Maya
The roaring in my ears is gone. In its place is a silence so profound it feels like the world is holding its breath. Dust motes dance in the shafts of light from the high windows. My own breath comes in ragged, shallow gasps. My gaze is fixed on the floor. On the cracks. They spread from my feet like dark lightning, a testament to the ugly, powerful thing that just ripped its way out of me.
My eyes lift. Seraphina is pale, her usual smirk wiped clean from her face. Kael stares at the fractured stone, then at me, his mouth slightly open. The disgust is gone. In its place is something I cannot read. Confusion. Shock. Maybe even fear.
Then the silhouette in the doorway moves.
He walks into the training hall, and the silence deepens. Every step is deliberate, measured. He carries an authority that Kael, for all his posturing as a future Alpha, has never possessed. It is not something you learn. It is something you are.
The transfer student. Ryker.
He does not look at the cracked floor. He does not look at Kael or Seraphina. His eyes are on me, and they have been since the moment he appeared. He walks directly to me, stopping just a foot away. The entire hall, the few other students who were watching, they all fade into the periphery. There is only him.
He lifts a hand and places it on my shoulder.
Instantly, the chaotic energy still thrumming under my skin goes quiet. It is not forced into submission. It feels… soothed. A wave of calm washes over me, a cool balm on a raw burn. The trembling in my limbs subsides. I can breathe again.
His gaze finally leaves mine. He looks at Kael and Seraphina. It is not a glare. It is something colder, emptier, and far more dangerous. It is a look that promises consequences without needing to speak them aloud.
Seraphina flinches. Kael instinctively takes a half step back, pulling her with him.
“Leave her alone,” Ryker says. His voice is not loud, but it cuts through the silence and echoes off the stone walls. It is not a request. It is a command.
No one argues. No one dares. Seraphina opens her mouth, then shuts it again, her rage warring with a sudden, primal caution. Kael just stares, his jaw tight.
Ryker turns his attention back to me. His expression softens, just slightly. “Can you stand?”
I nod, though I am not sure it is true. His hand on my shoulder is a firm, grounding pressure. He offers me his other hand. I look at it for a second, then my fingers curl around his. His grip is warm and strong. He helps me to my feet. I feel unsteady, as if the ground itself is no longer trustworthy.
He does not let go. He simply starts walking, leading me away from the center of the room, away from the evidence of my loss of control. He leads me right past Kael. For a second, Kael’s eyes meet mine. They are filled with a thousand questions I have no answers for. Then we are past him, and through the doors, and out of the training hall.
He finds me later by the creek that borders the academy grounds. I am sitting on a smooth, grey stone, the same one my father used to bring me to when I was a child. I am tracing the cracks in my palm from the shattered goblet.
I hear his footsteps on the soft earth but I do not look up.
“Are you okay?” he asks, his voice still low and calm.
“I cracked the floor,” I whisper. “I broke solid stone just by being upset.”
“I know.” He sits on the stone next to mine. It is a comfortable distance. Not too close, not too far. “That power you feel. The one you can’t control.”
I look at him then. His eyes are the color of a stormy sky. “What about it?”
“It’s the mark of an Alpha bloodline.”
The words are so absurd I almost laugh. “What? No. That’s impossible. You saw them. You saw how Kael rejected me. My family… we’re nobody. We’re from the Whispering Creek. We don’t make waves.” My own mother’s words sound weak and foolish in the open air.
“Being an Alpha has nothing to do with who the Moon Goddess pairs you with,” he says, his gaze unwavering. “And it has everything to do with why someone like him would be terrified of you. Your family isn’t nobody, Maya. They’re hiding.”
A cold dread trickles down my spine. Hiding. My parents’ constant warnings. My father’s sad eyes. “Hiding from what?”
He looks away, toward the rushing water of the creek. “The same thing my family is hiding from. A rare bloodline is a powerful thing. Some want to control it. Others want to destroy it.” He looks back at me, and his expression is deadly serious. “I have it too. I felt the echo of your power the moment I arrived here. Today, in that hall, it wasn’t an echo. It was a roar.”
My head is spinning. Alpha. Hiding. It does not make any sense. And yet, it makes a terrifying kind of sense. The surge of power. The cracks in the floor. The calming effect of his touch.
“Why are you telling me this?” My voice is barely audible.
“Because I recognize the look in your eyes,” he says softly. “The fear. The loneliness. And I know what happens next. If you don’t learn to master it, that power will not just crack floors. It will shatter you. It will destroy you from the inside out.”
I stare at him, at this stranger from the Northern Clans who saw right through me. He does not look at me with pity, like Lena and Finn. He does not look at me with disgust, like Kael. He does not look at me with triumphant cruelty, like Seraphina.
He looks at me, and for the first time since the ceremony, I feel seen. He sees the broken girl, but he also sees the power that broke the stone.
For the first time, someone sees me as powerful, not pathetic.
“What do I do?” I ask, the words a surrender.
He holds my gaze, his own intense and certain.
“You let me teach you.”
