Chapter 4 STRANGE ANCIENT MAN
VELVELA POV
The name had lived in my mind for six years as a threat to be contained, a darkness I kept at the edges of Crystalbank's borders through sheer force of will. I had studied it, mapped it, built strategies around keeping it away from my people. I had never once imagined standing inside it.
Yet here I was.
Esmey tapped my shoulder lightly. "I know you've heard stories," she said with a small smile. "But believe me, what you've heard is nothing compared to what really happens here."
I stayed quiet. There was no point telling her I had spent years studying this place, or that I had once been an Alpha. That woman had died two night ago. I was someone else now, and I hadn't yet figured out who.
"This isn't just a city," Esmey continued as we walked. "It's a military academy."
"A survival academy," Hilda corrected flatly.
I said nothing and quietly memorized every turn we took, every building, every road junction. If I was going to survive here, I needed to understand the terrain. Old habits.
Esmey pointed ahead at a pair of massive black gates flanked by warriors whose expressions hadn't moved since we'd approached. "The Iron Gate. No one enters or leaves without permission." One entrance, one exit. My mind filed it away without effort. We kept walking.
"Students' dormitories on the left," Esmey continued, gesturing toward rows of buildings where young wolves moved in groups…Some laughing, some hurrying toward training grounds. "And that one farther ahead is the Noble Wing. Only students from royal families, Alpha bloodlines, or powerful houses. As maids, we enter when assigned to clean and not before."
I looked at it. Beautiful, deliberate, built to remind everyone nearby that distance from power was a physical thing you could measure in stone and architecture.
A loud clang pulled my attention toward a massive arena where students were sparring inside while instructors barked from the edges. One student hit the ground hard enough that I felt it from where I stood. Nobody moved to help him. He got up on his own.
"The Great Arena," Esmey said. "Training, punishments, official duels." She pointed across the grounds as we walked, a combat field packed with warriors running sword drills and firing at targets, a large white building she called the Healing Hall with injured students limping through its doors, the whole compound organized around the logic of controlled violence.
Then she pointed to the tallest structure in the city, a black tower cutting straight up into the sky like a blade, surrounded on all sides by guards whose positions left no gap. Her cheerful expression disappeared entirely. "The Black Tower. No one enters unless summoned."
"That's where His Majesty stays," Hilda added quietly.
"The mask Lycan," I murmured before I could stop myself.
Both girls looked at me. "You know about him?" Esmey whispered.
Everyone knew about him. The ruthless ruler. The strongest Lycan alive. The king no Alpha dared provoke, whose name I had used to keep my own people in line when I needed them to understand what waited beyond our borders. I nodded once and kept walking.
Esmey explained the uniform system as we moved. Shadow Officials in black, the academy's highest-ranked officers who worked directly under the Lycan.. The Elite in crimson, mostly children of Alphas and Betas carrying themselves with the confidence… Platinum rank in blue; and finally a smaller group in brown jogging toward the training grounds.
"Bronze," Esmey said.
"The slow learners," Hilda added, without cruelty, just fact.
Everything here revolved around strength and rank. Not so different from the world I'd come from, except that world had been mine to shape. This one had rules I hadn't written.
"Maids have ranks too," Esmey offered, brightening. "Those assigned to the Noble Wing think they're untouchable."
Hilda's expression was immovable. "We all scrub floors."
Something almost like a laugh moved through my chest. Almost.
Then Hilda glanced at me with the particular look of someone deciding whether to say something useful or kind and choosing useful. "You don't have a wolf, do you?"
The warmth left my face. "I—"
She exhaled. "This place will be hell for you." She said it without malice, which made it worse.
We stopped eventually before a small building tucked far from the academy's center, modest enough that it looked less built than forgotten. Esmey handed me a small key. "Room Three. Get some rest."
"Tomorrow," Hilda finished, already turning away, "hell begins."
They left me standing in front of a door with the number three carved into the wood. I pushed it open.
Two narrow beds, a wooden cupboard, one small window, nothing else. Three nights ago I had slept in a palace. I sat on the edge of the thin mattress and stared at the opposite wall until the silence pressed in from every direction.. Declan, Vivienne, Crystalbank, my father, Lyra's ember going quieter by the hour, and I lay back and made the only decision left available to me.
I'll survive. Even if I have to do it alone.
Sleep didn't come.
The room was too warm and too quiet in the wrong way, and after an hour of staring at the ceiling I gave up and slipped outside. Night had settled fully over Bloodcity, most students disappeared indoors, the grounds quieter than they'd been all day. The cooler air helped. I wandered without any particular direction, memorizing paths out of habit, letting my feet move while my mind tried to rest.
I noticed a narrow stone path branching away from the main buildings, half-hidden by overgrown hedges, unmentioned in Esmey's tour. Curiosity was a hard thing to suppress even now, even here. I followed it.
The farther I walked the quieter everything became, tall trees pressing in on either side until the sounds of the academy faded entirely.
For the first time since waking up in that forest, I could actually breathe. Then I heard it…Water, faint and steady, and followed the sound until the path opened into a small clearing where a crystal-clear spring caught the moonlight and scattered it across the surface in thousands of moving pieces.
My shoulders dropped on their own. I hadn't realized how tightly I'd been holding everything until I stopped.
I stood at the edge for a long moment, just breathing, then slipped off and folded my maid's dress over a nearby rock and stepped in naked.
The cold rushed over my feet and I shivered, then exhaled as the temperature evened out, cool and clean and real in a way nothing had felt in days. I waded deeper until the water reached my shoulders, closed my eyes and leaned my head back, and for a few precious seconds I let myself forget , the sword, the rejection, Vivienne's cold smile, all of it releasing its grip just slightly.
"If only I could stay here forever," I whispered, and the spring answered with nothing but the soft sound of water moving.
Then something brushed against my foot.
I frowned, stilled. It came again, solid, deliberate. My eyes opened. Before I could react, a grip closed around my ankle and released just as fast, and I stumbled back with my heart slamming against my ribs. Someone was in this water. Someone who had been here before I arrived.
I took another step back, and I felt it, a strong powerful hand wrapped around my waist from behind, stopping me cold.
A figure rose from beneath the surface in front of me, water streaming from broad shoulders carved like stone, long black hair clinging to his back, droplets rolling down a chest that looked like it had been built for war. He stood close enough that I felt the heat radiating from his body despite the cold water between us, and my entire body went absolutely still.
His face was almost unreal. Sharp jaw, straight nose, high cheekbones, lips curved into the faintest suggestion of a smirk. He looked less like a man and more like something the Moon Goddess had made specifically to be dangerous.
Then his eyes lifted to mine.. Emerald green, ancient, cold, carrying the stillness of something that had witnessed centuries of violence and felt none of it.
Every army I'd stood before, every rogue Alpha, every traitor I'd executed, none of them had made fear move down my spine the way this stranger did. Something in the oldest part of me recognized what he was before my mind caught up.
Danger.
He didn't release his hold. His gaze moved across my face slowly, studying, the silence between us
stretching past the point where it was anything but intentional.
"A wolfless servant," he growled.
