Chapter 2

The Letter That Changed Everything

The letter sat on my lap like it weighed a thousand pounds. Duskmoor Academy. The words were embossed in silver across the top of the envelope, and my name—Riley Bennett—gleamed beneath it in handwritten script. It looked nothing like the battered notices the pack elders pinned to our community board. This was elegant, official. Real.

“I don’t know what to say,” I murmured, my voice barely above a whisper.

Emma leaned against the shed’s doorframe, arms crossed and eyes gleaming with pride. “Say you’re going. Say you’re finally getting out of this nightmare.”

I glanced down at the letter again. “But I don’t have any money. I don’t have clothes. I don’t have anything.”

“You’ve got your brain. You’ve got the acceptance. And you’ve got me.”

We both knew the risks. Leaving a pack without permission was dangerous—even for Omegas. For me, the nameless orphan with a strange light inside her, it would be considered treason.

Still, Emma had thought of everything.

She opened a cloth pouch and spilled out a handful of bills and coins onto the floor. “Been saving for three years. I took extra shifts at the apothecary, skipped meals, sold my dad’s tinctures to the traders.”

My eyes widened. “Emma...”

“You need this more than I do. Riley, you’re meant for something else. Something bigger.”

I looked away, my throat tightening. No one had ever believed in me like this. Not even me.

The acceptance letter detailed everything: I’d been granted a full scholarship, housing, and placement in the special track for magically sensitive shifters. Classes would begin in two weeks. All I had to do was show up.

Two weeks to disappear without a trace.

“I’ll need supplies. Clothes. A way to get there without being tracked.”

Emma nodded. “I already reached out to someone. There’s a trader named Theo. He moves between realms. He’s not a wolf, but he owes my mom. He can get you out undetected.”

My heart thudded. “This is really happening.”

She smiled. “It is.”

The next few days were agonizing. Not just the planning, but the fallout.

After what happened in the training yard, I became more than an outcast, I became a warning.

The Alpha summoned me to the main hall two days later. The Packhouse was colder than usual, its wooden walls lined with watching eyes. Emma stood just outside the front door, her lips trembling as I passed. I wanted to hug her, but we couldn’t risk being seen.

Inside, Alpha Dalton sat on his high-backed chair carved from dark ironwood, flanked by two Elders and Caleb’s mother, Mira. The air stank of control, magic and fury.

“You attacked my son,” the Alpha said, his voice low and thunderous.

“He attacked me first,” I replied, refusing to shrink back. “He tied me to the post. He started it.”

Mira hissed. “You nearly killed him. His arm is ruined.”

“I didn’t mean to, I didn’t even know what I was doing.”

Dalton stood. “That’s what makes you dangerous.”

They sentenced me to two weeks of isolation. No contact. No sunlight. No meals besides water and scraps passed through a rusted slot.

I spent those days in the underground cellar behind the old barn, a room that reeked of mold and forgotten things. They locked the door with iron runes, just in case. I slept on stone. Dreamed of fire.

Sometimes I thought I saw eyes watching me through the slats in the ceiling. Not human ones. Not wolf. Just something... older.

The night before they released me, I heard footsteps. Then Emma’s voice, muffled through the door.

“Riley? You okay?”

“I’m fine.”

A moment of silence. “You still want to leave?”

I swallowed. My lips cracked from thirst. “More than ever.”

Once I was free, the whispers followed me everywhere.

Caleb spat at my feet whenever I walked past. Mira cursed me in the common room. The other teens laughed like it was all some twisted joke.

I stayed close to Emma. We pretended nothing had changed. But everything had.

We rehearsed my escape each night, even as bruises darkened my arms and new rules restricted my movement. I was forbidden from the training yard. Forbidden from helping in the kitchens. Forbidden from going near any of the younger pups.

They said I was unstable.

They weren’t wrong. My magic simmered just below the surface. Even I could feel it now, a pulsing ancient thing that didn’t care about rules or traditions.

The night before I left, Emma and I met by the creek where we used to play as children.

“Promise me something,” she said, handing me a clean satchel filled with folded clothes and her lucky pendant.

“Anything.”

“Don’t come back unless it’s to burn this place down.”

I didn’t laugh. “Deal.”

I left before dawn.

Theo waited at the forest’s edge, seated in an old truck that smelled like cinnamon and engine grease. He was tall, human-looking but not quite. His eyes glowed faintly gold, and when he smiled, I saw a hint of fang.

“Riley Bennett?” he asked.

“That’s me.”

“Hop in. We’ve got a long way to go.”

I looked back once—toward the broken shed, the training field, the towering packhouse, and then I turned away.

The road out of Black Hollow was bumpy and silent for the first hour. I clutched the satchel Emma had given me, filled with clothes, a canteen, and my favorite book. The only piece of home I wanted to take.

“You’re lucky,” Theo said eventually. “Not many get into Duskmoor. It’s like... the Ivy League for the magically messed up.”

“Comforting.”

He laughed. “They’ve got dragons in the mountains, vampires in the law department, and witches teaching alchemy. It’s wild.”

“Sounds like a disaster waiting to happen.”

“More like the last safe place in the world.”

We drove through hidden passes and shielded tunnels. By dusk, we arrived at a shimmering barrier at the edge of a mist-covered valley. I could feel it—ancient magic humming beneath my skin.

Theo reached into his glovebox and pulled out a medallion. “You’ll need this. It’s your entrance token. Don’t lose it.”

He pressed it into my palm. It was silver and warm, etched with the sigil of the crescent moon wrapped in flames.

My skin tingled.

Towering spires of obsidian and glass rose around me, their edges glowing faintly with runes. Floating lanterns bobbed along stone paths, and creatures I’d only seen in storybooks walked beneath trees of silver leaves. Magic thrummed in the air—thick and heady.

Duskmoor Academy.

I had arrived.

And nothing would ever be the same again.