Chapter 7

7

Xander's pov

I stood there in that dim corner with torchlight flickering against the stone walls and the little crying Mabel.

“Ava please… please I just want to be alone.”

Her tiny voice hit the walls of my ears.

I had seen her cry before. Everyone at Mooncrest had, at one point or another, since Bianca and her crowd had never exactly been subtle about their opinions on scholarship students who could not shift.

But I had never been standing this close when it happened. I had never felt what I was feeling right now, some invisible thread pulling taut in my chest, an ache that was not mine and yet somehow lived inside me anyway.

"Hey." I said it softer than I meant to, softer than I said most things.

Flirting came easy to me, always had, a permanent shield I kept polished and ready for exactly this kind of moment where an actual feeling threatened toshow its face.

But looking at Mabel standing there shaking, I found the usual lines dying somewhere in my throat before they could reach my mouth.

She flinched when she realized it was me, swiping at her face with the back of her hand, jaw tight, clearly furious with herself for letting me see her like this. "Go away, Xander."

"Not really my style." I took a step closer, hands raised, the universal gesture for I am not a threat even though I had absolutely no idea what I was doing.

Comfort had never been my strong suit.

Charm, yes. Comfort, apparently not so much.

"Look, I know that was rough back there."

"Rough." Her laugh came out broken, more like a sob than actual laughter. "He rejected me in front of the entire academy, Xander. I don't think rough covers it."

I flinched at that, because she was right, and because some part of me was still furious at my own brother for doing exactly what he did.

Xavier and I had shared a womb, shared twenty one years of being expected to want the same things, but we had never been the same person.

"He's a joker," I said, and I meant it completely. "For what it's worth, I don't reject you."

Her eyes came up to mine then, wary, red rimmed, searching my face like she expected to find the joke hidden somewhere in it. "Excuse me?"

"I said I don't reject you." I shrugged, trying to keep my voice light even though something underneath it was not light at all, something that felt dangerously close to sincere. "Whatever cosmic mess put two threads on you instead of one, I'm not about to stand here and pretend I'd rather you disappear. Honestly, I'd kind of like to get to know you."

She stared at me a long moment, and I watched something complicated move behind her eyes, disbelief tangled up with exhaustion tangled up with the particular wariness of a girl who had spent her whole life being underestimated and mocked in equal measure.

"Is this some kind of game to you?"

"No game." I held her gaze, steady, because for once in my life I actually meant something I said without dressing it up first.

If I was honest with myself, and lately that was getting harder to avoid, some small stubborn part of me had been interested in her long before tonight.

She was the one girl at Mooncrest my charm had never worked on, the one who rolled her eyes at my lines instead of blushing at them, and there was something maddeningly attractive about that kind of immunity.

She wiped her face again, composing herself with visible effort, drawing her shoulders back the way someone does when they are done being seen falling apart.

"I need to get back to my room."

"Sure." I stepped aside to let her pass, even though every instinct I had wanted to keep her right there talking to me a while longer. "Try to sleep. Ignore whatever Bianca's already texting about you."

That earned me the smallest flicker of a smile, gone almost before it arrived, but I counted it as a win anyway.

She started walking, and I found myself falling into step beside her without entirely deciding to, still turning over the impossible thing that had happened in that courtyard.

A double bond, two threads from one girl, stretching to two brothers who shared the same blood.

I had grown up hearing the same lessons as every wolf child at this academy, the same absolute rule repeated in every classroom and every family dinner table.

Mate recognition happens once. One thread, one bond, one soul chosen among all the souls in existence.

That was not superstition. That was law, older than Mooncrest itself, unbroken as far as anyone could remember.

And yet tonight I had stood in that courtyard and watched two threads spool out of the same girl at the same moment, connecting her to two brothers who were never supposed to be able to share anything as sacred as a bond.

Something about that did not sit right with me. It went beyond strange into something closer to wrong, the kind of wrong that made the hair on the back of my neck rise every time I thought about it too long.

"Can I ask you something?" I said, glancing sideways at her.

"You're going to ask regardless of what I say."

Fair point.

"Did you feel anything before tonight? With either of us? Any kind of pull, even small, before the ceremony?"

She was quiet a moment, considering the question with more seriousness than I expected. "No. Nothing. I didn't even think I could have a mate at all, considering I don't have a wolf. I spent my whole life believing that part of me just didn't exist."

