"On the ground!" Warden Garrow’s roar echoed across the quad. "Every half-blood on the grass! Heads down! Now!"

Rough hands shoved me between the shoulder blades. I hit the wet lawn hard, mud soaking through the knees of my trousers.

Beside me, students scrambled like cornered sheep. Hundreds of half-bloods dropped low across the damp grass, eyes averted and throats angled away in instinctive submission. Nobody dared challenge the command.

"Keep your eyes down, freak," Lila hissed from my left, her chin tucked close to her chest. "If you make them look our way, I'll rip your ears off."

"Shut your mouth, Lila," I muttered through gritted teeth.

"You smell like a rotting ditch," she spit back. "They're going to purge you just for the stink."

"Both of you, silence!" a warden barked, striking a black tactical baton against the turf inches from Lila’s hands. "The Thorne pack does not ask twice."

I didn't answer. I pulled my knees tight to my chest, burying my face into the rough wool of my sleeves.

Three days. For three days, I had survived on bitter root broth and stale crusts, refreshing the binding salve that anchored the glamour over my face and throat. The sigil prickled constantly, a hot electrical itch beneath my skin.

*Suppress it,* I told myself, letting my breath drag out in thin, silent wisps. *Bury it under the rot. Don't let the spark catch.*

A single stray trace of the Moonveil bloodline, and my life was forfeit. The glamour masked my face and surface scent, but if an Alpha’s tracker caught the true bloodline underneath, the disguise was useless.

Black tactical armor moved past the academy gates. Heavy boots struck the stone walkway in disciplined rhythm, jarring the turf beneath my palms.

"Row one, stay down!" a commander shouted. "Sniffers, sweep the line!"

The snarl of hunting hounds rattled the cold air. Great, gray-furred beasts dragged their handlers down the first rank, noses whistling against student collars.

"Clear," a tracker called out.

My stomach twisted into a hard knot. My palms leaked cold sweat, turning the mud slick under my fingers.

"Row two, eyes to the dirt!"

The hounds moved. Leather leashes snapped taut. A boy two yards ahead began to whimper, trembling so hard his teeth rattled like dry dice.

"Hold your water, cur," an enforcer growled, kicking the boy’s boot. "Row two is clear."

*Two down.*

*Two left.*

"Row three, steady!"

The heavy stomping grew louder. The smell of gun oil, wet tactical fabric, and hound sweat washed over the grass. Every muscle in my neck seized. I pushed my face deeper into my knees, tucking my chin until my collar squeezed my throat, letting the glamour’s sour masking note fill my nose until it nearly drowned out my own pulse.

"Line three clean," the tracker barked. "Moving to the back ranks."

*Row four.*

My row.

The measured tread drew level with my shoulder. A hound gave a wet snort four feet away. I counted the thuds in my head.

*One. Two. Three. Four—*

The footsteps stopped.

The quad went dead. The wind died with it.

Every bird in the courtyard trees seemed to stop singing at once. Even the hounds fell completely silent, whining low in their throats before retreating a step.

The air around me plummeted in temperature. It felt as if someone had dragged an iceberg across the grass. Then the scent hit me—sharp silver fir, crushed winter frost, and heavy, aged leather.

An Alpha.

Not just an enforcer. Not an ordinary tracker.

My knees went entirely numb against the dirt.

"Alpha?" a tracker’s voice quavered, uncertain and strained. "Did you catch a stray scent?"

Silence answered him.

A pair of polished black combat boots appeared directly in front of my face. The mud barely clung to the leather.

"Fall back," a voice said.

The tone was deep, dragging like stone over iron, scraped raw from years of disuse.

"Alpha Thorne?" the commander ventured, his voice dropping into panic. "The sweep isn't finished—"

"I said fall back," Kael Thorne repeated.

The command wasn't loud, but it rolled across the quad like thunder. Thirty enforcers stepped back in unison, their armor rattling as they snapped into rigid formation ten yards away.

Kael didn't walk away.

Cloth rustled. The shadow over me deepened as he sank down, kneeling in the wet grass right before me. The smell of fir and cold leather wrapped around my head like a suffocating blanket.

"Look up," he said.

The command pressed against my skull, heavy enough to buckle my spine.

I bit my bottom lip until I tasted copper. I stayed frozen, chin locked against my chest, pretending to be a terrified, deaf mongrel.

"I know you hear me," the low voice murmured.

I kept my eyes shut tight. "Please, Alpha," I whispered, roughing up my vocal cords to sound cracked and pathetic. "I'm just a half-breed. I haven't done anything wrong."

"Look up."

He didn't yell. The flat stillness in his voice was far worse.

I didn't move.

A gloved hand reached out. Long, lean fingers gripped my jaw.

His touch was cold through the leather, but the strength behind it was absolute. With a steady pull, he dragged my face upward, forcing my neck back until my head tilted toward the gray sky.

My eyes cracked open against my will.

Kael Thorne stared down at me.

Dark hair fell across his brow in jagged cuts. Deep, bruised shadows hung under his eyes—the exhaustion of a man who hadn't slept a full night in two years. His jaw was set like granite, stubbled and pale.

He didn't look at my clothes. He didn't look at my posture. His dark, dilated pupils locked directly onto the waxy, swollen lumps covering my cheekbones.

"Ugly work," he muttered.

"I—I have a skin condition, Alpha," I stammered, trying to jerk my chin away from his grip. "The clinic said it could be contagious. You shouldn't touch me."

He didn't let go. His thumb pressed firmly against the edge of my jawline, right where the glamour’s faint alchemical hum was strongest.

"You talk too much for a sick dog," he said softly.

He leaned forward.

Before I could pull away, his head dipped toward the crook of my neck.

His cheek brushed the rough wool of my collar. His nose stopped less than an inch from my bare throat, right over the racing thump of my carotid artery.

I stopped breathing entirely.

Kael drew in a long, deep breath.

For two terrible seconds, he stayed there, inhaling the glamour’s sour masking scent and whatever ghost of Moonveil resonance lingered underneath.

Then, his entire frame went rigid.

His fingers tightened around my jaw, digging into the bone. When he pulled his head back, his dark eyes were wide, blown open until barely a sliver of iris remained.

The exhaustion in his face vanished. In its place was something terrifying—a shock so profound it drained the last trace of color from his lips.

Across the lawn, Lila’s jaw hung open. Her eyes bulged as she stared at us, frozen in terror. The entire student body knelt in breathless paralysis, every head turned toward the last row.

The Alpha of the Thorne pack was on his knees in the mud, holding the academy's most mocked half-breed by the jaw.

"Where," Kael whispered, his voice shaking with a tremor he couldn't hide, "did you get that scent?"