Chapter 28 What They Took

Chapter 28 What They Took
POV: Mina
I didn't sleep.
I sat on the edge of my bed and stared at Lyro's empty, disturbed sheets until the darkness outside the window started bleeding into grey dawn. My hands were clasped in my lap, perfectly still, while everything inside me was anything but.
The Trio had taken him.
I ran through the possibilities methodically, the way Rafe had taught me to think under pressure. Don't panic. Assess. Plan. Act.
Lyro wasn't dead. I was almost certain of that. Killing a student would create too much documentation, too many questions. The Trio was cruel but they were strategic, and strategy meant keeping leverage alive and functional.
They'd taken him because of what happened in the corridor. Because I'd intervened, used magic publicly, spoken out loud, and refused to back down. They'd felt something through the bond that they couldn't categorize or control, and they'd responded the only way they knew how.
By taking something that mattered to me.
By reminding me that I was still prey in their territory.
I stood at exactly six AM, rewrapped my binding with mechanical precision, took my suppressants, and walked out of the dorm room.
The Academy was barely awake at this hour, just the earliest risers heading to pre-dawn training or the kitchens. I moved through the corridors with purpose, following the Trio's scent trail from my room.
It led upward. To the top floor of the North Wing where the Elite students had private rooms instead of shared dormitories.
To Jax's door.
I knocked once.
The door opened immediately, like he'd been expecting me. Like he'd been standing on the other side waiting.
Jax Sterling looked at me with those ice-blue eyes, fully dressed despite the early hour, his expression composed in that infuriating way that gave nothing away.
Through the bond, I felt his wolf's immediate violent reaction to my proximity. The desperate pull. The possessive surge. His human mind clamping down on all of it with iron control.
"Sterling," he said. A greeting and a warning simultaneously.
I pulled out my notepad.
Where is he.
Not a question. A demand.
"Safe," Jax said. "Unharmed. We needed leverage to ensure you didn't do anything reckless before we had answers."
Leverage. I underlined the word twice, my pencil pressing hard enough to tear the paper slightly. He's a person. Not a chess piece.
"Everything is a chess piece when the stakes are high enough," Jax said. "You know that. You've been playing this game since you arrived."
Bring him back. Now.
"When you answer our questions."
I looked at him for a long moment, feeling my power rise in response to my anger. The runes on my arms began to warm, Lunar Binding threads forming instinctively at my fingertips.
Through the bond, Jax felt the power gathering. I watched his jaw tighten.
"Don't," he said quietly. "Using magic against me won't get your friend back faster. It'll just create a situation neither of us can control."
He was right, and I hated him for being right.
I forced the power down and wrote.
Ask your questions.
Jax stepped back from the doorway. An invitation. I walked in.
His room was exactly what I'd expected. Immaculate, organized, everything in its precise place. Books arranged by subject and then alphabetically. Notes stacked in perfect order. A desk that looked like a command center.
Logan was there, sitting on the windowsill with his arms crossed, looking like he hadn't slept either. Asher occupied the single chair, his long legs stretched out, watching me enter with dark unreadable eyes.
They'd been waiting together. Planning this.
"Sit down," Logan said.
I remained standing.
His jaw worked. "Fine. Stand."
Jax moved to his desk and turned to face me, hands clasped behind his back. The posture of someone conducting an interrogation they'd prepared for.
"The magic you used in the corridor last night," he began. "Silver threads. Binding. No physical contact required. That's not any wolf ability I've ever encountered."
I wrote nothing.
"You spoke," Asher said from the chair, his voice carefully neutral. "Not just yesterday. Multiple times now. You were supposed to be mute."
Still nothing.
"Your scent," Logan said from the window, his voice rougher than the other two. "It's been wrong since you arrived. Female. Sweet. Wrong for a male wolf in every way. And it's getting stronger the closer we get to the Awakening Ceremony."
I kept my face blank.
Jax stepped forward. "The dreams we've all been having. The bond we can feel forming between us and you, against our will, against all logic. The way our wolves respond to you—not with aggression or competition, but with—"
He stopped. Something flickered across his composed expression.
