CHAPTER 55: _ AWAKENING CEREMONY (THE ENTRY)

Heidi wants to disappear. She wants the floor to open up and swallow her before she has to walk another step under their scrutiny. But she also wants—desperately for this day to mean something.

She presses her hand lightly against her stomach, as though the wolf she hasn’t yet met might feel the gesture. Please, she thinks, please be strong. Please don’t let me be nothing.

She breathes in. Straightens her back. And keeps walking, even though every part of her feels exposed. The corridor feels too narrow for her lungs as she finally emerges from the corner of the walkway and proceeds to the hall.

She pauses before the heavy double doors of the hall, palms slippery with sweat. Her heart buzzes a feverish beat against her ribs, as though it wants to burst out and save itself before she does something spectacularly stupid—like walking inside. She can still hear faint murmurs from beyond the wood: a low rumble of voices, a ripple of excitement, the sharp scrape of chairs, and the occasional bark of laughter.

It’s alive in there, and the very air leaking out through the cracks smells like tension, like expectation, like too many bodies pressed together with too much energy and too little space. Her fingers curl around the brass handle. She doesn’t breathe as she pushes.

The moment the door groans open, she’s assaulted. Not physically, though honestly, that would be easier... but by an invisible wall of power. The auras roll at her in a hot and suffocating wave. Every one of them is distinct but all blend into something overwhelming: sharp like ozone, earthy like pine needles, musky, metallic, and humming with raw anticipation. Fear and thrill knot together in the air, making her throat dry and her stomach somersault.

She pauses on the threshold to take one final deep breath meant to steady herself before she pushes in.

Of course, because fate clearly hates her, the instant she steps in, her foot squeaks against the floorboards. And—oh brilliant. She has just barged into the middle of a speech.

The headmaster’s voice cuts off mid-sentence at her loud entry. It isn’t meant to be loud, but because she’s arrived later than everyone else, getting noticed is inevitable. Shit. She should have thought of that before hiding away like a thief just because she’s the best-dressed Moon Blessed today/

Silence drops into the room so violently she almost flinches. Every head – hundreds of them, swivels in perfect unison to the back... AND lands on her.

Heidi freezes. Her brain short-circuits. Her body decides that standing stock-still like a guilty raccoon in a trashcan spotlight is the best possible strategy. She can feel the heat rising up her neck, into her cheeks in the kind of flush that betrays her completely. Her stomach swoops to her knees. She swallows hard but her throat clicks audibly in the silence.

Oh gods. Oh, actual gods.

Rows upon rows of students fill the hall – her estimate has to be at least two hundred, ranging from the lower level ones who look like they still get lost finding the bathrooms, to the level fives who radiate dangerous self-assurance like their mere existence is an act of intimidation. The high table is crowded with teachers, all with stern and critical expressions. And at the center, the headmaster has his brows drawn low as though she personally offended him by breathing in his sacred air.

Her late entrance has not just interrupted his speech—it has completely derailed it. Whispers ignite instantly, crackling through the hall like sparks in dry grass.

"Who is she?"

"She can’t be new—look at her, she’s basically draped in everything expensive."

"But she doesn’t smell like one of us. I don’t sense an awakened wolf."

"Boy, she doesn’t look ordinary. Omegas are lower than ordinary, so she can’t be one."

"Ordinary doesn’t waltz into the Awakening Hall during the headmaster’s speech!"

"She can’t be a Moon-blessed. Impossible."

Every word slices at her and makes tiny cuts she can’t stop bleeding from. Her instinct screams: retreat, retreat, retreat. Back out the door, slam it shut, maybe fake fainting in the corridor until everyone forgets she exists. But her legs betray her as they stay rooted, shaking just enough to betray her nerves.

Her eyes dart desperately for some kind of anchor, something to hold onto before she dissolves into a puddle on the floor. And then she sees them. The Bellamys sat in the very front rows. Seated like they own the entire bloody pack. Which, to be fair, they literally do.

Darien is impossible to miss, his presence like a hot and magnetic bonfire. Beside him, Amias is sharper and colder as always, staring at her with those icy colored eyes of his. Morgan and Grayson look like they could snap her in two just by glaring—which, considering the intensity of the way they are currently glaring at her, feels dangerously plausible.

Their gaze pins her, a four-pronged spear of disapproval, curiosity, and something darker she dares not name. It burns straight through her ribs, setting her lungs on fire despite her current ’center of everyone in Duskwind Academy’ situation.

Her heart stumbles in its rhythm, skips, then races like it’s trying to sprint out of her chest. Against her better judgment, a thrill runs up her spine. They’re furious—she can see it in the set of their jaws, the tension in their shoulders, the way their eyes narrow just a bit too much.

If she doesn’t know better, she’d think they are jealous and furious to see her look so alluring when she’s not even theirs right now. And that thought... oh, that thought sparks something wicked in her.

But before she can fully bask in the dangerous satisfaction of it, Darien’s sisters snag her attention. Daphne’s disapproval is a living thing. Her head is shaking slowly in a performance so exaggerated it might as well be an opera as she tries to warn Heidi to stop looking their way.

"Everyone is looking." She mouths

The disdain radiating off her could power the entire academy. Heidi resists the urge to shrink like a scolded child. Isolde, on the other hand, looks like she’d rather be anywhere else. Her face is blank, her body is slouched, and she twists her mouth boredly at Heidi’s interruption before she scolds Daphne about something Heidi doesn’t hear.

She doesn’t know whether to be grateful for Isolde’s neutrality or insulted by the indifference. And then there’s the practical problem: every single seat is taken.

Of course. Of course, there would be no convenient little space for her to quietly disappear into. No shadowy corner or merciful vacancy halfway down the aisle. She’s stranded at the back, alone, awkward, and glowing with humiliation.

Well... that is until a chair scrapes against the floor and Lucan rises.