Chapter 1: Congratulations!

My heart hammered against my ribs as my eyes scanned the screen, desperate. Please... please...

And then I saw it. Bold. Unmistakable.

Aurora Roy.

A squeal escaped my lips before I could stop it. I... I actually made it?

No mistake. Clearwater Pack. Me.

Congratulations, you've qualified for the Tryouts at Twilight Academy.

I blinked. Stared. Blinked again. Twilight Academy, the most prestigious school in the shifter world. Only the best of the best. And somehow, impossibly, I had been chosen.

I'd be leaving Clearwater. Leaving everything I'd ever known. For years, I'd convinced myself that rejection was inevitable. After all, I couldn't shift like almost everyone else—a little detail that had made me prime target for ridicule since I was old enough to understand the whispers. But my skills as a healer had finally paid off. Someone had noticed. Someone believed I was worth more than my pack thought.

I was in.

A sharp shove slammed into my shoulder, jolting me back to reality.

"Move it, freak."

Gigi. Perfectly polished, perfectly cruel, with her posse snickering behind her like trained seals. She shoved past me, and my bag went flying, papers and notebook scattering across the dirty hallway floor. I barely managed to catch my phone before it joined them.

Normally, I'd snap back. Call her every name I'd rehearsed in my head during sleepless nights. But not today. Today, I was floating on something far bigger than Gigi's pathetic attempts to make me feel small.

I smiled.

"Freak," she sneered, venom dripping from the word like it was supposed to wound me.

I smiled wider. In a few weeks, I'd never have to see her perfect, hateful face again. Let her have her little moments of power now. They were numbered.

"What's she smiling at?" one of her minions whispered, confused.

I turned away, still grinning, and headed to class as the bell rang. Let them wonder. Let them twist themselves into knots trying to figure out why the school freak was suddenly... happy.

"She's such a sorry case," someone muttered behind me.

I shook it off. None of them mattered anymore. Not now.

---

But the whispers followed me anyway.

The moment I walked into Potions, the room went silent. You could have heard a pin drop in the dead of night.

"Her?" someone breathed.

"She's going to Twilight Academy?" another hissed.

"I can't believe this little mutt actually got in," someone else muttered, their voice thick with disdain. "Must be a mistake."

Gigi's sharp voice cut through the murmurs like a blade. "Has Twilight lost their standards completely? I mean... her?"

My fists clenched at my sides. I forced my head high as I slid into my seat, ignoring the stares burning into my skin. The girl next to me was gaping openly, like I'd grown a second head overnight. I shot her a glare sharp enough to draw blood, and she looked away quickly, cheeks flushing.

Typical Clearwater nonsense.

I was one of the best healer students this pack had produced in years. My invitation proved that. Yet they all looked at me like I'd cheated, like I'd somehow tricked the admissions committee into letting the village idiot through the gates.

All because I couldn't shift. 

Getting invited to Twilight was the dream of every ambitious young wolf. For someone like me from one of the smallest, most insignificant packs in the entire shifter hierarchy—it was practically a miracle.

Clearwater Pack wasn't just small. We were irrelevant. A tiny village nestled at the bottom of the food chain, barely worth a mention in the grand scheme of shifter politics.

Twilight Academy didn't cater to packs like mine. It catered to the best—not just werewolves, but Lycans too. Ancient bloodlines. Pure lineages. The children of Alphas and pack leaders, of wolf royalty and Lycan kings. Rumor had it the current Wolf King's and Lycan Ruler had both graduated from those hallowed halls.

That wasn't to say ordinary packs were completely locked out. Every generation, a handful of students from smaller, less prominent packs earned the chance to try out. The ones who showed extraordinary potential. The gifted outliers who could break through the barriers of their bloodline.

Over the decades, maybe five students from Clearwater had made it as far as the tryouts. None had ever become permanent students.

I was going to be the first.

The process wasn't easy. 

But I wanted this more than I'd ever wanted anything.

I wanted to hone my healing abilities. To master potions-making, the only things I'd ever been good at. They were my passion, my purpose. 

And Twilight was the best place in the world to learn. The academy was renowned for its advanced facilities, a legacy of its origins. Once, it had been a military fort guarding the main entrance to shifter territory during the wars—back when we'd fought other supernatural creatures and human hunters alike. Now it trained promising young shifters to be the protectors and leaders of our world.

The history. The prestige. The opportunities. It was everything I'd ever dreamed of.

And it was that exclusive.

I couldn't contain my excitement, no matter how hard I tried.

---

The whispers followed me all the way to lunch.

"Her mom probably always knew she was strange," Lana sighed dramatically, tossing her hair.

"I wish she'd stayed hidden with that weird family of hers instead of Beta Mason forcing us to deal with her," someone else muttered.

"Don't get too comfortable," Gigi sneered from across the cafeteria, loud enough for everyone to hear. "She'll be back soon enough when they realize she doesn't meet Twilight's standards."

"True," one of her minions agreed, smirking. "But at least we'll get a few weeks of peace without her freakish aura ruining the air!"

I took a deep breath and forced myself to tune them out. Their words still stung they always would but soon I'd be gone. One step closer to my dream.

Now all I had to do... was convince Mom to say yes.

---

"Absolutely not! Never!" My mother's voice rang through the kitchen like a slap.

"What?" I stared at her, disbelief crashing through my chest. My heart plummeted straight to my feet.

I'd expected some resistance, maybe a flicker of hesitation. But this? She was looking at me like I'd just suggested something unspeakable. Like my dream was a threat she needed to stamp out before it could take root.

