On the way to Clan History, Lyra stopped feeling like a person and started feeling like cargo. Not fragile cargo. The other kind. The sort that requires escorts and rules.
The guards flanked her, close enough that their pace decided hers. They didn't speak. They didn't need to. Their silence was a wall that moved with her, separating her from the Academy as cleanly as if she'd already crossed a border.
Students slowed as they passed. Conversations thinned, then broke apart, reforming as whispers that carried farther than ordinary voices ever did.
The looks had changed. The old contempt lingered—the familiar disdain for the girl with no Clan—but it had been threaded with new reactions. Caution, first. Then fear, poorly hidden. She belonged to Sion now. That fact glittered sharply in a few eyes, envy edged and unpleasant.
She had been chosen. And beneath everything else, curiosity. Not gentle. Hungry.
She had been marked. Claimed. The contradiction followed her like a shadow. Reduced and elevated at once. Untouchable. Potentially lethal.
The classroom door opened. The guards halted outside it, one to each side, rigid, ornamental in the way statues try to be threatening.
The sound of her entry cut the room in half. Whatever chatter existed before died mid-syllable.
Lyra kept her gaze low and moved toward her old seat at the back. Attention slid over her skin. The dress, black threaded with silver. Her hair, still not quite right from the morning. The paleness she hadn't managed to bury.
Elara sat several rows ahead. She turned just enough to look. The familiar spark—the competitive heat Lyra knew too well—was gone. In its place was something flatter, colder. Evaluative.
The white streak in Elara's hair caught the light like a deliberate signal. She didn't smile. Didn't acknowledge her. Just watched Lyra take her seat, then turned forward again, spine straight, composed.
Kael's voice surfaced uninvited. Elara is not your friend.
Morwen sat farther up. She glanced back once. Her eyes were wide, sympathetic in a way that made Lyra uncomfortable. The look people gave survivors. As if survival itself were contagious.
Professor Hargrave entered with his usual burden of scrolls and books, dust clinging to him like a second garment. His gaze paused on Lyra for a fraction too long. He adjusted his spectacles, fingers tight at the bridge. The guards outside unsettled him. They fractured the quiet fiction that this room still belonged to him.
"Well. Yes."
He cleared his throat.
"Today we continue our examination of the… dynastic complications following the Unification Wars. Page one seventy-four."
Lyra opened her book. The words refused to settle. Her attention slid, stubbornly, to the scar at her collarbone. It pulsed with a dull rhythm. Not pain. Presence. Like something counting, patient and precise.
And then the clock.
She had seen the corridor timepiece earlier. Thirteen forty-five. The guards had knocked exactly then. Now, as Hargrave spoke, each minute pressed harder, heavier.
She pictured Kael. On his way. Checking the time. Waiting where they had agreed to meet.
How long would he wait? Long enough to hope. Long enough for that hope to sour.
The thought of him standing alone in that abandoned place while she sat here, immobile, tightened something in her chest.
She forced her eyes back to the page. Hargrave was speaking about failed marriage alliances in the Iron Crown Clan. The subject felt absurdly distant, like listening to weather reports from another century.
13:50.
Hargrave turned a page.
"Now. A more… sensitive case. What historians refer to as the Waning Moon Curse. The decline of the Black Moon Clan."
Something shifted in his voice. Not drama. Discomfort.
Lyra looked up.
Hargrave studied his parchment as if it might accuse him.
"The records are incomplete. Much of what survives comes from rival chroniclers, and their biases are, of course, considerable."
A pause.
"The prevailing theory suggests that generations ago, the clan's lycan blood began to weaken. Not physically. Not at first. But in essence."
A murmur moved through the room, low and restrained.
"The bond to the moon. To transformation itself. It destabilized. True Alpha births declined. Transformations became unpredictable. Sometimes painful. Sometimes… destructive."
He swallowed.
"A spiritual corrosion of the line."
Cold settled at the base of Lyra's spine.
Sion's eyes surfaced in her memory. Gold. Old. The weight of him pressing down on the air. Was that what she had felt? Not power alone, but something fraying underneath it.
Hargrave lowered his voice.
"Certain internal texts suggest attempts at a remedy. A reversal. They reference… a sacrifice."
The word didn't echo. It simply stayed.
"A dual sacrifice," he went on, quicker now. "Of 'pure blood'—the term is disputed—and of a 'wandering soul.'"
One shoulder lifted, an academic tic.
"Archaic language. It could mean an outsider. Or, in more mystical interpretations, a soul without fixed anchorage in fate."
He closed the book. Too fast.
"Modern Black Moon leadership rejects these accounts as superstition," he added.
The denial sat badly in the air.
A wandering soul.
The phrase slid into Lyra and lodged there. Pure blood meant nothing to her. She had none. But wandering. That fit too neatly. A life fractured across awakenings. A Reclaimer moving between pieces of herself.
Cold spread through her veins.
She checked the clock.
13:58.
Her heart struck hard against her ribs. Kael. She had to leave. Immediately. But the guards remained where they were. They always did.
Hargrave's voice faded into noise. Lyra scanned the room. Windows too high. Supply door locked. No margins. No mistakes allowed.
14:00.
Time closed its fist.
Panic came clean and sharp. She couldn't stay seated. She stood, abruptly. The chair scraped against stone, loud and unforgiving.
Everything stopped.
"I need—"
Her voice caught.
"I need the lavatory."
Hargrave stared. Then his eyes flicked to the frosted glass, to the blurred shapes of the guards beyond. He hesitated, pinned between authority and fear.
"Be quick," he said, barely above a mutter.
She didn't wait.
In the corridor, the guards straightened at once.
"Lavatory," she said. "Permission granted."
The older guard checked inside. Hargrave nodded, tense. The guard nodded back.
"We'll accompany you."
Her stomach dropped.
"That isn't necessary."
"Orders," the other guard said.
Flat. Finished.
So they moved. Lyra in front. The guards three steps behind, boots striking together. The efficiency of it was humiliating.
Inside the lavatory, she was alone. For a moment that felt like a mercy. She gripped the sink and looked at herself. Pale. Strained. Recognizable, and not.
14:04.
Kael would already be there.
There was nowhere to go. No doors worth trying. No lie strong enough to matter.
A younger Beta entered, stopped short, flushed, and retreated without a word.
The truth settled. The routine was flawless. Sion had designed it without seams.
The scar burned now, sharp and derisive. The Fang of Loneliness was useless against structure. You couldn't poison a system. You couldn't fracture a schedule.
She washed her face with cold water. Any tears were ignored.
Then she straightened and opened the door.
The guards resumed their places as if nothing had happened.
"Back to class."
She nodded.
When she returned, the silence came back with her. Thicker than before. Hargrave spoke of tariffs and treaties. None of it landed.
Lyra stared out the window. Somewhere beyond stone and iron, Kael waited.
The curse of the Black Moon was not history. It was a reach. And whatever answer it demanded—pure blood, wandering soul—it stretched far beyond guards and clocks.
The cold did not leave.
It settled.