Chapter 31The academy's administrative wing smelled like old paper and ozone, and Ethan sat in a hard wooden chair in a room with no windows, Ash curled tense at his feet, waiting for whatever came next.They'd been separated the moment the group returned through the academy gates—Lyra led one direction, Grace and Daniel another, Ethan steered into this small, bare office by two instructors who hadn't said a single word beyond *wait here.* He'd been waiting twenty minutes now, Ash's ears tracking every sound beyond the door, body still faintly unsteady from whatever the gate's resonance had done to it hours earlier.The door finally opened. The grizzled field instructor entered first, followed by a woman Ethan didn't recognize—older, silver hair cropped short, a presence that filled the small room the moment she stepped through it. She didn't introduce herself. She didn't need to. The crest on her collar marked her as someone well above a standard instructor's rank."Mr. Vale." She

Chapter 33They didn't speak again until they were three floors away and safely back in the main stacks, blending into the handful of late-night students still scattered among the reading tables. Lyra's hands were shaking slightly as she smoothed her hair back into place, composure reasserting itself through sheer force of will."Someone checks that section regularly," she said, voice low. "That wasn't a coincidence. That was routine.""Routine means they expect people to go looking." Ethan kept his own voice steady, though his heart hadn't fully slowed either. "Which means we need to be more careful than we have been.""Or we stop entirely." She didn't sound convinced of her own suggestion even as she said it. "Ethan, whatever this is, it's bigger than two students with a restricted library card and good intentions.""I know." He did know. He'd known it since a gate pulsed beneath a forest clearing and his own system reacted to it like something ancient recognizing an old friend. "I

Chapter 35The training grounds felt different with three beasts instead of two—not harder exactly, but layered, like adding a third voice to a conversation that had only ever been a careful back-and-forth before. Nyx, healed enough after four days of rest to move without visible pain, settled into the dynamic with the same patient, watchful intelligence it brought to everything."Okay," Ethan said, standing at the center of the field with all three beasts arranged loose around him. "New formation. Bramble up front, same as always. Ash on the flank, ready to Step. Nyx—"*behind,* Nyx finished, dry amusement threading the thought. *weaving from the shadows your wolf no longer needs entirely for itself.*"Exactly."They ran the drill against a training construct set to moderate resistance, and for the first ten minutes it went about as well as Ethan expected a brand new three-beast formation to go—Bramble charged a half-second too early twice, Ash's Shadow Step crossed paths with a ven

Chapter 37Cassian didn't confront him directly this time. That was the first sign, three days after the exam, that something had shifted into a different, more dangerous register than open rivalry.Ethan noticed the absence first—no sneering comments in the corridors, no pointed remarks in shared classes, nothing at all from a boy who'd spent six weeks making sure Ethan knew exactly where he stood in the academy's social hierarchy. The silence sat wrong, the way an empty forest sat wrong right before something large moved through it."He's planning something," Lyra said, watching Cassian across the dining hall one evening, the boy deep in quiet conversation with two older students Ethan didn't recognize. "That's not someone who's given up. That's someone regrouping.""Let him regroup." Ethan kept his own attention on his meal, though the uneasy prickle at the back of his neck refused to fully settle. "I beat him fair. Nothing he does changes that."*the girl is correct to worry,* Nyx

Chapter 39They carried Bramble back toward the academy's edge in careful, exhausted silence, Lyra supporting the boar's weight on one side while Ethan kept both hands pressed against the worst of the venom-corroded wound, applying what little first aid he remembered from six weeks of hard-won field experience. Ash padded close behind, violet-rimmed eyes scanning the tree line with a wariness that hadn't fully settled since the fight ended.They stopped at the edge of a small clearing to rest, Bramble's breathing steadying slightly once the immediate adrenaline of the fight drained out of all of them, and that was when Nyx's dry, whispery voice cut quiet through the bond.*the bear's core. and the jackal pack's core. they remain on the ground where the seniors fled.*Ethan glanced back toward the ambush site, torn between the urgent need to get Bramble proper care and the practical reality that two fresh, high-quality cores—abandoned by fleeing enemies in their panic—represented exact