Two days after Seren asked Fiona a question no one had an answer to, Dorian Cass decided it was his turn.
She had been back in the junior hall long enough to feel the room resettling around her.
The first day had been shock.
The second had been the room replaying what it had seen, testing it against what it had always believed about her.
By the third morning she could track the recalibration in the way people arranged themselves, Fiona a degree more careful, the girls at the back less inclined to look away.
Whatever she had done to Fiona’s credibility, the room had absorbed it and was working out what to do with the remainder.
Dorian walked in late and took the seat with the widest sightline to the door.
Not Fiona’s seat.
Fiona always chose that one.
He had to ask the girl sitting there to move, and she did, because he was Dorian Cass and she was not, and the geometry of the room rearranged itself accordingly.
He set his things down, looked across the space, and found Seren.
She had already found him.
Dorian Cass.
Eldest son of the Cass family, pack council for three generations, the kind of boy who had gotten so used to his own opinions being listened to that he’d long since stopped checking whether they were worth listening to.
He had been in Yena’s orbit at every family event Seren could remember, one of a rotating cluster of boys who had convinced themselves that Yena’s draw was something personal, aimed specifically at them.
Yena had never given him the acknowledgment he was angling for.
He had transferred that resentment to wherever it could safely land.
Over the years, it had landed quite a lot on Seren.
He settled back in his chair and began.
“You look well,” he said.
Loud enough to carry.
Addressed to her the way Fiona addressed things to the room—the words aimed at one person, the performance aimed at everyone else.
“After everything.
The river.
All of it.
I wasn’t sure you’d keep coming back.” Fiona, two seats from Yena, did not look up.
“I slept well,” Seren said.
“Did you.” He smiled.
It was the smile of a boy who had always been found charming and had learned to lead with it.
“You must have.
Considering.” “Considering what?” “Considering.” He paused, as if tasting the construction.
“Everything with Prince Knox.
Passing by.
Not stopping.” He let the phrase sit.
“That would keep most people home a few extra days.” Yena’s voice, from her side of the room: “It was an accident, Dorian.
Everyone saw it.” He didn’t look at her when she spoke.
Seren marked that too—the particular quality of a boy not looking at the person he most wanted to look at, the overcorrection of it, the way his eyes stayed carefully forward.
“I know it was an accident,” he said.
“I’m only saying it was noticed.
By people worth being noticed by.” “Who told you I was watching him at the gate?” Seren said.
A small reset in his posture.
He had expected something else from her, defensiveness, or silence, or the crumbling look she used to produce on cue.
“Does it matter?” “It matters if it’s wrong.” He glanced at Yena then.
Fast, instinctive, the way a boy looks at the person he most wants watching when he does something worth watching.
Yena’s face gave him nothing.
Her eyes were on Seren, careful.
He turned back.
Less than a second.
Seren had counted it.
“It was an accident,” Yena said again, harder this time.
“Nobody saw what you’re describing.” A smarter boy would have taken that.
Yena’s word in a room like this was weight most boys weren’t willing to push against.
It was a clean exit, face-intact.
He didn’t take it.
“You saw what you were close enough to see.” He pushed back from his chair and crossed the room, unhurried, the kind of crossing that gave a room time to notice.
He stopped two feet from Seren’s table and looked down at her.
“I’m not saying it wasn’t an accident.
I’m saying some accidents are more convenient than others.” He was broad through the shoulders the way pack sons grew in their late teens, his wolf sitting close under his skin.
In her first life she had felt this kind of presence as pressure, something that made the throat want to close.
She let her hands stay flat on the table.
“Convenient for what?” she said.
“For getting noticed.
You’re Great General Hawthorne’s daughter.
The easiest way to move up is to make yourself memorable to the right people.” “You’ve put a great deal of thought into this.” “Not really.” “You have.” She tilted her head a degree.
“You’re not angry about the river, or about Knox.
You’re angry that nobody is looking at you.” Said the way she would state a weather forecast.
“You’ve been in this room for ten minutes and Yena hasn’t looked over once.” The silence had weight.
His jaw set, and the set ran all the way down his neck to his shoulders.
His eyes cut to Yena before he could stop them.
She was looking at the table.
Something moved in his face—brief and raw, gone in the time it took him to breathe.
The smile came back harder.
“Watch your mouth,” he said.
Low.
The performance had left.
What was underneath was worse.
He stepped closer.
One step, no stated purpose except to reduce the distance until the body registered it as threat before the mind caught up.
His wolf pressed at the edges of him, the pressure of a wolf that had been running a dominance play and decided to mean it.
Seren did not move her chair back.
She stood.
They were close now, her having to angle her chin up to hold his gaze, him broad and wolf-heavy.
She acknowledged the weight.
She did not yield to it.
“Let’s settle it,” she said.
“Properly.
One on one.
As wolves.” The way she would say any practical thing.
“Academy grounds, supervised or not, your choice.
If you win, I’ll walk out of this hall and you’ll never have to pretend again.
If I win,” she let the pause stretch, “you leave this room, and whatever story you’ve been carrying about me in it.” The junior hall went airless.
Dorian stared at her.
She held his gaze and gave him nothing to soften it with.
Behind him, the air around Yena had gone careful.
He had not looked at Yena once since he stepped closer—working hard at not looking, every line of him angled away from her, overcorrected.
The effort of a boy performing indifference for an audience he was trying to convince himself wasn’t there.
A pack son of the Cass name could not refuse a clean challenge without losing more face than he’d walked in with.
He could not accept it easily either, not here, not with Yena three seats away and the whole room watching him decide.
“Think about it,” Seren said.
She sat back down and opened her notes.
Dorian stood there for two more seconds.
Then the door at the far end of the corridor opened, the teacher, unhurried, with no idea what kind of room they were walking into.
Dorian went back to his seat.
The room settled back into the ordinary rhythm of a morning.
The challenge sat in the air unanswered, unretracted, going nowhere.
She was not worried.