Origins of an Academy Bully

Darius Acrux is fifteen when Zodiac Academy Awakens his powers and pairs him with a mentor: Lance Orion, a senior near the end of his own time there. Orion has spent years hiding a magic the school forbids. Mentoring the heir to Solaria's most ruthless Dragon Shifter family was not part of that plan.

Their families turn out to be circling the same secret, and dark magic becomes the only tool sharp enough to dig it out. Getting caught costs Darius his claim to the throne. It costs Orion whatever he has spent this long protecting.

Told in alternating chapters, the novella sits four years before The Awakening, the first full book in the series. It follows the year that shapes who Darius and Orion become in it.

At under a hundred pages, it reads quickly and stays tense throughout, closer to an extended prologue than a side story. The two risk everything they have to learn what their parents are hiding.