Chapter 4: Shawls Academy

Leslie POV

"Goodbye, honey." Grandpa's voice cracked on the words, low and thick with tears, and it sent a shiver straight through me.

One that made me want to sob until there was nothing left. But this was it. I'd enrolled — technically, at least — and if I wanted to become who I needed to be, sacrifices were the price.

"Goodbye, Pop-up," I managed, and somehow my voice held.

I grabbed the handles of my four suitcases and immediately regretted it. Without my Alpha strength, they may as well have been filled with stone.

"Need a hand?"

I turned, and there she was. Risel. I was so relieved to see a familiar face in this place that I hugged her before I could think better of it.

"Please. I'm sorry, I can barely lift these."

"Don't be. We're roommates now, anyway." She said it so easily, like it was nothing — but it hit me harder than I expected. At least I wouldn't be handed to a stranger.

The image of her father passing my bottled voice to that linen-wrapped figure surfaced again, uninvited, crawling up my spine.

"Don't tell me you're still chewing on whatever your mind conjured back there." Risel's eyes narrowed, half-amused, half-warning. "That was just a side effect. Nothing more."

"I'm not thinking about that." I was. "I'm just nervous. First day." I forced a breath. "And it's not Stacy anymore. It's Cooper. Leslie Cooper."

We both laughed — hers easy, mine a beat too late — and I asked her to tell me about the school before my nerves could catch up with me.

"Shawl Academy," she said, straightening like she'd rehearsed the line a hundred times, "is where the royal wolves of every pack, the royal vampires of every clan, the royal mermaids of every shoal, the royal witches of every grove, the royal sirens of every choir, the royal dragons of every flight, the royal phoenixes of every blaze — and the rarest species of all, royal humans of every kingdom — come to study."

"Okay, enough with the theatrics." I bumped her shoulder as we slid our forged invitations into the collection box at the gate. My stomach dropped the second the paper left my hand — there was no taking it back now.

We stepped into the hallway, and every thought in my head went silent.

Witches soared overhead on brooms, exactly like the ones from the storybooks Pearl used to mock me for reading. Mermaids stepped out of a fountain, water sliding off skin that reshaped itself into legs before my eyes. Vampires bared their fangs at each other like a greeting. And humans — actual humans — walked past in shoes with soles so tall I couldn't understand how they were still upright.

"Act normal, Leslie." Risel raised her hand, and her broom snapped to attention beside her. I stared, jaw somewhere near the floor, as she swung a leg over it like it was nothing.

"And Leslie — you'll want your ears out. That's how wolves are marked here."

She smiled, tapped her wand once, and my suitcases vanished into thin air. Then she was gone, lifting off into the crowd overhead.

I tried. I stood there in the middle of that impossible hallway and reached for the shift the way I used to as Stacy — that quick, practiced flex of will that used to bring my ears forward without a thought.

Nothing happened.

I tried again. Harder. Still nothing. My hands were shaking by the third attempt, and a few heads had already started to turn my way, curious. I gave up before I could draw more.

The hallway swallowed me — too vast, too loud, packed with creatures who all seemed to know exactly who they were. I stood frozen in the current of it, gaze sliding from face to face, until it landed on her and stopped dead.

"Hello. Coming through."

The entire hallway went quiet. Brooms slowed. Fangs disappeared. Every eye turned toward the girl walking through the center of it like she owned the marble beneath her feet.

My fists curled at my sides. I didn't move. I didn't want to.

"And who do we have here?"

She stopped in front of me, tilted her head, and dragged two fingers slowly down my cheek — gentle, almost affectionate, the way you'd touch something you already owned.

I stepped back before I could stop myself, jaw tight, eyes locked on hers. I wasn't going to let her get under my skin. Not again. Not the way she and her mother had, night after night, in that packhouse I used to call home.

Giselle wasn't taking anything else from me.

Her eyes swept over me once, slow, cataloguing — my face, my hair, the new color of my eyes — and for one unbearable second, something flickered behind them. Recognition, or the ghost of it. Then it smoothed away into boredom, like I'd failed to be interesting enough to hold her attention.

"Cute ears," she said, nodding at the two small points I still hadn't managed to force out. "Wonder whose litter you crawled out of."