Zayne Blackthorn.
Aria’s POV
The gates of Bloodrose Academy loomed like something torn from a nightmare. Twisted black iron curled into snarling wolves and licking flames, their edges sharp enough to draw blood at a glance. They were massive—towering above everything I’d ever known. One look, and my stomach twisted into a cold, sick knot.
This wasn’t a school.
It was a warning.
A place built to break the weak—and I was the perfect candidate.
I stood there on the rain-drenched path like a drenched stray, trembling in my oversized hoodie, my duffel bag soaked and sagging at my feet. The Council's transport hadn't even waited for the gates to open fully before dumping me like forgotten trash. No goodbye. No instructions. Just the car door slamming shut, the tires hissing through puddles—and silence.
The slap Brann had left on my cheek still stung beneath the freezing rain.
The gates groaned open, metal grinding against metal in a sound that made my teeth ache. It felt like something alive was opening its jaws for me, hungry and waiting.
I stepped inside.
The courtyard stretched wide and unforgiving, its cobblestones slick with rain and lit only by flickering torchlight. Towering buildings cast crooked shadows, and grotesque stone statues seemed to shift when you weren't looking. Students in black uniforms moved like wolves—fast, confident, dangerous. Crimson collars. Silver wolf crests. Untouchable.
And then there was me.
Soggy. Silent. Pathetic.
I pulled my hood lower, praying to disappear. But this place didn’t allow invisibility. Whispers curled around me like smoke, sharp and cold.
“Look at that pathetic thing.”
“Doesn’t even reek of a shift.”
“Probably a squib.”
“She’ll be gone in a week.”
I kept walking, head down, heart thundering. Each step felt like walking deeper into a lion’s den.
Then I felt it—like a current slicing down my spine. A pressure. A presence.
Someone was watching me. Not just watching, but peeling me apart with their eyes.
I looked up.
He stood across the courtyard, half-shrouded in rain and shadow, leaning against a stone pillar like he owned the entire world. He wasn’t just surrounded—he was centered, his presence magnetic and absolute. The others around him were dangerous. But he was something else.
Dark clothes clung to a tall, sculpted frame. Black hair slicked against his forehead. Sharp cheekbones. A mouth made for smirking.
But it was his eyes—silver, glinting beneath the storm—that locked me in place.
And then I heard it.
“Is that… Zayne?” a girl near me whispered, her voice barely audible over the rain.
“Yeah,” her friend answered, awestruck. “The Alpha.”
Another girl chimed in, her voice hushed but reverent:
“Zayne Blackthorn.
The name alone sent shivers through every orphanage and Council outpost. I’d heard the rumors.
The eldest of the Blackthorn heirs.
The one who challenged a Beta at thirteen and nearly killed him.
The Council’s golden boy—or maybe their caged beast.”
I swallowed hard, throat dry despite the rain.
That was Zayne Blackthorn.
He looked right at me, gaze raking over every inch like he could smell my fear. His lips curled slowly into a smirk—cold and cruel and amused. Like I was a bug he'd just decided not to crush… yet.
My pulse stuttered.
Beside him, a girl draped herself around his arm, her beauty almost unreal—like she’d stepped out of a fashion ad, if that ad had been for heartbreak and murder. Her eyes locked onto me with a flash of possessive rage.
I looked away.
Too late.
My foot caught on a loose stone, and I stumbled forward—straight into her.
A gasp. Sharp intake of breath.
Then pain.
Her hand struck my cheek hard and fast, a perfect echo of Brann’s blow.
The courtyard went silent.
“Watch where you’re going, you clumsy oaf!” she snapped, her voice ice and venom.
I blinked through tears, stunned. Rain mixed with the blood at the corner of my mouth.
She wasn’t done.
“Look at her! Tripping around like she belongs here. A stain. A freak. Probably some charity case the Council pitied. Well, there’s no pity here.”
Laughter. Cruel. Dismissive.
Zayne didn’t move.
Didn’t flinch.
Just watched, silver eyes gleaming with malicious delight.
And then he spoke.
