The full moon rose over Shadowmoon Academy like an open wound.
Nyra felt it the moment the sun dipped below the horizon. A hum beneath her skin, ancient and insistent, as if the moon was calling to something buried deep in her blood. The silver light that had been pulsing faintly since her awakening grew brighter, more demanding, until she had to wrap her hands in cloth to hide the glow from her roommates.
"You alright?" Finn asked, glancing up from his bunk. "You’ve been staring at the window for an hour."
"Fine," Nyra said. "Just tired."
"You’ve been tired since you woke up from the poisoning." He sat up, his easy grin fading into something more serious. "If something’s wrong, you can tell us. That’s what friends are for."
Friends. The word caught in her chest. She had never had friends before not real ones. Only Thorne. Only Hellen. And now three boys from the Undercroft dorms who had waited outside the healer’s wing while she lay dying, who had defended her against Draven, who had walked her to Corvin’s laboratory and refused to leave.
"There’s nothing to tell," she said, and hated herself for the lie. "Get some sleep. The Shadow Trials are in three days."
Finn didn’t look convinced, but he lay back down. Marek was already snoring softly. Jasper’s book had slipped from his fingers, his sharp eyes finally closed.
Nyra waited until their breathing evened out. Then she slipped out of bed, pulled on her boots, and walked into the night.
The academy was alive with the full moon.
She could hear it in the corridors the distant howls, the slam of doors, the rough laughter of wolves who had given themselves over to instinct. The air itself felt charged, electric, pressing against her skin like a held breath. She kept to the shadows, moving through the lesser-known passages she’d discovered during her weeks of hiding.
She didn’t know where she was going. Not consciously. But her feet carried her toward the senior wing, toward the training grounds, toward him.
Whatever you see whatever you hear stay away from me.
She should have listened. She knew she should have listened. But something pulled at her, something stronger than fear, stronger than reason. The same instinct that had guided her hands during combat, that had whispered to her in the darkness of the poison’s grip.
The Moon Goddess had said she was loved. Had said two were bound to her by fate.
The wolf and the serpent are waiting.
She reached the senior wing and stopped.
The door to Soren’s suite was slightly ajar. Torchlight flickered from within. And there were voices his voice, low and rough, and another. Higher. Familiar.
Valeria.
Nyra’s heart stopped.
Inside the suite, the torches had burned down to embers.
Valeria stood in the center of the room, her dark hair loose around her shoulders, her gown already sliding from her body. She had come the moment the moon rose, knowing Soren would be at his weakest, knowing his wolf would override his restraint.
She had been right.
He stood by the window, his back to her, his shirt already discarded. The moonlight painted his tattoo in shades of silver and shadow the wolves mid-hunt, their jaws open in silent howls. His muscles were corded with tension, his hands braced against the windowsill.
"Soren." She crossed the room slowly, letting her gown fall completely. "You’ve been fighting it all evening. I can feel it. Stop fighting."
He didn’t turn around. "You shouldn’t be here."
"I should always be here. I’m the only one who understands what you need." She pressed herself against his back, her hands sliding around his waist. "The full moon is cruel to those who fight it. Let me help you."
His wolf was howling. Not for her. Never for her. But the craving was there the primal need that the full moon awakened in every Alpha, the hunger that demanded satisfaction. Valeria’s scent filled his lungs. Her hands were on his skin. His body responded even as his mind recoiled.
This is wrong, Kael snarled inside his skull. She’s not the one. You know she’s not the one.
"Shut up," Soren muttered.
Valeria mistook it for surrender. She turned him around and pulled his mouth down to hers.
Soren let her.
Not because he wanted her. Because he was tired of fighting. Tired of wanting something he couldn’t have. Tired of the silver-haired woman who haunted his every waking thought and refused to leave his dreams.
Valeria pushed him toward the bed. He went.
And in the doorway, hidden in the shadows, Nyra watched.
She couldn’t move.
She knew she should leave. Knew she should turn away, should run back to her dorm and bury herself under her blankets and pretend she had never come here. But her feet were rooted to the stone, and her eyes were fixed on the scene before her.
Valeria’s hands on his chest. Her mouth on his throat. The way she moved against him, practiced and possessive, as if she had done this a hundred times before.
She had. Nyra knew she had. Soren had told her as much or as close to telling her as he ever came. Valeria has been my occasional companion during full moons. The memory of his words twisted in her stomach like a knife.
This was what she was to him. A student. A responsibility. A secret he kept out of duty. While Valeria was the one he turned to when the moon rose and his wolf demanded satisfaction.
Why did it hurt so much?
She had no claim on him. No right to feel betrayed. He wasn’t hers. He had never been hers. The kiss in the corridor, the training sessions, the way he’d looked at her when she woke from the poison none of it meant what her traitorous heart wanted it to mean.
But the silver light beneath her skin pulsed with something that felt like grief.
The wolf and the serpent are both yours.
The Goddess’s words echoed in her memory. If Soren was bound to her, why was he with Valeria? Why did the bond feel like a wound instead of a promise?
She took a step back. Then another. Her boot scraped against the stone.
Soren’s head snapped up.
His eyes met hers across the room.
