Chapter 84
Vanya
The silence on the training ground was suffocating.
Even the air felt heavy, as if the entire academy was holding its breath.
I stood ramrod straight, hands clasped behind my back like every other Alpha. The cold morning gravel crunched faintly under boots shifting in the quiet, and the mist hadn’t yet burned off. It hung around our ankles like a low, crawling fog.
Coach Shawn walked across the field with slow, steady steps, the box of written names tucked under one arm. Every eye followed him, every jaw tight with the same unspoken question:
Whose name was written?
Mine?
Kross’s?
Someone else entirely?
My heart thudded so hard I could feel it in my throat.
I hated that I kept thinking about him—Kross—as if my pulse didn’t already know where he was standing.
A
