Ronan’s POV

Elias was shaking. Not trembling like someone who was cold or exhausted.

Shaking the way something fragile shakes right before it breaks.

The hallway was silent now, but the echo of Vale’s footsteps still crawled under my skin, leaving a cold trail of fury behind them. Fury at him, myself, at this entire academy that pretended to build “leaders” when all it did was hunt the weak.

Elias wasn’t weak.

He was surviving something no Alpha here could even imagine.

And I had ...