Chapter 33-Selene's Words

Odett’s POV

  The revised emergency rules waited on my desk when I woke, covered in enough notes to make the original proposal look unfinished. I read the section about unverified orders twice before adding one more question in the margin. The protection marks around my room remained pale, and Lorilie stayed comfortably present inside my mind.

  ‘You have checked those marks four times,’ Lorilie observed.

  ‘Three,’ I corrected.

  ‘You checked the one beside the window twice,’ she reminded me smugly.

  I closed the proposal before Lorilie could count again. I had slept without a nightmare, yet I still treated a quiet morning as something to verify. At least the Academy work waiting on my desk gave my thoughts somewhere ordinary to go.

  Joshy met me outside the family dining room with two books tucked beneath his arm. He looked awake only because Mom had placed a mug of coffee in his hand before allowing him near anyone. Aunt Jess sat at the table guarding an empty plate with an expression of deliberate innocence.

  “Sam expects me to defend his portion of breakfast from Aunt Jess,” I announced with solemn responsibility.

  “Sam is several territories away and has no authority over bacon he abandoned,” Aunt Jess argued with offended certainty.

  Uncle Orian moved the serving plate closer to himself before the disagreement became physical. Dad unfolded the personal portion of Sam’s message while Mom tried unsuccessfully to hide her smile. No one mentioned an exact return date, which kept hope from turning into another countdown.

  “He said he may begin the southern route within the week if the remaining records are reviewed on schedule,” Dad explained.

  “May begin doesn’t mean he’s coming home yet,” I said.

  “No, it doesn’t,” Dad agreed without softening the truth.

  I wanted a date and knew Dad could not give me one. Sam was closer, his team was together, and they still had work to finish. I took a piece of bacon and told Aunt Jess it was under royal protection.

  “That protection lacks enforcement,” Aunt Jess warned with a calculating look.

  “Touch it, and I’ll start our combat practice early,” I warned cheerfully.

  Mom ordered both of us to behave before Dad could encourage the argument. Joshy quietly moved the protected bacon onto a smaller plate and placed it beside Mom. Aunt Jess looked genuinely betrayed by his understanding of diplomacy.

  The Academy courtyard had changed by the time we arrived. Practice schedules covered the announcement boards, study groups occupied every bench, and fifth-years carried their proposals as if the pages might escape. Three weeks had sounded generous until everyone began dividing the time between written exams, combat practice, hearings, and the emergency exercise.

  Our first lesson returned to the pack proposals. Each team had to identify the belief beneath one major rule and decide whether that belief came from evidence, tradition, fear, or personal ambition. The instructor gave us twenty minutes before she began calling on teams.

  Joshy opened our founding statement and tapped the first sentence. We had written that a hybrid pack would provide a permanent home for supernatural families who did not fit comfortably within a single-species territory. The statement had survived every revision because neither of us had questioned why we believed the pack had to exist.

  “Need,” Joshy decided with thoughtful certainty.

  “That is not one of the choices written on the board,” I pointed out.

  “It should be,” he replied practically.

  The instructor reached our table before we could decide whether correcting her assignment would improve our assessment. She read the founding statement, then looked at the margin where Joshy had written need beside all four approved categories. Her expression became far too interested.

  “A need still has to be recognized by someone,” she said. “Did you reach this conclusion from what you observed, or did you begin with the belief that you were meant to create this community?”

  The question landed harder than the instructor intended. I had been telling people about the hybrid pack since I was a child, long before I knew what its laws might be. Selene had spoken of it while I was small enough to sit beneath Dad’s blankets and call it destiny.

  “Both,” I answered.

  Joshy glanced toward me but did not interrupt. He knew about the pack Selene had described, although we rarely discussed the prophecy itself. Designing the community felt safer when it belonged to paper, research, and choices we could defend.

  “Then your hearing panel may ask whether the community exists because people need it or because its future Alpha was told to build it,” the instructor warned.

  “Would the reason change the protections people deserve after they arrive?” I asked.

  “No, but it could change whether you listen when they tell you the community should become something other than what you imagined,” she answered evenly.

  I looked down at our founding statement. If I decided every part of the pack was inevitable, I might hear a future resident’s objection as defiance instead of advice. That was not the kind of Alpha I wanted to become.

  Lorilie remained quiet while I wrote a question beneath the opening line. Who decides whether the pack should exist? The answer could not be Selene, me, or the future title everyone assumed I would carry.

  “The people who choose it,” Joshy said softly after reading the question.

  “Then we need that written into the founding process before the panel asks,” I replied.

  We rewrote the opening as a proposal rather than a promise. Prospective members would review the laws, choose temporary representatives, and vote on whether the community met their needs. Joshy added a review after six months, when the first residents would have lived with the rules long enough to judge them.

  The new plan was harder to defend, but I liked it better. I could picture people building the pack with us. I no longer had to imagine them walking into a future whose shape I had decided alone.

  Nolan and Cassian joined us during project period. Nolan challenged the voting threshold, while Cassian questioned whether families living under hostile rulers could safely place their names on a public request. Their objections forced us to design private statements of interest without pretending anonymous support was the same as a final vote.

  “This is becoming an entire government before you have one house,” Nolan complained with weary disbelief.

  “One house still needs rules if six species share the kitchen,” Joshy replied.

  “The first rule should be banning Aunt Jess from unattended breakfast,” I suggested with complete seriousness.

  Cassian stared at me until Nolan explained that Aunt Jess was a larger threat to food security than most natural disasters. The conversation wandered long enough for the tension in my shoulders to loosen. Selene’s words remained beneath every revision, but they no longer felt like an answer no one was permitted to question.