The black envelope stayed at the bottom of my gym bag the next morning.

I should have gone to the headmaster. I should have shown Rowan. Instead, I spent dawn filling out a transfer request, then went to combat training because missing class would jeopardize the scholarship I still needed until the transfer cleared.

“Pair up!” Coach Graves shouted. “Alphas, control your aura. Omegas, stop expecting your partner to go easy because the ceremony bruised your feelings.”

I wrapped tape around my knuckles.

“Vale. Elara. Mat four.”

Of course.

Kieran stepped onto the blue square in a fitted gray training shirt. He did not bow.

“I’m not going easy on you.”

“I would be offended if you did.”

His mouth tightened.

Then he attacked.

His first punch hit my guard hard enough to numb my forearm. I pivoted away from the second and barely ducked a kick aimed at my shoulder.

“Too slow,” he said.

“Too angry.”

I drove a jab toward his ribs.

He blocked it and shoved me back.

“You think everything is about the bond now?”

“No. I think you are trying to punish me for existing.”

His next strike stopped an inch from my jaw.

Something dangerous flashed in his silver eyes.

“I am trying to prove I can stand this close to you without becoming my father.”

I lowered my fists slightly.

“Your father did not kill your mother.”

“He made her weak.”

“Vivienne said he made one reckless decision.”

Kieran went still.

“Vivienne talks too much.”

“She said your mother chose him.”

“She chose the bond over herself.”

His voice changed. Less angry. More afraid.

“My mother commanded three hundred wolves. She never asked permission from anyone. Then she met him, and suddenly every decision became what he needed. Where he wanted to live. Which patrol he wanted her on. She called it love.”

He stepped closer.

“When they died, people told me it was romantic that she stayed with her mate until the end.”

Kieran laughed bitterly.

“I thought it was pathetic.”

I held his gaze.

“I am not asking you to stay with me until the end.”

“No. Your scent is doing the asking for you.”

“You keep blaming my body for your choices.”

His face hardened again.

I circled him instead of attacking. “I filed a transfer request this morning.”

That landed harder than any punch.

Kieran's stance broke for half a second. “Where?”

“I haven't decided.”

“You cannot transfer while the marks are unstable.”

I raised my brows. “Interesting. Yesterday you wanted me as far away from you as possible.”

“I still do.”

“Then why do you care?”

His hands curled into fists. “Because leaving Blackthorn puts you outside the northern wards. If the fourth Alpha is a rogue, you would be walking toward him without knowing it.”

The warning sounded practical, but the bond told on him. The mark tied to Kieran gave one hard pulse, hot enough to make me wince. His eyes dropped immediately to my scarf.

“You felt that,” I said.

He looked away.

“Kieran.”

“I felt nothing.”

“Another lie.”

He stepped close enough that the air between us changed. “You want honesty? Fine. The thought of you leaving makes my wolf want to tear the gates off their hinges. I hate that reaction. I hate that I can know you for less than a week and still feel responsible for whether you breathe.”

For once, I had no clever answer.

Kieran saw it and backed away first.

“Good,” he muttered. “Now we both hate something.”

Coach Graves blew his whistle.

“Free scrimmage. Protect your square. No claws.”

The gym erupted.

Students spilled across the mats, changing targets and testing openings. I turned toward a smaller Beta rushing my side.

I never saw Jaxson Miller coming from behind.

“Let’s test the famous four-mate Omega.”

Both hands hit my shoulders.

I flew backward toward the steel weight racks.

Kieran moved faster than thought.

One arm locked around my waist. He spun us. My back hit his chest instead of two hundred pounds of iron plates.

He set me on my feet.

Then he became something else.

Kieran crossed the mat and tackled Jaxson so hard the floor shook.

His first punch split Jaxson’s lip.

The second broke his nose.

“Kieran!” Coach Graves shouted.

He did not hear.

“You don’t touch her!”

The third strike landed with a wet crack.

Two upperclassmen tried to drag him away. Kieran threw them off without even looking.

His aura exploded through the room.

Several Omegas dropped to their knees. One Beta staggered into the bleachers.

Jaxson covered his face, but Kieran kept swinging.

He was going to kill him.

I ran forward and caught Kieran’s wrist in both hands.

“Stop.”

He froze.

Not Coach Graves.

Not two senior Alphas.

Me.

Kieran’s fist hovered above Jaxson’s face. His eyes had gone almost black.

Slowly, they returned to silver.

He looked at my fingers around his wrist.

I released him.

The whole gym had gone silent.

“Why?” I asked.

Kieran stood.

Blood coated his knuckles.

He stared at Jaxson, then at me, horror spreading across his face as he understood what he had done.

“I don’t know.”

“Yes, you do.”

His jaw clenched.

“You hate the bond. You hate what happened to your mother. You keep saying I’m a liability.” I stepped closer. “So why did you lose control when someone touched me?”

Kieran backed away.

“Don’t.”

“Answer me.”

He looked trapped.

For the first time since the ceremony, he did not hide behind disgust.

“Because I hate what you do to me.”

His gaze dropped to my mouth.

The mark tied to him burned hot beneath my scarf.

Kieran swallowed.

He took another step back as if distance were the only thing keeping him sane.

“If I stay in this room another minute,” he said, voice rough with restraint, “I am going to put my teeth in your neck and claim you in front of everyone.”

Then he turned and walked out before his wolf could make the choice for him.

Three nights later, the fourth mark tore open again.

I woke with a gasp, one hand flying to my neck.

Black blood stained my fingertips.

