Chapter 5

5

Mabel's pov

By the time the sun set tonight, every single person at Mooncrest Academy would have their mate. 

And me? The wolfless scholarship girl? I guess I might just have to sit and watch.

I stood at my window watching the light change over the courtyard below, gold sliding into amber, amber sliding slowly toward the deep blue that meant evening was finally arriving whether I was ready for it or not.

The whole academy had transformed over the course of the day into something electric and strange, every hallway buzzing with a nervous energy I could feel in my teeth even through my closed door.

Students who normally moved through the halls with careless confidence now walked faster, spoke less, checked their reflections in every window they passed like the glass might warn them of something waiting on the other side.

I sat down hard on the edge of my bed and stared at the uniform laid out beside me, white and simple, the kind of garment meant to mean something ceremonial, and I felt sick in a way that had nothing to do with nerves about clothing at all.

What if nothing happens.

The thought looped through my head all afternoon, relentless, familiar in the way old fears always are, worn smooth from handling. 

I had spent my whole life being the girl without a wolf, and today every single person at Mooncrest was going to watch that fact confirmed in front of them, publicly, undeniably, with no room left afterward to pretend it might still change with time.

There would be no more waiting after tonight. No more telling myself maybe next year, maybe when I'm older, maybe it just takes some of us longer. 

Tonight was the answer, whatever it turned out to be, and some small cowardly part of me wanted to climb back into bed and stay there until the whole ceremony was over and done with and I could go back to simply hoping instead of knowing.

"Hey." Ava's voice came from the doorway, and I looked up to find her already dressed in her own white uniform, her dark curls pinned back carefully from her face, her expression softening the moment she saw mine. "You've got that look."

"What look?"

"The one where you're already writing the worst version of the story before it's even happened." 

She crossed the room and dropped onto the bed beside me, close enough that our shoulders touched, close enough that I could feel the steadiness radiating off her like something I could borrow for a while.

I bit my lower lip hard.

"Am I that obvious?"

"You're my best friend, obviously you're that obvious." She bumped her shoulder against mine, grounding in the way only she ever managed to be. "Listen to me. Whatever happens today doesn't change who you are. You're still you tomorrow morning no matter what that courtyard does or doesn't do."

"Easy for you to say." My voice cracked on it more than I meant it to. "You're not the one everyone's going to be staring at."

"Everyone's going to be staring at everyone. That's the whole point of the ceremony." She squeezed my hand, her grip warm and certain against my cold fingers. "You're not alone in this. I'm right there beside you the whole time, whatever happens, and I promise you the sun is still going to rise tomorrow either way."

Her words helped more than I let on, settling something in my chest just enough that I could stand, could dress, could walk with her down toward the courtyard where the entire student body had already begun to gather beneath a sky just beginning to darken toward evening, the first pale edge of the moon already visible above the towers.

The ceremony itself was older than anyone could properly explain, some ritual passed down through generations of wolf bloodlines long before Mooncrest Academy had ever been built on this mountainside.

Headmaster Graves stood at the center of it all when we arrived, robed formally in deep grey, his voice carrying easily across the hushed crowd as he explained what none of us needed explained, since we'd all heard it recited a hundred times before in classrooms and family kitchens and bedtime stories meant to prepare us for exactly this night.

Ancient symbols had been chalked into the stone ground in patterns that seemed to shift slightly if you looked at them too long, silver dust catching what little light remained as the sun finally disappeared behind the mountains entirely.

I stood pressed close to Ava near the edge of the crowd, my heart hammering so hard I was certain the people nearest me could hear it, watching as the first names were called and the first students stepped forward into the center of the circle.

Students stepped forward one at a time, called alphabetically, and the courtyard held its breath for each of them, waiting for that flicker of silver thread that would mark a bond, a mate, a connection older than any of us fully understood. 

Most of the time nothing happened at all, and the student stepped back into the crowd with a mixture of relief and disappointment written plainly across their face, and the ceremony simply continued on to the next name without pause. 

A few times a thread did appear, thin and bright, and the crowd would gasp and murmur while two students found each other across the circle with expressions somewhere between terror and wonder.

And I watched each one of those moments with my stomach twisting tighter and tighter, dread building steadily toward whatever was waiting for me.

My name came near the middle of the list.

"Mabel Sinclair."

I felt every eye in that courtyard land on me at once, felt the particular quality of silence that comes right before people expect to witness someone's humiliation confirmed in front of them.

“Hey. You got this.” Ava whispered to me, giving me the go ahead.

I nodded slowly and stepped forward on legs that didn't feel entirely like mine, aware of Bianca somewhere in the crowd already smirking, arms crossed, waiting for exactly the outcome she'd predicted since the moment I arrived at this school.

I was aware of the whispers that had followed me my whole life gathering into one final verdict, aware of Ava's eyes on me from the edge of the crowd, steady and encouraging even now.

Nothing is going to happen, I told myself, bracing for it, almost welcoming it at this point simply to have the waiting finished at last, to stop carrying the question and finally just carry the answer instead, however painful it turned out to be.

Then my chest caught fire.

Not literally, but it felt that way, a searing heat blooming beneath my ribs so sudden and so total that I gasped out loud, my knees nearly buckling beneath me.

Something ancient and enormous unfurled inside me, awake for the first time in my entire life, twisting and stretching like it had been curled up sleeping for nineteen years and had finally, finally decided to open its eyes. I looked down at my own chest in time to see it.

A silver thread, impossibly bright, spooling out from somewhere inside me and stretching taut across the courtyard, cutting through the darkening air like something alive.

Straight to Xavier Blackwood.

The silence that followed was absolute. Nobody breathed, nobody moved.

I stood there with my heart slamming against my ribs, staring at the thread connecting me to a boy who had looked at me exactly once with something like fear, and I understood in that moment exactly what that look had meant, understood it too late to do anything but stand there and let the whole courtyard see it happen.

Xavier's face had gone white.

He didn't look relieved, he didn't look happy, or even surprised in the ordinary sense people are surprised by good news.

He looked horrified, genuinely horrified, his whole body rigid like he was staring at something that shouldn't exist at all, something the world had promised him could never happen.

"Impossible," he whispered, the word barely audible but carrying anyway in that dead silent courtyard, reaching every ear present, reaching me most of all.

My whole world had narrowed down to that single silver thread and the boy at the other end of it who looked like my existence had just confirmed his worst fear, and I didn't have time to process any of it, before anyone in that courtyard could react, before Graves could even speak, before I could even find enough breath in my lungs to say a single word.

A second thread appeared.

Silver, identical to the first, spooling out from that same place beneath my ribs and stretching across the courtyard in an entirely different direction, bright and sudden and impossible.

This one connected to Xander, and the courtyard erupted.

Voices rose all at once, shock and disbelief tangled together into a roar I could barely process, Bianca's face twisted into something I didn't have time to interpret.

Headmaster Graves had gone very still at the center of it all, staring at the two threads like he was seeing something he'd hoped never to witness again in his lifetime, something that had clearly happened before and clearly hadn't ended well.

I stood frozen in the middle of it, the heat still burning beneath my ribs, two silver threads trembling in the space around me, connecting me to two brothers who were staring at me now like I had become something entirely different in the space of thirty seconds, something none of us had a name for yet.

I had two mates.