That was exactly the piece that kept catching in my mind like a splinter. If she had never felt anything before tonight, if the bond had appeared suddenly and completely formed in front of an entire courtyard, doubled in a way that broke every rule any of us had been taught since childhood, then something else had to be at work here.

Something older, maybe, or something deliberately done. Ancient magic did not simply announce itself with polite explanations.

I could swear I felt a pull with her the other day. It was no mistake, my wolf had identified her as my mate. Now, why did she also have my brother as his mate?

I did not say any of this out loud yet. It felt too unformed, too much like a theory I had not earned the right to speak yet, and Mabel had clearly had enough revelations for one night.

We reached the corridor that split toward the dormitories, and she stopped, turning to face me properly for the first time since we started walking.

"Thank you. For not being cruel about this. I wasn't expecting that from you."

"I contain multitudes," I said, and was rewarded with the ghost of another almost smile. "Get some sleep, Mabel."

She bit her lower lip and gave a slight nod.

"I have to head over to the school's archive now." The words left my mouth before I had fully decided to say them, some instinct pushing them out ahead of my better judgment.

I had not planned on telling anyone what I intended to do tonight, had barely admitted it to myself until the sentence was already hanging in the air between us. But there it was, spoken plainly, impossible to take back now.

She raised an eyebrow, some of her old sharpness returning despite everything. "The archive. At this hour."

"I have questions," I admitted, and left it at that, because explaining the rest would mean admitting how unsettled I actually was, and I was not ready to hand her that particular piece of myself yet. Not tonight.

She studied me a moment longer, like she was trying to decide whether to ask more, then simply nodded and turned toward her dormitory without another word, leaving me standing alone in that dim corridor with the thread in my chest still humming faintly, still tethered to a girl who had no idea what kind of trouble her existence had just caused.

Mabel's POV

I didn't know why he had been nice to me, could it be that he pitied me? Maybe that's why he also didn't reject me.

I appreciated his kindness nevertheless.

By the time I got back to my dorm, the room was empty. The silence was almost comforting. It meant no one would see me fall apart.

The moment I closed the door behind me, every ounce of strength I had been clinging to vanished.

I slid down against the door, wrapped my arms around myself, and cried until there were no tears left. At some point, exhaustion won, and I drifted into a restless sleep.

****

The shrill vibration of my phone dragged me awake the following morning.

I groaned, my entire body aching as though I had been beaten. My swollen eyes burned, and the memories of last night crashed into me all at once.

Xavier, his cold expression.

The way he looked straight at me without the slightest hint of emotion before saying those heartbreaking words.

My chest tightened.

"Oh, Mabel," I whispered to myself, biting my lower lip to stop another wave of tears.

I reached for my phone and unlocked it, I groaned when I saw ozens of missed calls. Almost all of them were from Ava.

Guilt settled heavily in my chest, but I wasn't ready to talk to anyone. I didn't have the strength to pretend I was okay.

I was about to put it away when a notification from the academy's blog caught my eye. Curiosity got the better of me.

The moment I opened it, my blood ran cold.

My face was everywhere.

Pictures from last night's bonding ceremony had already spread across the entire academy. Some showed the exact moment the bond had formed. Others captured Xavier's rejection, freezing my humiliation for everyone to see.

The headlines were even worse.

WOLFLESS SCHOLARSHIP GIRL GETS BONDED TO THE TWIN ALPHA HEIRS.

MOONCREST'S BIGGEST MATE DISASTER.

CAN A WOLFLESS GIRL REALLY BE FATED TO TWO ALPHAS?

My fingers trembled as I scrolled. The comments were merciless.

“The Moon Goddess must have made a mistake.”

“She's obviously cursed.”

“Xavier was right to reject her. I hope Xander does too.”

Every word felt like another knife twisting into my heart. I couldn't breathe.

Why...

Why was this happening to me?

I buried my face in my hands, trying to calm the storm raging inside my chest.

Then suddenly—

My phone buzzed again, I quickly picked it up, about to silence it when a notification caught my attention. It was from the school's blog.

A BODY HAS BEEN FOUND, LYING NEAR THE SCHOOL'S ARCHIVE.

My heart skipped a beat.

"What...?"