The Lunar Crest Academy: Marked by The Lycans
Chapter 105: First Kill

Chapter 105: Chapter 105: First Kill

Lorraine’s POV

My arm was broken again.

Clean snap, mid-forearm. I’d heard the crack when I hit the wall after Astrid’s last move during hand-to-hand drills. She didn’t even blink when I screamed.

She just tossed a water bottle at me and told me to fix my stance next time.

Now I was back in the common room, curled up on the worn couch that had become my safe place after each brutal day. The old ceiling fan above creaked with each rotation, stirring the heavy silence. My body was screaming, bruises bloomed like shadows all over my skin, and blood was still crusted on my lip. Every breath ached in my ribs, and my muscles felt like they were being shredded from the inside out.

But I didn’t cry.

Not anymore.

The worst of that had been spent in the first few days when I vomited from exhaustion and begged the moon to just strike me down. Now, I had grown used to the pain. Familiar, even.

It meant I was still alive.

It meant I was getting somewhere.

I tilted my head back on the armrest and stared at the ceiling. My body was trembling slightly, not from fear, but from what it had endured.

Astrid had been extra cruel today. She said nothing the entire time, just barked commands and threw me into harder drills, faster rounds, heavier weights. She shoved me, struck me, disarmed me, over and over again. No room for hesitation. No mercy.

And yet, I was still here.

Still breathing.

Still fighting.

And something strange had begun to happen.

Something.... new.

I looked down at my arm. It was still broken, I could feel the splintered bone beneath my skin. But already the pain had dulled. Already the warmth had started spreading. That strange, golden heat. The one I’d felt each time my body began to heal itself.

Faster now.

Stronger.

It used to take days for cuts to close. Now, I could break every bone in my body and by the time morning came... I was whole again.

Better than before.

Perfect, even.

I clenched my jaw and slowly unwrapped the bandage Astrid had thrown at me earlier. The bruises on my knuckles were already fading into my skin like water into dirt.

It was her.

My wolf.

She was healing me.

Not just repairing the wounds, but reinforcing them. Reinventing them. Like every time I broke, she rebuilt me harder, sharper, deadlier.

She was no longer asleep. Not fully.

She was watching.

Waiting.

And maybe.... just maybe, she was beginning to trust me.

I took a shaky breath and let my head rest back against the couch again...

I drifted off without realizing it.

One second, I was staring at the ceiling, my bruised body sinking into the torn cushions of the couch, and the next, I was sprinting through trees under a pitch-black sky. My heart thundered in my chest, my legs burned with every step, and something.....someone, was chasing me. I didn’t dare look back. I didn’t have to. I could hear them. The snapping branches. The growl too close to my ear. The weight of something gaining on me.

I kept running.

Faster.

Harder.

And then...

I tripped.

The ground rushed up to meet me with terrifying speed and I screamed

And bolted upright in reality.

My scream choked in my throat as I blinked into the dim light of the common room, my heart still racing from the dream. My mouth was dry. My pulse pounded in my ears. But it wasn’t just the dream.

It wasn’t just panic.

It was danger.

Real, breathing danger.

Four figures stood around the couch, their silhouettes sharpening into terrifying clarity as my eyes adjusted. Nobles. All dressed in dark, clean uniforms that reeked of arrogance and bloodlust. Their eyes glimmered with the sick kind of thrill that could only come from the certainty of a kill.

I didn’t move.

Didn’t blink.

Just... stared.

Because how the hell had they gotten in here?

No one knew I was here.

No one.

Astrid made sure of that. She always locked the gates to the feral dorm after every session, double-checking with her own key. She was paranoid about security, about secrecy.

So how?

One of them, tall, with a blade already unsheathed, grinned down at me like he’d found gold buried in the mud.

"Well, well," he said, voice smooth and poisonous, "look who we finally found."

My throat clenched.

"We’ve been hunting you for over a week," another added, circling closer to the couch like a vulture, "The whole academy’s been buzzing. You disappeared right when the bounty on your head was announced."

