The Lunar Crest Academy: Marked by The Lycans
Chapter 100: First Challenge

Chapter 100: Chapter 100: First Challenge

Lorraine’s POV

We walked in silence.

Astrid didn’t say a word as we cut across the academy grounds, past the curious stares of the elites, past the Lycans who watched us like we were some pitiful footnote in a war that no one remembered starting.

The sharp clack of her boots echoed off the stone walkways. I followed, every step a dull ache. My hand pulsed, the pain more rhythmic now, almost like my body was trying to adapt to the absence of what had once been mine.

We didn’t take the usual winding paths. Astrid knew the shortcuts. She moved like someone who had memorized every crack in the pavement, every hidden alley, every door no one else remembered existed.

And then, finally, we were there.

The feral dorm.

My first home in the Academy

A towering iron door stood before us, bolted shut with chains. It looked like a prison gate. In truth, it always had been. Only back then, we’d pretended it wasn’t.

Astrid reached into her coat and produced a rusted silver key—long, jagged, old. She didn’t fumble. She shoved it into the lock and twisted hard. A sharp click. Then the chains unraveled, falling away with a clatter that echoed through the empty courtyard behind us.

She gripped the heavy handle with both hands and shoved the door open.

The groan of rusted hinges filled the air.

Dust. Darkness. Silence.

The smell of old blood and cold stone drifted out like something long buried, disturbed from slumber.

Astrid stepped inside first, her silhouette vanishing into the gloom.

I followed.

And the second I crossed the threshold, something in me cracked open.

Nostalgia hit like a punch to the ribs. Raw. Unforgiving. Sudden.

This place...

This damned place.

It was ours.

This was where we slept. Where we cried. Where we laughed, sometimes. Where we held on, even when everything around us begged us to let go.

Thirty-two of us at the start of the semester.

More than thirty warm, beaten bodies crowded into narrow beds, laughing through cracked lips, whispering into the night about who we used to be. We shared stories like they were bread. We traded hope like currency.

Now?

There were only three of us left.

Three.

One of them was missing, gone without a trace some nights ago

Another lay half-conscious in the infirmary with his chest split open, Felix, who had fought when no one else would.

And me.

Standing here with one less finger, blood dripping drown my hand, skin pale and clammy.

It didn’t feel like a dorm anymore.

It felt like a graveyard.

The beds were still here. So were the cracked walls. The broken mirror we used to joke about.

The air was thick with memory.

I remembered the night Elise braided my hair in this corner. I remembered Callum fixing the broken heater with a bent spoon because we were freezing and no one cared enough to help us. I remembered Felix making bad breakfast we could bare eat

Gods. I could still hear them laughing.

But they were gone.

They were all gone.

Astrid moved toward the center of the room, glancing around, her gaze sweeping over the dusty couches in the common room. She said nothing, but I could feel her assessing everything, cataloging it like she always did.

Then she turned to me.

"This dorm is closed to the others," she said quietly, but with authority. "No one gets in without my approval. So here you are safe from the bounty hunt on your head"

I nodded, slowly, the ache in my throat tightening.

"You will remain here," she said. Her voice was cold. Final. "From this point on, this dorm is your prison and your sanctuary."

I blinked. "What?"

"You’re confined," she repeated. "Alone."

The word echoed in my skull like a bell tolling after a funeral.

Alone. Again

"I’ll make sure you have everything you need, food, medicine, gear, training tools. But you won’t be going to classes. You won’t be walking the academy grounds. You won’t be seeing your little noble friend. Or anyone."

I stared at her, throat dry. "Why?"

"Because," she said, stepping closer, her tone sharpening, "you’re weak."

The word sliced deep. It shouldn’t have hurt, not after everything I’d already been called, endured, bled for, but somehow, from her lips, it did.

"You don’t stand a damn chance like this," she continued. "Not against the nobles or elites. Not against the Lycans. Not against the politics swarming through these halls. And definitely not against what’s coming for you next."

My lips parted, but no sound came out.

Astrid’s voice dropped lower. "I was going to give up on you when I found out you were a feral the first night you arrive but you’ve shown you are special, you have a strong mindset and you are resilient. But if you keep walking around like a girl who flinches every time someone raises a voice, you’re going to die."

She leaned forward, eyes glittering like molten steel. "Or worse, more people you care about will continue to die because of you."

I clenched my jaw. My missing finger throbbed. I felt like a cracked piece of porcelain, held together with nothing but fury and will.

"So what?" I asked. "You’re locking me away because I’m not strong enough?"

"No," she said. "I’m giving you a chance."

My breath caught.

She gestured around the room. "This place, your prison, your graveyard, your war zone, it’s all yours now. You can cry. You can scream. You can throw yourself against these walls until your bones splinter. I don’t care."

She turned and started walking toward the door again.

"But when I come back," she said without looking at me, "I expect to find a weapon. Not a girl."

She stopped at the threshold and cast one final glance over her shoulder.

"Train your body. Train your mind. Kill the fear inside you before it kills you. Because Lorraine..." her tone dipped into something darker, something heavy with warning, "what’s coming next... doesn’t care how hard your past was. It will eat you alive."

And with that, she turned around to leave

The door groaned shut behind her.

The silence wrapped around me like a shroud. The memories pressed down like ghosts.

I stood in the middle of the feral dorm, my sanctuary and my cell, and I stared at the spot where Felix once taught us how to breathe through pain. Where Callum joked about dying in his sleep so he wouldn’t have to attend morning drills. Where Elise and I whispered about making it out of this place alive.

They were gone.

And now, for the first time.... I had no one to lean on.

But maybe that was the point.

Because if no one was going to save me—

I’d have to become the kind of girl who could save herself.

No.

Not a girl.

A weapon.

"Astrid," I called, voice hoarse, raw from blood loss and anger. "Why are you helping me?"

There was a long pause. She had already gone through the door and was about to lock it. But her footsteps stopped. I thought she was going to ignore me. That maybe she’d vanished like everyone else. But then, she turned around

A moment passed. _{free.w e bn.ov(e)l(.)com}

Then her voice came through, muffled but unmistakably sharp.

"I told you already," she said. "A war is coming."

The lock clicked, and the door creaked open just enough for her red eyes to meet mine through the dark of space.

"And you," she continued, "whether you believe it or not... are the only one who can save us."

I blinked. My knees felt shaky, my hand still throbbed like it had its own heartbeat. "Why?" I asked, almost desperate. "Why me? I’m a feral. I’m weak. I’m nothing."

Astrid’s eyes flickered, just for a second, like something unspoken passed through her.

Then she sighed and leaned her shoulder against the doorframe, studying me with something between exhaustion and conviction.

"I don’t know," she admitted, quiet now. "Not entirely."

She didn’t look away.

"But maybe you’ll figure that out.... once you start training. Once you reconnect with your wolf."

Her voice turned colder, harder again.

"But until then, let me give you your first challenge."

I swallowed hard.

Astrid stood straight and moved a step closer

"Look at your hand," she said.

I did.

The blood was still flowing, slower now, but steady. The stump where my finger used to be looked raw and wrong, pulsing with pain that made my vision blur.

"You want to survive?" she asked.

I nodded slowly.

"Then will your wolf to heal you. That’s the first test. The first gate. Heal yourself...." She tilted her head, expression unreadable. "Or bleed to death."

She didn’t wait for me to respond.

The door slammed shut again.

The lock clicked into place.

And I was alone once more, with nothing but pain, silence, and the impossible weight of those words.

Heal yourself.

Or bleed to death.