(Xyrion POV)

  The courtyard buzzed with excited students, banners snapping in the breeze.

  Mages compared mana sparks. Knights boasted loudly. Alchemists tried extremely hard not to spill things.

  Xyrion stood above it all with cold, effortless composure, arms folded as he surveyed the swarm of new arrivals.

  Beside him, Kayden crouched slightly, sniffing the air like the wolf he half was.

  “Nerves,” Kayden muttered. “Ink. Fruit tarts. Fear.”

  His posture shifted.

  Then Kayden’s hand caught someone at the edge of his vision.

  “You okay?” Kayden asked gently.

  Xyrion turned.

  The girl stood too close to the pillar at Kayden’s side, swaying just slightly, like she’d stepped into the wrong current. Thick glasses magnified wide, startled eyes. Her hood had slipped back, revealing unevenly cut hair dyed a muddy, half-faded pink—color that hadn’t taken properly. Wrong in every imaginable way, it truly drew the eye.

  Unauthorized usage: this narrative is on Amazon without the author's consent. Report any sightings.

  Kayden was already angled toward her, attention quiet and focused.

  She shook her head too fast. “N-No. Just… tired.”

  Her glasses slid down her nose.

  Kayden caught them mid-fall and nudged them back into place with practiced care.

  “Those don’t fit you,” he said softly.

  Xyrion took in her state and thought the opposite. Poorly dressed. Posture deflated.

  Heat flushed her cheeks.

  Xyrion watched in silence.

  She was unsteady. Overstimulated.

  And yet—

  Nothing answered him when he reached out with his senses.

  There it was—so faint it barely registered.

  Not absent.

  Almost nothing.

  That was unusual for someone here at the Academy.

  The girl took a half-step back, flustered—and walked straight into the stone pillar beside him.

  Hard.

  Her stack of orientation papers exploded across the courtyard like startled birds.

  Xyrion stared.

  She blinked up at him, mortified, then scrambled to gather the scattered pages, nearly grabbing someone else’s boot instead of her notes. She tried to stand, caught her satchel strap, recovered, bowed too fast—

  —and sent her hood tumbling forward over her entire face.

  “I—I’m so sorry!” she squeaked from inside the fabric. “I didn’t see the uh—pillar—no, that’s silly, of course I saw it, I just—sorry!”

  She spun to leave.

  And walked directly into another pillar.

  Kayden sighed fondly. “She’s cute.”

  Xyrion felt baffled. “Cute is not the word I would use.”