Chapter 1 Wrong World

Rowan's POV

The whispers start before I clear the door.

Not whispers. The kind people make when they want you to hear. When they want you to feel it land.

"She's human."

"They actually brought one here."

"Look at her."

I keep walking.

That is the only thing my mother ever taught me that actually works. When they come for you, you keep your chin up and your feet moving. You do not stop. Stopping is the same as bleeding in front of people who are looking for blood.

Velthorpe Academy's main hall is enormous and loud, and every single head turns when I walk in. Two hundred students, maybe more, all of them built differently from anyone I have ever stood next to. Taller. Stiller. The kind of still that does not feel calm. It feels like something waiting to move.

I am the only human in this room. I do not need anyone to tell me that. I can feel it the way you feel a temperature drop.

I shift my bag higher on my shoulder and scan for an empty chair.

That is when she hits me.

Not an accident. She does not even look. A girl with sharp cheekbones and a silver blazer walks past, and her shoulder catches my bag so cleanly that it spins off my arm and lands on the floor. Papers everywhere. My earphones. The photograph my mother packed inside the front pocket, of the two of us at the beach three summers ago, sliding halfway across the tile.

Laughter. Not all of it. But enough.

I crouch down and gather everything. My face is completely neutral. I learned that too. You give them nothing. You give them nothing, and they eventually get bored and find someone else.

When I stand up, the girl is already gone. Seated at a center table, as if she did not just dismantle me in front of the whole room.

I look for a seat by the wall.

That is when I see him.

He is at the front of the hall, standing slightly apart from the group around him, the way people stand when they are used to being the center without trying. He is tall, dark-haired, and completely still. Not bored still. Dangerous still. Like the weather before it breaks.

Silver eyes.

He is looking at his phone. He does not look up once during the whole thing with my bag. Not once.

I find a chair by the wall and sit down, and tell myself it does not matter. I am not here to be liked. I am here because my father ran out of options, and my name ended up on a contract I never signed myself, attached to a boy in a world I was never supposed to touch.

I am here because apparently a witch cursed a royal bloodline, and the only fix is a human girl willing to marry the Alpha King's son.

I still cannot say that sentence without my brain trying to reject it.

My father held my hand at the front gate this morning. He said this was the best thing for our family. He said I was brave. He said my mother would be proud.

My mother. Who is sitting at home in our apartment right now? Waiting.

I nodded and let him believe I was okay with all of it.

I am not okay with any of it.

The rest of the day passes the way bad days do when you are trying not to count the hours. Classes I was not prepared for. A lunch table that cleared when I sat down. A professor who asked me a question about the pack law custom in front of everyone, the kind of question designed to make me look stupid.

I answered it correctly. I read everything I could find about the pack law the week before I came here. I was not going to walk in blind.

The professor blinked. Half the class turned to look at someone behind me. I did not turn around. I already knew who they were looking at.

I could feel his eyes on the back of my head like a hand pressing down.

That night, I unpack in the east wing of the residential estate. It is just me, my two suitcases, and a room that is nicer than any place I have ever slept in and still feels like a cell.

I call my mother. It rings seven times and goes to voicemail. I leave a message telling her I arrived fine. That everything is okay. I miss her.

I sit on the bed and stare at the ceiling until my eyes stop burning.

At some point, I fall asleep in my clothes.

I wake up to a sound.

Soft. Close. The quiet drag of something sliding across tile.

I sit up. The room is dark. The clock on the wall reads 11:47 p.m.

There is an envelope on the floor by the door.

I stare at it for a full ten seconds before I move. My heart is already doing something wrong. A fast, shallow thing that means my body knows something my brain has not caught up to yet.

I pick it up. No name on the front. No seal.

Inside is a photograph.

My mother.

She is standing in a forest somewhere. Pine trees and grey light. She is wearing a dark coat that I have never seen on her. Her face is turned slightly away from the camera, as if she does not know she is being photographed.

Next to her is a man I do not recognize. Tall. Dark coat. His hand is on her arm.

I flip the photograph over.

There is a date stamp on the back.

I read it three times because the first two times, my brain refused to process it.

The photograph was taken four days ago. Last Tuesday. While I was here, packing. While she was supposed to be home.

While she told me, on the phone the night before I left, that she was not going anywhere. That she would be right there waiting when I came back.

My hands are not shaking. I notice that it is happening to someone else. My hands are completely still, and the rest of me is falling apart.

Someone slid this under my door tonight. Someone inside this estate. Someone who knows where my mother is and wants me to know that they know.

I look at the closed door.

Then I look back at the photograph.

And for the first time since I arrived at Velthorpe Academy, I am genuinely, completely afraid.

Not of the werewolves.

Not of the contract.

Of what I do not know yet.

And whoever just told me to start asking.