“Indeed,” he murmured, voice like silk over a blade. “It seems the trash has finally been delivered.”
He turned away from me, as if I were already beneath notice.
“Try not to contaminate the grounds, stray. Some of us have standards.”
Laughter rippled through the students around him. His girl gave me a final shove and a smile of wicked triumph.
“You’ll learn your place, cursed one,” she sneered. “And it’s at the bottom.”
I stood there, frozen. Soaking. Burning. Every eye on me. No one helping.
But beneath the shame and the humiliation…
Something stirred.
A flicker deep inside my chest—low and rough and ancient. A growl.
My wolf.
Silent until now.
But not anymore.
The dorm room was colder than death.
Stone walls. No curtains. A narrow bed with a scratchy blanket and a pillow that felt like it had been stuffed with rocks. The wind howled outside the tall window, rain tapping the glass like impatient claws.
Sleep didn’t come.
Not after what happened in the courtyard.
Not after him.
My cheek still throbbed. My pride hurt worse.
I sat up, teeth clenched, staring at the darkness until it blurred. The need to breathe—to move—became unbearable. So I pulled on my hoodie, shoved open the creaking door, and slipped into the corridor like a shadow.
No one roamed the halls at this hour.
No one but me.
Bloodrose after midnight felt like another world—silent, ancient, and alive. Torches flickered low in sconces, their flames whispering secrets in a language I didn’t understand. I followed the hall, bare feet silent against stone, turning down a narrow staircase that led to the lower levels.
A strange pull guided me.
Like something calling my name without speaking it.
I turned a corner—and stopped.
He was there.
Zayne Blackthorn stood alone in the moonlit corridor, half-swallowed by shadow, his black shirt unbuttoned at the throat, revealing ink that crawled up his collarbone like dark vines. His hair was damp, tousled. He looked carved from obsidian—flawless, lethal.
He didn’t look surprised to see me.
“Stray,” he said softly, voice echoing off the stone like smoke.
“Should’ve known you’d wander where you don’t belong.”
My breath caught. My instincts screamed run—but I didn’t move.
“Did you follow me?” I asked, heart racing.
“Why would I follow someone who reeks of fear and desperation?” he said, tilting his head, eyes gleaming. “You’re not interesting enough for that.”
Liar.
Something crackled in the air between us—unspoken, charged, electric.
“You enjoy it, don’t you?” I said, voice low. “Making people feel small. Like gods squashing insects.”
He stepped closer. Slow. Measured.
“I don’t need to make anyone feel small,” he murmured. “They just are.”
I met his gaze.
Silver. Wild. Something feral behind it.
But there was something else, too.
Curiosity.
A flicker of… interest?
“What are you?” he asked, voice suddenly quieter. Not cruel. Just curious.
“A mistake,” I said bitterly.
He stopped barely a foot away from me. The scent of rain and something darker—cedar, smoke, power—wrapped around me.
“That’s not what I asked.”
I swallowed hard.
“I don’t know what I am,” I admitted.
He studied me in the silence that followed, his gaze dipping to my lips, my throat, my hands clenched into fists at my sides. Then, for just a second, something shifted in his expression—like he saw something familiar in me. Something that scared him.
“You felt it, didn’t you?” he said, barely more than a whisper.
“Felt what?”
He stepped so close I could feel the heat radiating off his body.
“The stir. The pull,” he said, eyes locked on mine. “The wolf waking up.”
I couldn’t breathe.
Because… I had.
A twitch in my blood. A hunger I didn’t understand.
And I knew he saw it.
He leaned down, his lips brushing the shell of my ear.
“Careful, little stray,” he whispered. “Sometimes… waking up is the beginning of the end.”
Then he pulled back, his expression unreadable.
“Go back to your cage,” he said coldly. “Before I forget to let you walk away.”
And just like that, he vanished into the shadows, leaving behind only silence and the echo of my pulse thudding in my ears.
I stood alone, breathless, trembling.
But not from fear this time.
From the growl still rising in my chest.
The part of me that wanted to chase him into the dark.