, aching with suppressed emotion. She hadn’t heard him sound truly afraid before. Not even when he was confronting her in the dining hall. But now, beneath the rigid control, there was something undeniably brittle in his tone. Caution. Deep, bone-deep regret.

Liam kept pushing, his voice dropping to a harsh whisper. “If she is indeed Flameborn, the Council will move fast. They’ll want her confined immediately for assessment.”

“She’s not ready,” Kade said, his voice hard as flint. “She’s not trained. If they get their hands on her now, they’ll see her only as a raw weapon—one they don’t control, and therefore must break.”

“They already do,” Liam said grimly. “And your scent is all over that incident. You contained her. You revealed the link.”

Kade didn’t reply immediately. Aria could picture him perfectly—jaw clenched, posture rigid, the weight of centuries of political duty and bloodline expectations tightening around his spine like iron bands.

Liam pressed again, the final warning quiet and brutal. “You weren’t supposed to let the bond activate. You weren’t supposed to get close.”

“I had to shut it down,” Kade growled, the Alpha power in his voice struggling with the frustration. “If I hadn’t shown up, she would’ve burned more than the table. She might have hurt herself. Or someone else.”

“You’re slipping,” Liam warned, the Beta’s concern overriding deference. “Orders or not, if the Court suspects your bond is active—if they even smell that it’s imprinting, that the fire has taken hold—they will rip her out of this place in chains. Or they’ll take her to The Hollow.”

“She’s not going to The Hollow,” Kade snapped, the closest he’d come to losing control. “They’ll break her. You know what they do to unstable Elementals down there. It’s a cage for power they can’t manage.”

“Then stay away from her,” Liam hissed, the definitive command cutting through the air. “You’re the one making her volatile. Your mixed signals are causing the discharges.”

“I’m not claiming her,” Kade bit out, the words icy, final, and devastating. “She’s unstable, untrained, and a political nightmare. And I’m not risking the Court’s eye on my lineage for a bond I never asked for and a mate I can’t afford.”

Aria flinched so hard she hit her shoulder on the metal shelf. It shouldn’t have hurt. He was just saying the cold, hard, political truth. But the raw words sank anyway—like a hook, sharp and dragging.

They moved away, their purposeful footsteps fading into the silence.

Aria didn’t move for a long, frozen moment.

The book in her lap trembled slightly in her hands. It was the Origins of Flameborn Rites, a volume she hadn't even gotten past the first chapter of. It was old, half-faded, the script in elegant cursive ink. She had found it by accident, wedged behind a stack of obscure Blood Court customs. No one else had touched it in years.

She looked down at the page.

There—at the corner where her fingers had been gripping the paper during Kade’s final, cutting dismissal—a smear of black was blooming.

Not ink. Not dust.

Scorch.

Slow. Subtle. Like coal beneath the ash, burning from the inside out. There had been no fire, no blinding light, only pressure and heat. The quiet, persistent pulse of something ancient and terrifying is stirring beneath her skin.

Just from hearing his voice, just from feeling the violent emotional spike of his rejection.

She curled the edge of the page to test it, but the paper flaked away under her touch, turning to brittle ash. Ruined. Just like the dining hall table.

Just like her hopes of a quiet life.

The library was still. Sunlight slanted over the polished stone floor. The shelves loomed around her like silent, wooden judges.

Her hands trembled, but she didn’t cry. She couldn't afford to waste the energy.

Instead, she closed the book gently and pressed her palm firmly to its leather cover, feeling the subtle residual warmth.

“I’m not a weapon,” she whispered into the silence. “I’m not going to be broken.”

But even as the desperate words left her lips, her wolf stirred again—low, warning, and utterly truthful.

You were forged.