"But I made the cut!" My voice rose, thick with frustration and something that felt dangerously like desperation. "Do you even know how hard that was? It's practically impossible for someone from Clearwater to—"

"I know how much this means to you." Her voice was cold. Final. "You've always talked about it."

"Then why—"

"And I never supported it!" she snapped, her eyes flashing. "I just let you talk. How was I supposed to know you'd actually get in?"

The words hit me like physical blows. She didn't believe in me. She never had. All those years of listening to me dream, and she'd just been... humoring me. Waiting for me to fail like everyone expected.

"You cannot and will not leave Clearwater." Her voice softened slightly, but the steel underneath remained. "You'll stay here with me. Stay where it's safe." She reached for my hands, pleading.

"Ugh!" I groaned, yanking away from her touch.

It was always like this. The fear. The control. The irrational refusal to let me live my own life. She wasn't just against Twilight—she was against everything I wanted. Everything that wasn't hiding in this tiny pack, invisible and forgotten.

"What are you so afraid of?" My voice cracked on the question.

She didn't answer. But the fear radiating off her was suffocating, a thick cloud that filled every corner of our small kitchen. Her paranoia had ruled my entire life for as long as I could remember—sheltering me, hiding me, keeping me locked away like a shameful secret.

Weird. Freak. Mutt. Rejectling.

Those names had haunted me my whole life, not just because I couldn't shift yet, but partly because of her. Mom had kept me hidden from the world until I was thirteen. I'd spent my childhood staring through windows at a life I wasn't allowed to touch. Her fear had made me strange, awkward, different. And now she wanted to keep me here forever, trapped in her bubble of terror.

Her wide brown eyes, so unlike my own were filled with panic as she silently begged me to understand. But I couldn't. I wouldn't.

"What are you so afraid of, Mom?" I whispered, quieter now but no less desperate.

She just shook her head, gripping my hands like they were lifelines. Her fear had shaped every corner of my existence—made me cautious where I should have been bold, hesitant where I should have been confident, painfully awkward in a world that already had reasons to reject me. I'd thought she was finally trusting me to step into the world on my own.

But now, looking at the panic clouding her gaze, I realized the truth.

I was still trapped.

How could I learn to be a healer—a shifter—if I couldn't even leave the cave?

"Mom." I grabbed her hands, my voice trembling. "You know this has always been my dream."

"Again with the Twilight nonsense," she muttered, looking away.

It had taken hours to convince her to even let me apply. Tooth and nail, tears and pleading. And even then, it had only happened because Beta Mason had forced her hand.

Now, standing in our kitchen, her doubt was crystal clear. "Letting you apply was nonsense. And now you want to leave the pack completely? No!" Her voice rose, echoing off the walls.

"Mom!" I shouted back.

"There's so much danger out there, Aurora! So much!" Her fear was raw now, unrelenting.

But there wasn't anything out there except opportunity. Why couldn't she see that? Why couldn't she just let me live?

I dropped to my knees. "Mother, please. Can't you see how much this means to me?"

"What's going on here?"

Beta Mason's deep, familiar voice made my heart leap. He stood in the doorway, concern etched into the lines of his face.

Ever since we'd moved to this pack, he'd been there—more than just the Beta. A father figure, really. The one who'd dragged me to school that first day years ago, enrolled me when my mother would have kept me locked away forever.

"Mom won't let me go!" I cried, the words tumbling out before I could stop them.

"Agatha." His voice was firm.

"Not now, Beta Mason!" she snapped, waving him off like he was nothing.

He sighed, running a hand through his greying hair. "She's the only one, Agatha. The only healer from this pack who qualified. Twilight's standards are impossibly high, and she met them."

"That doesn't matter." Her voice was sharp as broken glass. "She will remain here. She cannot go to Lunovia!"

"You do want what's best for her, right?" Mason's calm voice cut through the tension like a blade.

"Of course I do!" she insisted.

"And this pack is what's best?" I pressed, desperate.

"I just don't want her outside the pack." Mom's voice cracked. "There's a reason we came here."

"To live peacefully," she whispered. "Just the two of us."

"You can't live your whole life in fear," Mason said firmly. "Let her chase her dreams. She's gifted. She actually stands a chance."

"I can't risk it." She shook her head, almost pleading now.

"Mom." My voice broke on the word.

Mason's patience finally thinned. "She's capable, Agatha. I've been patient with you, but there's no reasonable explanation for this. None."

He paused, and something shifted in his expression. "I thought you might react this way. I spoke with the Alpha."

"The Alpha?" Both of us froze.

"Yes. He's invited you for dinner." His tone left no room for argument.

---

That evening, Alpha Derrick walked through our door.

He was massive broad-shouldered and hard-eyed, radiating power like heat from a furnace. His presence alone could freeze anyone mid-sentence, and I'd seen grown wolves tremble under that gaze. He was one of the strongest men I'd ever encountered, his aura pulsing with raw strength.

It was funny to think, really, that someone like him was considered nothing by the higher breeds. I couldn't help but wonder how a Lycan Alpha's aura would feel, if Alpha Derrick was this imposing. A Lycan's presence would probably feel like death itself.

"Ah, there's the star child," he said, his eyes landing on me. A rare smile tugged at his lips. "Your daughter is skilled. She'll make waves at that academy." He gave me a small nod, and for one shining moment, I felt seen.

Then his gaze shifted to my mother. "You're not much of anything, just a shifter's mate, a healer's mother," he said bluntly. "But Aurora?" He chuckled lightly. "If I didn't know better, I'd say she wasn't your biological daughter."