Claimed by the Wrong Alphas

Slater

I sat stiffly in the Admission Office, staring past the frosted window to the inner courtyard of Ravenshore Academy.

I was looking at the group of fresh-faced, newly admitted students hanging outside the Assembly Hall. Despite the biting winter cold, they all had bright faces, and the light had not gone out of their eyes yet.

I remembered being just like them.

Green. Naïve. Desperate.

It had only been a year, and yet it felt like another lifetime. The memory of my arrival still haunted me. From the 104 students who had passed the initial screening and were finally accepted as first-year students, only twenty of us remained.

The rest had either dropped out halfway through, unable to handle the rigorous training and the psychological effects that passed for education here, or they had... disappeared.

I wasn’t here for the prestigious education or the networking opportunities that came with rubbing shoulders with future Alphas.

I was here because students had been disappearing.

Starting with my sister, Riley.

A year ago, she’d vanished from Ebonvale Academy—Ravenshore’s sister school for daughters of Alphas. One day, she was at home, crying repeatedly because she didn’t want to return. I could tell she was desperate to reveal more than her tears that night, but somehow, she ended up telling us nothing.