Alpha Xander's Undoing Chasing my Unknown Mate Back novel Chapter 83

Chapter 83

Chapter 83

*Xander*

The Academy felt wrong in quiet.

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It was built for noise-boots on stone, bells ringing, arguments echoing down halls. Now the silence sat heavy, coating everything like chalk dust.

A third of the students were gone.

The gifted who’d been ‘exposed’ during Solstice ran home to their friends and their families. Those who stayed kept to the shadows, peeking past curtains as if that could hide them when the Venatorum came.

Those assassins were skilled in finding the gifted. And with news of the ancient ritual that outed so many students who were hiding in plain sight, I had no doubt that the Venatorum would be on their way.

Everyone knew it.

I crossed the quad and ignored the red rope barring off the ritual field. The three rings were still visible— chalk scuffed, salt broken, stone blackened. Someone had tried to scrub away the scorch marks, but the stains had sunk too deep.

Azrien paced at the back of my mind, the low restless track of a wolf who wanted to claw the ground just to feel something solid under us. He hadn’t slept. Neither had I.

“Alpha.”

I didn’t look up. “Don’t call me that.”

Professor Vallin approached, sleeves rolled up to his elbows, with a ledger tucked under his arm. He looked irritatingly neat for a man walking through the wreck of the school he cherished so much.

“The Council departed at first light,” he said. “The Academy is to be ‘temporarily self-administered. Varra has

taken leave.”

I crouched at the ring’s edge, fingers in the chalk. “Convenient.”

“They’ll blame her for everything, although she warned against going ahead with the ritual,” Vallin replied. “Better she’s not here when it happens.”

“You’re very calm,” I said.

“A hundred and sixty-seven students remain. They need stability and assurances I can’t give. Calm is more useful than rage.”

“You should be bleeding.”

“I’m not.” His eyes flicked to my hand. “But you are.”

13:19 Wed, Sep 17

Chapter 83

39

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I hated him for not being easy to hate. “Is this where you explain how none of this is your fault?”

“No,” he said. “This is where I hand you what I have, and you do what you were always going to do.”

He held out the packet. I didn’t take it.

He set it on the low wall of the field instead and opened the ledger on his knee.

“I have a map,” he said. “Three copies. I circled places I would use if I wanted to move a prisoner without being seen. I also left some supplies on the south trail. There’s a sealed tin with five silver-tainted weapons that I don’t advise you use unless you mean to hurt someone.”

I looked at the packet and hated that I appreciated it. It was easy to blame him for his plan failing.

But I blamed myself more. Mine failed too.

I stood. “You put a hook in Rory’s head. With a rune.’

“If I hadn’t, she would already be dead.”

I hated that he wasn’t wrong. “So use it. Say where she is.”

“If I knew, I’d tell you and you’d be running.” His voice dropped. “I felt the pull west before it snapped. That’s all I can give you.”

Boots scuffed across the field. Mona ducked under the rope before a warden could stop her, Dhara and Matt close behind.

“You haven’t eaten,” Mona said, shoving a packet into my palm. “You’ve never been my favourite, but she loves you. Eat while you glare.”

“I don’t need-”

“Don’t argue with me, Grayson.” She folded her arms.

If it was another day when I had strength, I wouldn’t have let her get away with that tone.

Dhara scanned the rings with tight eyes. Matt set down a pack and gave me a once-over. “You look like hell.”

“You smell like crap.”

He didn’t rise to it. “We drew maps. You should come see what we came up with.”

We left the field and cut through the library. The big table was cleared for maps and buttons marking routes. Matt laid their hand-drawn map beside Vallin’s and Dhara moved pieces with quick, sure hands.

“We avoid the main road,” Matt said, tapping a line where the trees thinned. “Too many eyes. We don’t want the Venatorum using us to find Rory, and attack Dhara. The old service path behind the greenhouse is faster. Three hours to the first marker that Vallin identified as potential places, two if we move like we mean it.”

“We mean it,” Mona said.

13:19 Wed, Sep 17

Chapter 83

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39

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“From Vallin’s map, there are caves along the cut,” Dhara pointed out. “If someone wanted to move people without being seen…”

Mona’s mouth pinched. “Caves. Perfect. Love caves.”

“Food,” I said, because if I didn’t keep the plan blunt and stupid we would talk ourselves into all the Six Packlands, and I could already feel time slipping away. “Water. Rope. We travel light. If we find a trail, we don’t stop to argue with it.”

Dhara nodded. “Already packed.”

Matt looked up from the maps. “You want to keep snapping at the people helping you, or you want to find her?”

My jaw clenched. “Sorry.”

That stunned him more than if I’d punched him. “Okay.”

On the way out, I bumped into a second year from my pack who was outed as a Sky wolf, holding a pack to his chest, looking like he decided to be smart and go into hiding too.

He cleared his throat. “Alpha? Is she… okay?”

The question landed in my chest and sat there. I felt Azrien’s head lift. The silence where her bond should have been was a clean cut to my now non-existent soul.

I swallowed. “She will be,” I said. It wasn’t an answer. It was a promise I didn’t know how to keep yet.

Outside, the air was too clear for a place that had nearly split in half.

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