"You are the most popular student now, do you know that?" A girl among them sneered. Her sword glittered under the light. "We wanted to be the ones to collect the prize. So imagine our joy when we finally learnt that you’ve been hiding in this rat hole"

"This is hunting hour," the fourth one said, licking his bottom lip like a starving wolf. "And I’ve been starving to finally kill you and get those lunars as reward

I still hadn’t spoken.

Still hadn’t moved.

But my fingers curled slightly into the couch cushion beneath me.

They lunged at me all at once.

Four bodies. Four blades. Four wolves moving like shadows, striking like lightning.

But I didn’t freeze.

I moved.

Just before their claws could tear into me, I dropped low, twisting, sliding between their legs and coming up behind them. My back hit the wall with a thud, my breath coming out sharp. They spun, surprised, but not stunned for long.

I didn’t have long.

Before I could find my footing, I felt a hand tangle deep in my hair. Fingers yanked my head back brutally

And pain spread across my side as one of them slashed it with their claws

A scream bubbled up, but I bit it down.

Blood poured down my ribs, hot and wet.

I hit the floor hard, coughing, gasping.

The girl who slashed me crouched beside me, smiling like this was fun. Like I was prey.

My vision blurred for a second.

But I didn’t stop.

I couldn’t.

If I’m going down tonight, I thought, then I’m dragging at least one of you bastards to hell with me.

And then I felt it.

That spark.

That burning anger.

The kind that didn’t just settle in your chest, jt detonated like a bomb.

My jaw clenched as heat spread from my core to my fingers. I looked down and watched in awe and terror as my claws began to grow, long, curved, black as night and sharper than anything I’d ever seen on my body before.

Not just claws.

Weapons.

I launched at the girl before she could react, my claws slicing clean across her throat. Her eyes went wide, blood gurgled from her mouth, and she dropped.

The others froze.

But only for a heartbeat.

Then all hell broke loose.

They attacked like a pack of rabid wolves, but I was faster now. Smarter. Ruthless.

Astrid’s voice echoed in my head: Don’t play fair. Play to kill. Fast. Brutal. Unpredictable.

I ducked under a blade and kicked the wielder’s knee backward till it snapped. He screamed, but not for long. I leapt, slammed my elbow into his temple, and drove my claws straight into his chest. His heart shuddered once, then stopped.

Two down.

The other two came at me screaming, one with a spiked chain, the other with a pair of silver daggers.

My side was burning. My face was bleeding. My left arm barely moved.

But I didn’t care.

The one with the daggers moved first, slashing in quick, deadly arcs. I grabbed a broken chair leg from the floor and blocked the blows, barely. Splinters flew everywhere. She sneered and lunged

And I headbutted her. Hard.

Bone crunched. She staggered and I pounced.

Claws in her gut. A twist, then a screama and she slumped dead

Three down.

The last one, the one with the chain, actually looked scared now.

"Monster," he whispered.

I smiled.

"Good. Run."

But he didn’t.

He screamed and charged, and I leapt right into it.

The chain wrapped around my waist, cutting deep, but I didn’t let that stop me. I pulled him toward me with it, using his own weapon to drag him in.

Then I spun behind him, wrapped the chain around his throat....

And pulled.

He thrashed. Fought.

But I held tight.

He died gasping in my arms.

And then...

There was siilence.

Just silence and the heavy sound of my ragged breathing.

Blood everywhere. So much of it. My hands were soaked. My shirt clung to my body. My ribs throbbed and my arm was numb. But I was standing.

I survived.

I stood in the middle of four corpses.

And then....

There was a clap

Slow. Measured. Cold.

My head snapped up.

Astrid Voss stood just beyond the archway to the common room, dressed in black, her boots clicking softly against the tiles as she walked in like she owned the blood-soaked floor, and she probably did

"Nice," she said, her lips curling.

My mouth opened. My knees trembled.

"You.... you let them in," I whispered. "This was all you."

She shrugged like it was the most natural thing in the world.

"You’ve been hiding behind controlled conditions for too long," she said, circling one of the bodies like it was nothing more than a training dummy. "I needed to see what you’d do when it was real. When it was chaos."

I stared at her, panting. "I could have died."

"But you didn’t," she said simply. "You passed your first combat test."