"Submission," Asher finished quietly, like the word cost him something. "Our wolves want to submit to you. That shouldn't be possible. Alphas don't submit to anyone."
"They submit to one thing," Logan said, and his voice had gone strange. Rough and uncertain and almost young sounding. "Their mate."
The word sat in the room like a stone dropped in still water. Ripples expanding outward in every direction.
Through the bond, I felt all three of them feeling it simultaneously. The truth they'd been circling for weeks, finally spoken aloud.
I looked at their faces. Logan, jaw tight, eyes wild with something between fury and desperate hope. Asher, controlled as always but with something cracked open behind his dark eyes. Jax, perfectly composed except for the slight tremor in his clasped hands.
They weren't asking anymore. They were telling me what they suspected and waiting for me to confirm or deny.
I could deny it. Could write something dismissive and walk away and let the ambiguity protect me for five more days.
But they had Lyro.
And through the bond, I felt that they genuinely didn't understand what was happening to them. That the obsession and the violence and the relentless hunting had been fear dressed up as aggression. Fear of something they couldn't name or control.
I picked up my pencil and wrote one word.
Complicated.
Logan let out a short humorless laugh. "Complicated. That's what you're going with."
Bring Lyro back unharmed. Today. And I'll tell you what I can before the ceremony.
"What you can?" Jax's eyes narrowed. "That implies there are things you won't tell us."
There are things that aren't mine to reveal yet. Things that have to happen in their own time. I paused, then added: I'm not trying to deceive you. I'm trying to survive long enough for the truth to come out properly.
Asher leaned forward in his chair, elbows on his knees, studying my face. "How long?"
Five days.
"Five days until the Awakening Ceremony," Jax said slowly. "Your eighteenth birthday."
I felt my pulse spike and kept my face neutral. He'd connected those two things. Of course he had.
Lyro. Unharmed. Today.
The three of them exchanged glances. Some silent communication passing between them that I wasn't fully privy to even through the bond.
Finally Jax nodded. "Today. Unharmed." He paused. "And you'll stop running."
I'll stop running from your questions, I wrote carefully. I can't promise anything beyond that.
"That'll do," Logan said, pushing off the windowsill. He pulled out his phone and sent a text. Twenty seconds later, his phone buzzed with a response. "He's in the storage room on the second floor. He's fine. Pissed off, but fine."
I was already heading for the door.
"Sterling." Jax's voice stopped me. "Whatever is coming. Whatever you are and whatever happens at that ceremony. Our wolves have already decided." He said it like a statement of fact rather than a declaration. Cold and certain. "Whether our human minds agree is a separate question."
I turned and looked at him. At all three of them.
Through the bond, I felt the truth of his words. Their wolves had already claimed me. Were already fighting for me, protecting me even when their human minds were trying to hurt me.
It was the most terrifying and complicated thing I'd ever felt.
I left without responding.

I found Lyro exactly where Logan had said. Locked in a storage room, sitting on a box of old equipment, eating chips from a vending machine bag with the resigned expression of someone who'd decided to make the best of a bad situation.
He looked up when I opened the door. "Oh good. You found me. Did you have to fight them?"
I shook my head and wrote: Negotiated.
"Huh." He stood and stretched. "What did you give up?"
Five days of not running.
Lyro studied my face. "And after five days?"
Everything changes.
He was quiet for a moment, reading something in my expression that I hadn't meant to show.
"You're scared," he said. Not an accusation. Just an observation from someone who'd gotten good at reading my silences.
Terrified, I admitted.
"Of the ceremony? Of what happens when you transform?"
Of what happens after. If I survive the transformation, the Council will come for me. The headmaster cooperates with them. The Trio will know the truth and I don't know if they'll protect me or hand me over. I paused. And I'm terrified of doing this alone.
Lyro was quiet for a moment. Then he reached out and briefly gripped my shoulder.
"You're not alone," he said simply. "I'm still here. Magic visions and all."
I pressed his hand briefly and then let go.
Behind us, down the hallway, I felt the Trio's combined presence through the bond. Watching. Waiting. Trying to understand what five days would reveal.
Five days until everything I'd been holding together came apart.
I needed to be ready.