At the same moment, alarms began screaming across Blackthorn.

“Lock your doors!” the dorm matron shouted from the courtyard. “Perimeter breach!”

I stumbled to the window.

Red emergency lights flashed over the snow-dusted lawn. Enforcers ran toward the eastern gate with stun batons and silver-tipped rifles.

The black envelope lay open beside my lamp. I had read the warning so many times the paper had softened along the fold. When the fourth mark bleeds again, do not let Blackthorn lock you away.

My first instinct was to laugh at the timing. My second was to check the window latch.

Below, the eastern ward flashed blue. A figure hit the invisible barrier and kept moving. The ward bent around him like glass under pressure, then shattered in a burst of white sparks. Three enforcers rushed him. He dropped the first with an elbow, swept the second off his feet, and caught the third by the uniform before the man could fire. Instead of killing him, the intruder threw him into a hedge and continued toward the dorms.

He was not attacking Blackthorn at random.

He was following a straight line to me.

A man walked through them.

He did not sneak.

He did not run.

He moved straight up the central path as though the academy belonged to him.

One guard fired a tranquilizer dart.

The stranger caught it.

He looked at the plastic vial in his bloody hand, crushed it, and kept walking.

The mark on my neck pulsed so hard my vision blurred.

The pull I had felt for days—the strange hook beneath my ribs, always pointing beyond Blackthorn’s walls—snapped tight.

He was here.

The fourth Alpha.

Someone hammered on my door.

“Elara!”

Cassian.

I unlocked it before he broke the frame.

He pushed inside, dressed in black training pants and nothing else. His golden eyes swept the room.

“Are you hurt?”

“Not yet.”

Rowan appeared behind him with a silver medical blade in one hand and an emergency kit in the other.

“Lower your aura,” he ordered Cassian. “She’s already bleeding.”

Kieran shoved into the hall a second later, wearing combat gloves and a furious expression.

“Move.”

The room filled with three competing Alpha scents—winter pine, cedar smoke, and the metallic bite of rain.

My lungs tightened.

“Stop,” I gasped.

Rowan noticed first.

“Back up. All of us.”

Cassian immediately released my arms. I had not even realized he had grabbed me.

Kieran planted himself in the doorway. “The bunker is two floors below. We move her now.”

“No.”

Three heads turned toward me.

“I am not being locked in a bunker because a stranger walked onto campus.”

Cassian stared at the black blood sliding under my collar. “That stranger is connected to your fourth mark.”

“I know.”

His face changed.

Before he could answer, the alarms cut off.

Silence slammed into the building.

Kieran tilted his head.

“Why did the sirens stop?”

A heavy impact shook the corridor.

Cassian reached for me again, then stopped himself before his fingers closed around my wrist. “If this is Crowe, he is under a standing death order.”

“You know who he is?” I asked.

“Every royal child knows the story.”

“Which story?” Rowan cut in. “The official one, or the one your father buried?”

Cassian's head snapped toward him.

Kieran swore. “Can we unpack royal secrets after the murderer is no longer walking toward her bedroom?”

The word murderer should have terrified me. Instead, the fourth mark gave another hard pull toward the hall. Beneath the pain was something stranger: recognition without memory, as if my body had been waiting for a voice my mind had never heard.

I hated it. I hated that the Moon Goddess could make a stranger feel familiar.

“I am not going anywhere without seeing him,” I said.

Cassian's expression sharpened. “That is not a reasonable risk.”

“It is my risk.”

Before he could argue, metal screamed.

The reinforced steel fire door at the end of the hall tore off its hinges.

It skidded across the floor and smashed into the opposite wall.

Footsteps followed.

Slow.

Wet.

Unhurried.

Cassian, Rowan, and Kieran moved at the same time.

They formed a line across my doorway without discussion.

For once, none of them fought each other.

“Stay behind us,” Rowan said.

I moved sideways instead so I could see.

The stranger stopped under the flickering hallway light.

Blood soaked his torn gray shirt and both forearms. A fresh cut split his cheek. Dark hair hung over his forehead.

I knew his face.

Vivienne’s council bulletin flashed through my mind.

Silas Crowe.

The heir who had murdered his father.

The man declared dead three years ago.

The raven.

Cassian’s claws slid free.

“Silas Crowe.”

Silas did not look at him.

Rowan raised his blade. Kieran widened his stance.

Silas ignored them too.

His eyes found me through the narrow space between their shoulders.

The fourth mark exploded with heat.

I cried out and grabbed my neck.

Silas went completely still.

Every violent edge in him vanished at once.

He stared at my hand over the bleeding mark, then at my face.

“Mine,” he said.

The word was quiet.

It was somehow more frightening than Cassian’s growl at the altar.

Silas looked down at his hands.

They were covered in someone else’s blood.

To my shock, he wiped them carefully on the cleanest part of his shirt, as though the first thing that mattered was not touching me while dirty.

Then he looked at the three Alphas blocking the door.

His calm disappeared.

The pressure of his aura hit the hall like a blast wave.

Cassian slid half a step across the floor.

Kieran’s shoulders jerked.

Even Rowan tightened his grip on the doorframe.

Silas’s eyes went black.

“Why,” he asked, voice low enough to vibrate through the walls, “are there three Alphas around my mate?”

Cassian stepped forward.

“Because she is not yours to take.”

Something feral curved Silas’s mouth.

“No?”

He crossed the threshold.

Cassian raised his guard.

Silas drove his fist straight toward the future Alpha King’s jaw.