CHAPTER 213: _ MEAN GIRL, SIERRA

~Heidi’s Point Of View~

The knock at Heidi’s door is gentle but somehow sounds urgent as well. It’s like when a finger is tapping a stopwatch. It breaks the guilty silence of the room and through a sleep so deep she hasn’t bothered to fight it. For a second she stares at the ceiling, brain thick with the fog of the planning moment she had spent the first hour of returning to her room on that has now turned to exhaustion, and the first clear thought that breaks through is: Mrs. Castell will kill me for this.

Her chest tightens with panic. It’s not the sharp, actionable kind that makes you move, but the slow, corrosive kind that sits in your stomach and spreads.

Her wolf paces. "You fell asleep? Brilliant. That’s how you get buried alive... unless you bury that overcaked-faced witch first."

Heidi throws a hand over her face and forces herself up. The mattress sighs like it’s letting go of a secret. Her head is a cluster of small fireworks of timelines, interviews, the list she made, the possible witnesses, Junie — and all of them prick, one by one, until she focuses only on the present: get dressed, get down, don’t make it worse.

She pads to the door barefoot. The floor is cold and smells faintly of lemon cleaner and other people’s secrets. The maid stands patiently in the corridor with a bright cloth in her hands and eyes trained to unreadability. Maid faces are like closed windows; you can see shapes, not currents.

"Miss Heidi?" the maid says, voice soft enough to be kind and exact enough to be a command. "The table will be set in ten minutes. Mr. Castell is waiting for everyone to come down."

"Everyone?" The word skitters like a nail across a chalkboard.

Her throat cramps. Mrs. Castell specified she was not allowed at the family table. Heidi swallows. "Mrs. Castell asked me not to attend..."

The maid’s mouth turns in half a smile. "Mr. Castell requested all household members present. He asked that breakfast begin with a full table."

OH!

She had mistaken the name the maid mentioned earlier for "Mrs" instead of "Mr."

Also, did the maid just say "morning"?! Hell, she had intended to go down to "receive her punishment" like Mrs. Castell had ordered, not to sleep off until the next morning! Heidi internally panics.

However, the only sensible reason for why Mrs. Castell didn’t come to wake her up from sleep with a whip is definitely because of her husband’s presence.

There’s this exhale that comes inside Heidi. It’s a small lift upon the realization that Mr. Castell is back home. The man is kind in a quiet, awkward way. He’s not a typical savior or a hero, just someone who doesn’t enjoy watching someone else be stomped into dust as long as he can avoid complicating his evenings. That’s enough for a bit of relief. The kind that’s shallow, but it keeps her feet moving.

Her wolf snorts. "You’re afraid of a woman wearing fake jade and cruelty but relieved about a man who smells like mild pipe tobacco. Makes sense."

"Shut up," she whispers, but the grin that threatens to split her face is more honest than she’d like.

She moves to the small basin attached to the room and turns the tap. Hot water runs. It smells of bleach and something floral that she misses during her stay at the dorm. She lets the water run over her hands like a blessing that’s cheapened and then drags the bar of soap across, making a slip of white foam. Most of the strategy is nerves and repetition; she scrubs until the soap slides cleanly down her arms, as if she could wash the fear from her skin.

She thinks about the evening before, about the meeting she didn’t show up for, the punishment she’d been promised as ’re-education’, the glass Mrs. Castell had thrown yesterday. She imagines the woman’s smile, the little crack of satisfaction in cruelty. But when she looks into the tiny mirror, she catches herself readying.

Bath done, she wraps herself in a towel because dignity is a priority even if it’s a fragile one. She pulls on clothes that are functional. Translation: a plain shirt with a loose collar, a sweater that hides the hollow of Morgan and Grayson’s marks at the base of her throat. She fastens it too high, careful to completely hide the faint lines where the twin bites press into her. It’s not that they couldn’t find them if they looked — pack noses are nothing if not invasive — but it’s about small choices. About controlling what people can see and what they can use as weapons.

She tucks Morgan’s stupid phone that is still warm from being set down in her bag last night — next to a packet of tissues and the list with her handwriting that now looks messy where she’d fallen asleep. The phone feels like a hot coal in her palm.

On the stairs, she meets Sierra.

Even before the bitter girl speaks, there’s this coordinated, insult-ready energy that clings to her like perfume. She’s smiling in that way people do when they’re about to rip something down to shreds and they think the world should applaud. She doesn’t even try to step around Heidi as they nearly bump into each other. She simply shoves her back.

The shove is small but also very intentional. Heidi’s shoulder hits the bannister, but she keeps her balance. She could have moved, stepped aside, and laughed it off like before, but instead, something in her answered in kind. Not while she has nothing left to lose.

"Nice to see you again, Sierra. It seems you’ve forgotten how hard you had your ugly little ass kicked back at the Academy, or by whom. Don’t tell me you need me to remind you with some little demonstrations, do you?" Heidi draws in her bottom lip while simultaneously cracking her fingers.

Sierra’s smile evaporates. "You’re in my house. You have no right to..."

"Right?" Heidi cuts in, standing upright and placing both hands on her hips. "You mean, like right to walk around other people’s lives and pull their reputations out by the roots? Or the right to defend myself against a shameless bitch who throws lies around like the truth’s filthier than she is? Which right are we talking about?"

There’s a pulse of silence at that.

Heidi’s wolf paces, wanting to bite the air. "Hit her," he says. "Hit her now."

Heidi breathes in, in a way that steadies more than it calms. Violence here in the Castells’ home would make a scene, then a headline, then a report that could be used against her in a hundred ways. No. She’s not stupid. She’s strategic. Words are sometimes sharper.

Sierra leans forward, and the world narrows to two girls in a vast hall. "You will regret coming back here to this pack by the end of breakfast. You’ll wish the Moon had never cursed you."

Heidi’s laugh is short and dry. "Like I said, you must have forgotten the beating. Want a re-run?"

Sierra’s face changes, like a mask that can’t quite hold the smile. She shoves Heidi harder this time around. "Don’t you dare. This is my house, my family. You’re nothing but a slutty parasite."

Heidi’s wolf is a drum in her ribs, loud enough that she can’t pretend it’s not there. She wants to step up and knock Sierra into her immaculate vanity, wants to split that smugness open and show the rot inside. But she keeps her voice in check. After all, the patient one, they say, is but a powerful one.

"You’re the parasite for living on other people’s cruelty and calling it empathy. You’d eat your own if it made your reflection prettier." Heidi huffs.

That changes the color of Sierra’s face, turning it crimson. She hisses, raises her hand and... "Watch your mouth!"

At that exact moment, Lucan steps out of his room. He sees the shove, sees the way Sierra’s hand is poised. His face is a soft, surprised thing, like he’s presently learning that people choose sides without him.

"What the...," Lucan curses quietly and catches Sierra’s wrist before she can swing, and then, without waiting for her to protest properly, he takes Heidi’s hand.

There’s always something about the way he does it... in the casual, possessive way of the pack, and it comes more like an offer that gets to Heidi.

Sierra looks thunderstruck. "Lucan, what are you doing? I’m your sister! You can’t be..."

"Not now, please." he cuts her off, and his voice is flat in the way people get when they stop being polite. He doesn’t let go of Heidi’s hand and steers her toward the dining room like he’s corralling a person out of danger.

Sierra trails them, sputtering the kind of insults that teenagers sharpen for being loud in public. "You’re taking her side? Are you serious? You’re my brother and you’re siding with a... a-" She flails for the final word but it feels thin and she knows it.