For one terrible, endless moment, no one moved. Valeria, oblivious, continued pressing kisses to his shoulder. But Soren was frozen, his dark eyes locked on Nyra’s face, and she saw something flash through them shock, then horror, then something that looked almost like despair.
"Thorne." His voice was hoarse.
Valeria stopped. Turned. Saw the figure in the doorway.
"You." Her voice was pure venom. "What are you doing here? Get out!"
Nyra ran.
She ran through the corridors, past students who howled at the moon, past wolves who had given themselves over to the shift. Her vision blurred. Her chest burned. She didn’t know where she was going only that she had to get away. Away from the image of Soren’s hands on Valeria’s body. Away from the sickening realization that she cared far more than she had any right to.
She burst through a side door and found herself at the lake.
The water was black glass under the full moon, the same water where Soren had found her crying weeks ago. Where he had called her a weakling and walked away. Where their strange, painful dance had truly begun.
She collapsed on the stone bank and pressed her face into her knees.
"Stupid," she whispered. "Stupid, stupid, stupid."
She wasn’t supposed to feel this. She wasn’t supposed to want him. He was cold and cruel and infuriating, and he had seen her secret and kept it, and he had gone into the Forbidden Forest for her, and he had sat by her bedside for two days, and he was with Valeria.
He was with Valeria.
"What did I expect?" she asked the water. "What did I possibly expect?"
The water didn’t answer. But a voice behind her did.
"I expected you to listen when I told you to stay away."
Nyra spun. Soren stood at the edge of the willow curtain, bare-chested, his trousers hastily pulled on, his chest still heaving from the run. He must have left Valeria the moment she fled. Must have followed her through the corridors, past the howling wolves, all the way to the lake.
"I didn’t mean to see," she said, her voice cracking. "I didn’t mean to—I should have stayed in my dorm. I should have listened. I’m sorry."
"Sorry." He laughed. It was not a pleasant sound. "You’re sorry."
"Yes."
"For what? For spying on me? For seeing something you were never supposed to see?" He stepped closer, and his eyes were wild gold bleeding through the black, his wolf still too close to the surface. "Or for the look on your face when you saw?"
Nyra backed away. "I don’t know what you mean."
"You do." He kept advancing. "You looked at me like I’d betrayed you. Like I’d done something unforgivable. Why, Thorne? Why would you care who I spend my full moons with?"
"I don’t care."
"Liar." His voice dropped. "You’re a terrible liar."
She backed into the willow tree. The same tree she’d hit weeks ago, when he’d cornered her and asked why she was afraid of him. There was nowhere left to go.
"I told you to stay away," he said, his voice rough. "I told you I was dangerous. But you came anyway. You followed me. You watched."
"I didn’t mean to—"
"And now you’re crying." He reached up and caught a tear on his fingertip. She hadn’t even realized she was crying. "Why? Why do my choices affect you like this?"
"I don’t know."
"You do."
"I don’t!" She pushed at his chest, but he didn’t move. "I don’t know why I care. I don’t know why it hurt to see you with her. I don’t know anything anymore. I don’t know what I am, or what I’m becoming, or why my chest feels like it’s going to split open every time you look at me. I don’t know any of it!"
The words echoed across the lake. Nyra stood with her back against the tree, her chest heaving, her face wet with tears she could no longer control.
Soren stared at her.
Then, slowly, he stepped back. The wildness in his eyes receded, replaced by something she had never seen before.
Vulnerability.
"Neither do I," he said quietly. "I don’t know why I went into the forest. I don’t know why I sat by your bed for two days. I don’t know why I can’t stop thinking about you, or why my wolf calls you something I’ve never called anyone before." He turned away. "I don’t know what you’re doing to me, Nyra. And it terrifies me."
She had never heard him say her real name before.
"Soren—"
"Go back to your dorm. The full moon isn’t safe for anyone, least of all you." He walked toward the trees. "I’ll see you at training."
He disappeared into the darkness, and Nyra was alone with the moon and the water and the aching, terrifying knowledge that she was falling in love with a man who had just been with another woman.
She sank to her knees on the cold stone and let the tears fall.
The moon hung high above the academy, indifferent and eternal.
In his private quarters, Corvin sat surrounded by open books and scattered vials, the blood-stained cloth in his hand. He had been working for hours, cross-referencing ancient texts, testing the blood against every marker he could identify.
And now he had his answer.
"Two signatures," he whispered to the empty room. "There are two mate signatures."
He stared at the results, his mind racing. The first signature was dominant strong, primal, unmistakably Alpha. Soren. The second was fainter, more subtle, but equally present. His own.
"The wolf and the serpent," he murmured, remembering the old texts. "Two bound to one vessel. Two halves of a single bond."
He set the cloth down with trembling fingers.
She wasn’t just Moonblood. She wasn’t just a woman disguised as a man. She was the center of a fated bond that had drawn both him and Soren to her from the moment she arrived. And Soren had felt it first. Soren had already claimed her in his wolf’s mind.
But Corvin was part of it too. And he had no intention of letting Soren win without a fight.
"The Shadow Trials," he said to himself. "Everything will come to a head at the Shadow Trials."
He blew out the candle and sat in the darkness, watching the full moon through his window, and waited.