Alpha Xander's Undoing Chasing my Unknown Mate Back novel Chapter 74

Chapter 74

Chapter 74

*Rory*

By second bell, the Academy was humming with a new kind of noise.

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Not the usual shuttling and chatter, not the hustle before quizzes or the clatter of trays. This was… withheld sound. Conversation turning at the last second, then flattening. Doors open that should have been closed.

Students sitting in hallways, backs to stone, books shut on their laps. Their faces were pale and stubborn. Some held hands. Some didn’t look at each other at all, like looking would make it real.

Mona sat in the center of a cluster outside Vallin’s lecture hall, legs stretched, an apple in her hand she had no intention of eating. Dharra sat beside her, head tilted, eyes narrowed at the seam where the floor met the wall like she could hear the building thinking.

I

got that angle from a photograph-one a first-year posted to the student feed with a caption that was just three moon emojis and a lock. The comments beneath it ran a hundred lines deep in an hour. Is it true? Who? Binding? Forbidden geometry? Council? Venatorum?

Xander glanced at the screen, swore, and turned the phone over.

We lasted thirty-six minutes before I said, “I’m getting up.”

“You’ve got nine left,” he said without looking up from the Codex he’d propped on his knee.

“Time moves differently for people with a fever.”

“Sit,” he said, and then softer, “Please.”

I did. For exactly two more minutes.

Then I told my legs they belonged to me and swung them off the bed. The floor was cool, cruel. The room spun once. Xander’s hand closed around my arm before I could prove gravity was stronger than denial.

“Rory,” he warned.

“I’m going.” I said.

“To do what? Sit on stone you’re not ready to lean against? You’re still shaking.”

“So I’ll shake in the hall. I have to show my face, Xander. They’re doing this for me-because of me-”

“They’re doing it for themselves,” he said. “For all of you.” He blew out a breath and raked a hand through his hair, losing the fight. “Ten minutes.”

The corridor outside his room smelled like old wax and paper. Voices drifted from three directions. When we reached the main stair, the sound gathered-low, layered, angry in a way that was too disciplined to be a riot and too loud to be dismissed.

13:15 Wed, Sep 17

Chapter 74

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On the landing, a handful of instructors watched the students with arms folded. I recognized two from the martial wing-faces like shut doors. Another I knew by kindness-Professor Rana from the language hall- stood with a book in her hands and a look on her face like she was trying to place a word she knew she used to know.

At the bottom of the stairs, a girl I’d never spoken to before-brown braid, anxiety in her shoulders-steady- held a printed sign to her chest: NO RITUAL WITHOUT ANSWERS.

Her throat worked when she saw us, but she didn’t look away. The sign shook a little. She held it tighter.

“Do you want to keep walking?” Xander asked.

“Yeah,” I said, and we did.

Outside the Gifts lecture hall, Mona looked up, saw me, and scowled so hard it should have qualified as a spell. She shoved to her feet and met us halfway, hands on hips. “What did I say.”

“Hi,” I said.

“Don’t ‘hi’ me.” She pointed at my face. “You look like candle wax.”

“Glamorous,” I said.

“Go back to bed.”

“I wanted to see,” I said, and that was the truest thing I’d said all morning.

She softened. Just a notch. “Fine. Look. Then lie down before you fall down, because if you faint on my picket line I will literally never forgive you.”

Dharra stood and stepped into my space like she was checking my pulse with silence.

“The earth likes this,” she said. “Not the discord. The refusing. It’s different from violence. It feels like… roots under paving.”

A door opened behind her.

Vallin stepped out, robe neat, expression unreadable. His eyes took in the line of students, the handwritten signs, the way a dozen bodies made a wall without saying a word.

His gaze slid past Mona and landed on me. He paused. A tiny bow of his head, almost invisible. It could have meant anything.

“Class is canceled,” he said, voice even. A ripple went through the hall-small, startled. “I will not teach under the threat of expulsion. Those who wish to study may use the east reading room. Those who wish to sit may

sit.”

“That’s it?” Professor Keld, from the martial wing, barked. He shouldered his way to the front of the gathering, jaw set. “Headmistress Varra’s order was clear. Classes continue. Solstice goes forward. Any student who refuses instruction on this matter will be disciplined.”

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Chapter 71

“Then discipline me,” Vallin said, very quietly.

Keld blinked. He hadn’t expected the wall to talk back.

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