Chapter 3 To Live With an Enemy

The silver-haired girl managed to swallow her bite, wiping a speck of pink frosting from her upper lip with the back of her thumb. She walked right past me and dumped her coffee tray onto the desk beside the third bed.

"Yeah, the admissions office told me. They tried to put me in the Platinum Tower with the rest of the overgrown lizards, but my dad's security detail was already setting up hidden cameras in the hallway. No, thank you. I told the dean if I couldn't live in the normal dorms like a regular student, I'd set the administrative building on fire."

She turned around, offering me a frosting-smeared hand. "I'm Vanya, by the way. Nice to meet you, roommate."

I stared at her hand as if it were a venomous viper.

A dragon shifter living in the rogue barracks. It made no sense. Dragons sat at the top of the hierarchy. They didn't share breathing space with rogue wolves. Unless… she was here for another reason.

"You're a dragon," I pointed out as my body slowly rose from its crouch.

"Guilty as charged," Vanya sighed, hopping backward to sit on her silver duvet. "But don't hold it against me. I don't even like flying that much. It messes up my hair, and frankly, the altitude gives me sinus headaches. What's your name? Or should I just call you 'The General'?"

The casual joke hit a mark. The General? My heart jumped into my throat. Did she know? No, no… she couldn't.

"Jeaine," I muttered, backing up until my thighs hit the frame of my own bed.

"Cool. Nice to meet you, Jeaine," Vanya said, leaning over to grab her coffee. "Mind if I take the desk by the window? Lighting’s better there and I draw during lectures or I lose my mind.”

I didn't answer. My mind was spinning, trying to force this girl into the box of my memories. In my past life, dragons were monsters. I had spent five years hunting them. Killing them. Hating them.

And now one of them sat five feet away, complaining about sinus headaches while eating a pink donut.

"My dad's going to be furious when he finds out I actually checked into this room," Vanya chuckled, taking a sip of her coffee. "He thinks the Shifter Lord is using this entire integration program to build a private army of rogue wolves. He keeps saying, 'Vanya, the Ignis Lineage doesn't mingle with political stunts.' But honestly, Lord Ignis needs to take a day off.”

Lord Ignis. That name echoed in my skull, nearly provoking a headache.

Lord Ignis wasn't just a high-ranking dragon. He was the Dragon Sovereign. The commander-in-chief of the rebel forces.The man whose throat I had ordered my vanguard to slit during the winter siege of the Ruby Citadel.

And this girl… this goofy, silver-haired teenager with frosting on her face, was his daughter.

A violent wave of nausea hit me. The room tilted. The beige walls seemed to press inward, suffocating me. The scent of ozone grew heavier, but it wasn't coming from Vanya; it was coming from the depths of my own post-traumatic memory.

Fragged images flashed behind my eyelids.

A burning courtyard. A silver-haired dragon screamed as my wolves dragged him into the shadows. The smell of burning hair.

I could hear myself again: “Leave no survivors in the main house. If the lineage survives, the war never ends.”

"Jeaine?"

Vanya’s voice cut through the static in my head. She was standing up now, concern on her face as she looked at my pale own. She took half a step toward me, her hand reaching out. "Hey, you look like you're about to faint. Are you okay? Did the integration exam hit you hard? I heard the physicals for rogues are brutal–"

"I need air," I choked out.

I didn't wait for her response. I grabbed the doorknob, wrenched the door open, and threw myself into the hallway, slamming the door shut behind me.

I leaned my back against the cool concrete of the corridor, my chest heaving as I sucked in the neutral, un-ozoned air of the hallway. My forehead was slick with cold sweat.

What is happening? This wasn't my past anymore.

In the previous timeline, Vanya Ignis didn't exist at Astraea Academy. I knew the roster of the dragon tracks by heart because I had spent years analyzing them for weaknesses. She had never been here. If she had been here, she would have been a high-profile target.

Did my return to the past ripple outward, altering the choices of people I hadn't even met yet? Or was this timeline fundamentally distorted from the moment I drew my first breath back in this seventeen -year-old body?

"Watch it, rogue," a sharp voice snapped from my left.

I snapped my head up, my eyes narrowing. A young tiger shifter was glaring at me, sneering as he brushed past me in the hallway, carrying a box of leather-bound books. He had looked at me like I was dirt on his shoe.

The standard hierarchy was still intact. The elites were still arrogant. The rogues were still outcasts. But things were obviously not the same.

Before I could spiral further into the mathematical impossibility of my reality, the heavy fire door at the end of the hall banged open.

A girl with thick, curly brown hair and a mountain of canvas bags stumbled through, dropping a plastic crate full of instant ramen noodles in the process. The packages scattered across the linoleum, rolling toward my boots.

"Oh, sweet moon, I am so sorry!" she gasped, dropping to her knees to scramble after the flying noodles. "The elevator is broken in the south wing, and I had to carry all of this up three flights of stairs, and if I lose my spicy chicken flavor, I will actually lie down and die right here…"

I froze. The voice. The curls. The disorganized energy.

"Mabel?" I called instantly.

The girl paused, a pack of ramen clutched in her hand. “…Uh?”

Then she laughed awkwardly. “I’m sorry, do I look like someone who has their life together enough to be recognized on sight?”

Relief should’ve hit me. Instead, confusion did.

In the war, Mabel hadn't joined the military. She had taken a low-level administrative job. The last time I saw her was three years ago, when a dragon air raid wiped out the supply depot she was stationed at. I had received her name on a casualty list.

She looked up again, squinting. “Wait. Have we met? You seem… familiar.”