Chapter 9 Secrets in the Dark

The Academy was still and silent after midnight. The hallways had that strange hum of magic and tension that only came after curfew, when even the stars outside seemed to hold their breath. I moved carefully down the dorm hallway, each step light and silent, avoiding every creaking board. My hoodie was up, my bruised knuckles stuffed into the sleeves. No one could see me like this. Not now.

Only one person knew where I went when I disappeared at night. Only one person ever noticed when I vanished between classes, eyes hollow and pulse racing with a storm no one else could feel. Ayla.

I tapped lightly on her door. It creaked open immediately. She'd been waiting.

Ayla's bright, clever eyes scanned me like she always did. She said nothing about the blood on my hoodie or the fresh tear in my sleeve. Instead, she stepped aside and let me in.

The room was warm. Candles flickered on the desk, casting gold light across the walls covered in ancient maps, clan sigils, and handwritten notes. Ayla was obsessed with old things secrets, symbols, bloodlines no one dared speak of. It was probably the reason we'd become friends. She didn't care about rank. She cared about truth.

"I found something," she said without preamble, locking the door behind us. "And you're not going to like it."

I swallowed hard. "That's a great way to start."

Ayla moved to her desk and picked up a thick, leather-bound book. She set it between us, pages already worn, stained with ink and something darker something that smelled faintly of ash and old magic.

She flipped it open to a specific page. Then she looked up at me, her voice low.

"Tell me again what you remember about your parents."

I blinked. The question was a razor blade.

"My father died before I was born. My mother... she was quiet. She was never part of a pack. She raised me in the human city until she..." I hesitated. "Until she got sick."

Ayla nodded slowly, eyes unreadable. "You never thought that was strange? That she kept you away from every pack? That she never told you which bloodline you came from?"

"She said it was safer that way."

"Because it was," Ayla whispered. "Eva, I've spent the last three weeks researching marks like yours."

I flinched. My mark. The crescent-shaped scar on my lower back that had burned the moment Dante first touched me. I hadn't told anyone about it except Ayla. Not even Dante knew what it meant-maybe not even I did.

"What did you find?"

Ayla flipped the book around. On the page was a drawing-an identical crescent scar inked in silver beside a bloodline symbol I didn't recognize.

"The Scarlet Line," she said softly. "Descendants of the Crimson Alpha. The first-born warriors of the Moon Goddess. The bloodline was thought to be wiped out during the Shadow Massacre fifteen years ago."

My chest tightened. "The what?"

Ayla sat beside me, her voice steady. "A war. One of the Elders buried one no one teaches anymore. There was a prophecy that a female born of the Scarlet Line would rise again and either save or destroy the future of all Alphas. She would be marked before her first heat... and cursed to be rejected by her mate before her wolf awakened."

My breath stopped in my throat; my skin prickled.

"What are you saying?" I whispered.

"I'm saying your rejection wasn't random, Eva. I'm saying your mother was trying to protect you from this."

She turned the page.

There, drawn in blood-red ink, was a girl with hair like mine. Eyes like mine. A mark glowing across her spine, her body surrounded by wolves kneeling before her not attacking. Submitting.

My heart slammed against my ribs. "This is insane."

"No. This is why you survived the mate bond snapping. Why your wolf hasn't surfaced. Why you're stronger every time you fight, why Dante can't control himself around you even though he rejected you. Your blood is ancient. Forbidden. Royal."

I stood up abruptly, pacing. My mind was spinning. "No. I'm not special. I'm not some chosen thing from a deadline. My mother, she would've told me."

"Maybe she tried," Ayla said gently. "Maybe she died before she could."

My legs gave out and I dropped to the bed, burying my face in my hands.

I wasn't just a rejected she-wolf. I was a threat. A ticking bomb. A prophecy waiting to explode.

And suddenly, all of Dante's anger, all his hatred, made sense.

Because the Moon Goddess didn't just give him a mate.

She gave him me.

And I was something the world wasn't ready for.

"I don't want this," I whispered. "I just wanted to be seen. To belong."

"You were never meant to belong," Ayla said, sitting beside me. "You were meant to lead."

The words chilled me to the bone.

She reached into a small metal box on her shelf and pulled out something wrapped in black silk. She unwrapped it carefully a jagged piece of silver metal shaped like a broken fang.

"The blade used to kill the last of the Scarlet heirs," she said quietly. "It didn't burn like it was supposed to. The Elder who tried to use it said her blood melted the silver instead."

I stared at it.

I didn't want to believe any of this.

But deep in my bones, in the place where my wolf had been too silent for too long, I felt it stir.

A flicker.

A tremble.

A whisper of something ancient waking.

Something red.

Something scarlet.

Ayla put a hand on mine. "You have to be careful, Eva. If the Elders find out, they'll kill you before the prophecy can come true. And if Dante finds out."

"He'll finish what he started."

But even as I said the words, doubt crept in, because the way he'd looked at me tonight... the way his body had trembled in mine's presence... it hadn't been hatred.

It had been hunger.

"Maybe not," Ayla said gently. "Maybe he'll choose differently next time."

I shook my head. "He doesn't choose me. Not ever."

"You think so?" she said, eyes narrowing with something unspoken. "Then maybe you should know this, he came here tonight. After the shift. Looking for you."

My breath caught, eyes wide.

"What?"

"I didn't let him in," Ayla said. "But he was shaking. Sweating. His eyes... golden. The wolf wanted you, Eva. And I'm not sure he can hold it back much longer."

I couldn't breathe. I stood, pacing again. My body didn't know whether to run, cry, or scream.

Dante's wolf wanted me? But now, there was a bigger truth behind the bond between us.

If I was the last of the Scarlet Line... then I wasn't just his rejected mate.

I was his fate, his undoing or maybe his redemption or maybe even both.

A knock at the door made us both freeze.

One knock. Two, then silence.

Ayla looked at me, heart racing. "That's not curfew patrol." I stood up slowly.

Every nerve in my body screamed that something had changed tonight. Something had cracked open and would never be hidden again.

Ayla's fingers wrapped around the handle of the blade. I walked to the door, and I opened it. And there he stood.

Dante.

His eyes glowed gold in the dark. His shirt was torn. His chest heaved like he'd run straight from hell to get here but it wasn't the wolf that scared me. It was the way he looked at me, like he knew. And like he wasn't going to let me go again not this time.