The Lunar Crest Academy: Marked by The Lycans
Chapter 34: Your Body is not Yours, It’s Mine

Chapter 34: 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.

I raised my chin, voice tight but certain. "I’m going to get revenge."

Kieran’s brow arched slightly. "Revenge?"

"Yes." The word came out like a vow. "Astrid. Selene Ashthorne. Alistair Ashthorne. Every single one of them who’s had a hand in this. I’m going to kill them all."

Kieran’s lips twitched, just barely. It wasn’t a smile. it was something darker. Something amused

"You?" he said. "You can’t even shift. You can’t fight. Hell, I’m sure you cant keep up with a noble, much less a Lycan. You’re the weakest wolf I’ve ever seen. You’ve got anger, sure, but what are you going to do? Bite their ankles?"

I stared at him, unflinching. "I’ll do it," I said, the words scraping out like stone. "I don’t care how long it takes. I don’t care if it kills me. That’s my mission now. I’ll make them pay. For Callum. For the girl in the cafeteria. For all of us."

For a moment, Kieran said nothing. He just looked at me, that strange expression flickering across his face again, something between curiosity and intrigue, like I was an unsolvable puzzle. _{fre eweb\(n)ovel(.)co(m)}

Then he shrugged. "Cool speech," he said. "But let’s not forget something very important—"

He stepped closer, and his voice dropped.

"—you have no right to die in the next month."

I blinked. "What?"

"For the next month," he said, with a smirk now fully forming on his lips, "you belong to me. That was our deal, remember? You serve me for one month. That includes keeping your suicidal hero complex in check. You die, and you’re breaking contract."

I glared at him. "You’re sick."

"Maybe," he said, grinning. "But I own you right now. So try to stay alive, yeah?"

He turned to leave, but paused at the edge of the path.

"Meet me in my study room by 8 p.m. tonight," he said over his shoulder. "I have something for you to do. Consider it your first task."

And with that, the Lycan prince vanished into the distance, leaving me alone beneath the sun that suddenly felt far too bright for such a dark day.

I looked down at my hands, bloody, shaking, and now bound by a deal I had made with the devil.

I walked slowly, the weight of eleven deaths pressing on my shoulders like a cloak soaked in blood. My legs were heavy, but they moved anyway, carrying me toward the edge of the academy grounds where an old tree stretched its arms into the sky like it too had seen too much. I wasn’t going there to wallow, not anymore. I didn’t have the luxury for that. Not when so many were gone. Not when their blood still stained the halls of the hospital and echoed in the screams of their friends.

I sat beneath the tree, the bark pressing into my back, rough and real. My mind burned with thoughts. Revenge. It was the only thing keeping me upright. It wasn’t just anger, it was duty. A promise to the dead.

To Callum.

Callum, with his calmness and his quiet loyalty.

I owed him more than tears. I owed him vengeance.

Astrid. Alistair. Selene.

They would fall. One by one. I didn’t know how yet, I was weak, yes, but I wouldn’t stay that way. Not anymore.

I was so deep in my thoughts, mapping out how I would survive long enough to make them pay, that I almost didn’t see him, almost.

He limped past the path a few feet ahead, not seeing me beneath the shade of the tree.

Adrian Vale.

His golden hair was streaked with dried blood, matted and tangled, his face pale, his jaw clenched against some deep pain he didn’t want anyone to see. He looked... broken. Brutally wounded. His left arm hung stiffly by his side, his shirt torn and soaked in red.

And just like that, something snapped inside me.

Adrian.

I remembered.

During the fight with Selene, when she had her claws wrapped around my throat and my vision was fading, it hadn’t been Kieran who reached me first. It had been Adrian.

He’d come for me.

He threw himself at her, a noble against an elite. It had been a suicide move, and yet he did it without hesitation. And then... he was gone.

The moment Kieran arrived, Adrian vanished. I hadn’t seen him again, not until now.

I stood slowly, my eyes following him as he limped away, his steps uneven, like every movement cost him something.

Why had he disappeared? He saved me. And then he vanished.

Why?

Where had he gone immediately after Kieran came?