Chapter 34: Your Body is not Yours, It’s Mine
Astrid Voss.
I froze, the name hitting me like a slap. My breath caught in my throat, and my mouth moved soundlessly before I found my voice. "What...?" I whispered, my eyes wide with horror. "No. That can’t be right. You must be mistaken."
Kieran didn’t blink. He just stared at me with that same unreadable expression, arms crossed, his gaze cold and certain.
"No," I said again, firmer this time, though my voice still shook. "Astrid, she’s cruel, yes. Cold. Apathetic as hell. She watches people die like she’s flipping through a boring book. But she wouldn’t... she wouldn’t actually kill someone herself. That’s not her style. She doesn’t get her hands dirty. She lets others bleed while she sits behind her fancy desk and blames the rules. Perhaps, the person I saw superspeeding out of the cafeteria was a student, a male student"
"Believe what you want," Kieran said casually, "but the scent on that bloodied fabric doesn’t lie. It was her scent. Unmistakably Astrid Voss."
My stomach churned. "No," I muttered again, barely audible this time.
I wanted it to be a mistake. Some random Lycan. A blue-collared elite. Even one of the vicious nobles. Not her. Not the woman responsible for enforcing order in this godforsaken academy. Not the one who was supposed to be the authority.
"She’s supposed to be neutral," I whispered, trying to convince myself now. "She’s supposed to protect the system, not exploit it. Not... kill us herself."
My hands balled into fists at my sides. I felt my throat tighten, but I swallowed it down. Rage pulsed through my veins, hot and alive. That dead feral girl in the cafeteria... she hadn’t just been forgotten. She had been butchered, and by someone who was meant to oversee justice.
My mind flicked to the others, Callum’s dead face. Felix’s grief. Elise’s scream. Eleven bodies. Eleven lives lost because I tried to fight back. Eleven ghosts now, haunting every step I took.
Kieran watched me carefully, like a predator watching something small and fragile try to stand.
"What are you going to do with that information?" he asked, almost bored, like he was testing me.