Chapter 2

2

Mabel's pov

It shut my eyes and opened them again, I was sure something inside me had moved.

I bathed my lashes and stared out the window, so many thoughts running through my mind.

We crossed the gates of Mooncrest Academy and I adjusted uncomfortably in my seat. Mooncrest Academy rose out of the mountainside like it had grown there instead of being built, all dark stone and towers with windows that caught the afternoon light and threw it back gold.

It felt less like arriving somewhere beautiful and more like walking into the mouth of something very old and very patient.

The courtyard was already crowded with students when the transport let me off, legacy families in tailored coats greeting each other with the kind of practiced warmth that only exists between people who've known each other's parents for generations.

I stood there with my suitcase and my scholarship letter folded in my coat pocket like proof of something, watching packs of students who all seemed to already know exactly where they belonged.

"Scholarship line's over there," a boy said as he passed me, not unkindly, just factually, the way you'd point out a bathroom.

I found the line. It was short and easy to spot, mostly because everyone in it was doing the same thing I was, trying very hard to look like they weren't uncomfortable.

"Still wolfless," someone murmured behind me, not quite quiet enough. "That's the Sinclair girl, right? Heard she can't shift at all."

I kept my eyes forward and my spine straight, the way I'd trained myself to do years ago, because reacting only ever fed the whispering. It didn't stop the heat that crawled up my neck, though. It never did.

A group of girls passed by, laughing openly.

“Pathetic.”

“Can’t believe Mooncrest lowered standards.”

I bit my lower lip hard, trying to control myself, then—

"Mabel!"

The voice cut through the noise like sunlight through fog, and I turned to see Ava shoving her way through the crowd with her bag half falling off one shoulder and a grin already breaking across her face.

I hadn't realized how much I needed to see someone who actually wanted to see me until she crashed into a hug that nearly knocked us both over.

"You're here, you're actually here, I was starting to think they'd rerouted your transport out of spite." 

Ava pulled back and studied my face with the kind of thoroughness only a best friend gets away with. 

"You look tired. Also terrified. Also like you need food immediately."

"All three," I admitted, and something in my chest loosened for the first time since I'd left home.

“I missed you…”

“I miss you more Ava.” I grinned widely as we hugged again.

Then, she disengaged from the hug and stared at me.

“So…” 

“What now Ava?” I knew she was going to start up a long discussion. I must admit, I've missed this.

"Mate Recognition Season starts this week," she said as we fell into step together, weaving through the crowd toward the dormitory wing. "Which means everyone's lost their minds a little early this year. You should see the older years. Half of them haven't slept."

"I haven't really thought about it," I lied.

Ava raised an eyebrow but let it go, which was one of the many reasons I loved her. She didn't push where pushing would only bruise.

“You know I just imagine things like… what if Xavier becomes your mate…?”

I stopped walking entirely and stared at her. 

“What? You have been crushing on him for like what? Decades now.”

“Bring your voice down Ava, walls have ears.” I hushed her immediately, swaying my head left and right just to be sure no one heard her.

“I'm sorry… I—”

“It's fine. No one heard.” I bit my lower lip again. I had been secretly in love with Xavier Blackwood since I first came into Mooncrest Academy, but he had never for once noticed me.

“But think about it.” She said and winked at me.

I let out a weak laugh, “Nothing like that is going to happen. This isn't a movie Ava.”

“I mean I'm just saying…”

“Well stop saying.” 

We both laughed and continued walking. 

But come to think of it, I really wish it would happen, I just wish he would see me for once. Who am I kidding, I am no match for Xavier anyway, he is clean and hot and has a wolf but I am just the opposite so, I quickly brushed the thought off.

We didn't get much further before a girl stepped directly into our path, moving with the kind of unhurried confidence that only comes from never once having been told to get out of someone's way.

She was beautiful in the specific, engineered way that made you feel instantly smaller just standing near her, dark hair falling in a perfect line, a drink balanced carelessly in one hand.

"Oops, sorry," Bianca said, not sounding sorry at all, as the drink somehow ended up down the front of my shirt instead of in her mouth.

The cold hit before the embarrassment did. Then the embarrassment caught up fast, spreading hot through my face as half the courtyard turned to look, as a ripple of laughter moved through the crowd like something contagious.

"You should really watch where you're going," Bianca added, already walking past me like the conversation was finished, like I was finished, like I'd simply stopped existing the moment she was done with me.

My breath wavered, anger and pain filled me.

Ava quickly grabbed my arm before I could say anything I would regret, or worse, before I could do the thing stupid, which was pull Bianca's hair and feed it to her and her clique.

"Ignore her. She does this every year, it's practically tradition at this point."

I wiped at my shirt with the sleeve of my jacket, breathing through the sting of it, and that was when the courtyard went quiet.

Not all at once, it happened the way silence spreads through a crowd, rippling outward from wherever the source is, until even the people who don't know why they've stopped talking have stopped talking anyway.

I followed the shift in attention and understood immediately.

Xavier Blackwood walked through the courtyard like the space itself rearranged to make room for him. He wasn't loud about it, he didn't need to be. 

Everything about him, the set of his shoulders, the stillness in his face, the way even Bianca straightened when he came near, told you everything you needed to know about where he stood in the order of things.

He was so handsome and his height almost intimidating. His dark black hair glimmered in line with the sunlight. He was a true definition of a demi god, everything about him was so perfect. 

I stared at him, my lips gape, I hated how my pulse picked up. I hated it the way you hate anything embarrassing and uncontrollable, a blush, a stumble, a reaction your body has without asking your permission first.

He walked straight toward us and for one stupid second… I thought he was coming to help me. Instead, he walked straight past me and stopped in front of Bianca instead.

"You're soaked," he said to her, which made no sense because she wasn't the one wearing someone else's drink, and then I realized he meant the front of her dress where some of it had splashed back onto her, and he was already offering her his jacket, already being kind to the girl who had just humiliated me in front of half the school.

It shouldn't have mattered. I told myself it shouldn't have mattered as Ava steered me firmly toward the dorms, away from the whole scene, but something small and stubborn in my chest ached anyway.

Then, just as we turned the corner, Xavier's head snapped toward us.

It was less than a second. His whole body went rigid, like something had physically struck him, his eyes finding mine across the distance with an intensity that didn't match anything that had just happened. For one impossible heartbeat he looked at me like he'd never seen anything like me before.

Then it was gone. His expression smoothed back into practiced indifference, and he turned away without a word, back to Bianca, back to the world I clearly wasn't part of.

"What was that?" Ava asked, glancing between me and where he'd been standing.

"I don't know," I said, and I meant it.

I thought about it the whole walk to the dormitory, replaying that half second again and again, trying to make sense of an expression that had looked less like recognition and more like shock, like fear, like something he hadn't wanted to feel.

Why did he look at me like that?