Chapter 90: Where Is She?

Roiner

Roiner stood beneath the dark canopy of his black umbrella, his crimson eyes fixing on the silver face of his pocket watch for what felt like the hundredth time.

The heavy rain descended in relentless, freezing sheets, hammering against the fabric above him and turning the soil into a treacherous slurry of mud. Hours had bled away into the late afternoon. The sky was darkening rapidly, bruising into a deep, sickly purple, yet the edge of the forest remained agonizingly still.

Where is she? Roiner thought, his jaw clenching so tightly a sharp, predatory fang nicked the inside of his lip.

The bond pulsed faintly in his veins, a low, distant thrumming that told him she was alive, but nothing more. It was too new. Had the connection been fully forged, he could have reached into her mind with a simple thought, mapped her location, and pulled her out of whatever hell she had stumbled into. Instead, he was left with this infuriating, muted hum under his skin, blind to her exact whereabouts.

He looked up from his watch, scanning the perimeter of the treeline. Most of the student groups had already emerged, bedraggled and soaking wet, dragging their hunted game to the tallying tables. Their scores were already being recorded on the master ledger.

Yet Team Fang was nowhere to be seen.

Roiner’s eyes narrowed into dangerous slits. A simple delay was one thing, but with those wolves involved, a simple delay was never just a delay. Either they had encountered genuine peril, or the royal brothers had orchestrated something foul to torture his mate. Knowing the arrogant cruelty of the werewolf princes, he leaned heavily toward the latter. If those spoiled bastards had touched a single hair on her head

"Greetings, Headmaster."

Roiner slowly turned his head. A group of students had stepped out from the trees, led by a tall, dark-haired boy who wiped rain from his brow.

"Hello, Maximus," Roiner replied, his voice dropping into that smooth, velvety tone that carried the lethal weight of an immortal apex predator. He didn’t bother to soften his gaze. "What is it you want?"

Max shifted uncomfortably under the Headmaster’s piercing, blood-red eyes, clearing his throat awkwardness. "Um... you know, I was just wondering... did you see Jax come out anywhere here? Because I couldn’t find him out in the field."

"No," Roiner said plainly.

"Oh. Okay." Max rubbed the back of his wet neck, looking back toward the shadows of the woods.

"Why are you asking?" Roiner inquired, his tone devoid of genuine interest, though his mind dutifully logged the interaction.

"Well, we were hunting together, and then he just... disappeared," Max explained, a small frown line appearing between his brows. "He never came back. It’s been hours since I last saw him. But... honestly, I think he probably just returned back to the dorms."

"Okay," Roiner murmured, already losing interest as his eyes drifted back to the dark forest where Aina should have been.

Max nodded, turning to leave, but stopped dead in his tracks as a lone figure stumbled out from behind a massive oak at the treeline.

Roiner’s sharp eyes caught the movement instantly. "Is that not Jax, your friend?"

Max snapped his head around, his face lighting up with immediate relief. "Oh! Yes! Sorry to worry you, Headmaster, he’s right there!"

Max immediately jogged over to the boy, calling out his name. Roiner watched the reunion with cold, analytical detachment, but a sudden anomaly in their behavior caught his attention. As Max reached out, slinging a friendly arm over Jax’s shoulders, Jax flinched violently. The boy shrank away from the touch, his entire body going rigid as if he were being handled by something utterly repulsive. Jax paused, glancing at his friend with a look of sheer disgust, staring at Max as if he were looking at a putrid abomination, before shaking his head and smiling.

Roiner frowned, his instincts tingling with a faint, warning whisper. Something is wrong with that boy.

He shook his head, brushing the thought aside a second later. He had no time to dissect the petty squabbles of wolf children. His chest was tight with an aching, relentless anxiety that had nothing to do with Max or Jax. Aina was still out there. The competition was rapidly drawing to a close, and her team was on the verge of losing every single point they had fought for, not that he gave a damn about the points. He cared about her breathing.

Roiner gripped the wooden handle of his umbrella, making up his mind. Enough of this waiting. I will go into the forest and retrieve her myself.

He took a single step toward the mud-slicked path when a light, sharp tap landed on his shoulder.

Roiner paused, turning around with a slowness. Standing behind him was an old, withered man leaning heavily on a carved obsidian cane. He wore the ornate, ceremonial robes of a rival academy’s Headmaster, his face lined with deep wrinkles and his gray eyes milky with age.

"Hello, Roiner," the old man rasped, his voice sounding like dry leaves scraping over stone. "It has been such a long time since the both of us have met." He offered a small, thin-lipped smile. "Do you want to come and catch up over tea?"

Roiner’s first instinct was to snap the old fool’s neck and throw his body into the brush. Every fiber of his vampire nature roared at him to reject the invitation, to tear through the woods until he found Aina.

No, he forced himself to think, his fingers curling into a tight, white-knuckled fist at his side. He was the Headmaster of this institution. A sudden, unhinged reaction would draw suspicion, and the last thing Aina needed was every foreign Headmaster sniffing around her true identity.

"Cedric," Roiner said, forcing his voice into a calm, polite facade, though his eyes remained frozen. "All right. Tell me... how is your pack? Are you still mad about not being chosen as your pack leader?"

Cedric let out a dry, rattling laugh, waving a dismissive, frail hand. "Oh, no, no! I am long over that ancient history, my friend! Come, let us escape this dreadful rain."

The two men began to walk toward the main hall, their boots squelching in the mud. But after barely ten paces, Roiner stopped and looked back over his shoulder.

He stared deep into the outline of the weeping forest. A dark, knotting sensation gripped his stomach, a foul, rotting weight that made his blood run cold. It wasn’t just the absence of his mate. There was a faint, sinister residue clinging to the air, whispering at the very edge of his senses.

Dark arts, he thought, his jaw tightening. It was subtle, almost imperceptible beneath the smell of wet earth and pine, but it was there. Something foul was moving in those woods.

Am I just being paranoid? Roiner questioned himself, tearing his eyes away and resuming his walk alongside Cedric. Is my mind playing tricks on me simply because I have finally bonded with my mate, and my instincts are screaming to protect her from the world?

He couldn’t be sure. But as he stepped indoors, the cold feeling in his chest refused to warm.