CHAPTER 65: _ AWAKENING CEREMONY (AFTER-SHOCK)

Amias doesn’t even realize he’s halfway out of his seat until Morgan’s hand clamps down on his arm, shaking his head. Her warning is clear: don’t you dare move. She’s not yours to save, but ours.

Amias wants to yank his hand off, but he doesn’t plan on revealing his interest in Heidi just yet, so he stays put, muscles thrumming with the restraint of a predator forced back into its cage. But inside... inside is chaos for him.

How could she—what was that? Why didn’t she?..

He can’t finish a single thought because none of them make sense.

The teachers call her to the omegas’ lineup. He feels his throat close around the word. Omega. They’re labeling her. Condemning her. His mate. He is just planning on training her to his taste and claim her after she’s proved herself, but now... now, his goal seems like a distant dream.

Fuck! Now, what does he do with this ache he feels for her? This longing—this burning desire?

Barely a wink after he’s deep in his thoughts, the machine rattles. It begins softly. So soft Amias almost doesn’t catch it. It’s a hum, faint as breath, weaving up from the floor. He doesn’t even think it’s real at first.

Must be just the nerves, maybe a trick of his imagination. That’s the excuse he can make up for the impossible playing out before him.

But then Heidi freezes, her small shoulders and the other Omegas look at each other with that wary confusion. The striker let out a single clink like the sound of a blade grazing stone. But Amias feels the hairs on his arms rise. Something inside the thing is waking.

The hall is still. The laughter falters. Heads swivel toward the pillar.

And then the runes flare, blaring a strobe of unnatural lightning that screams ’ancient power clawing its way back into the world’.

Amias straightens in his seat, his body is moving before his mind can catch up. What is this? What’s going on?

The air sharpens like the moment before a storm cracks open the sky. And then it happens.

The ball launches upward with a roar like cannon fire. A shockwave shudders through the hall as though the entire academy is exhaling at once. The ball tears through the runes, through stone and history alike, blazing hotter and brighter until it collides with the very top of the striker. Metal shrieks, stone groans. The thing convulses like a beast in its death throes.

And then, finally, the impossible... the ball doesn’t stop. It just keeps going. With a deafening crack, the top explodes. Shards of rune-carved stone that are once thought indestructible, rain down like celestial fire. Dust chokes the air. Light blinds the eyes. The hall becomes chaos and silence at once.

"What the hell?!" Daphne screams in that her high-pitched shrieks that are meant for when someone steps on her new designer socks.

Grayson stands on his feet without a second thought. "My mom was right."

Even Isolde gasps. "You don’t say..."

When the dust finally drifts enough to see, Amias can hardly believe it. The striker is destroyed. The ball is lodged high in the far wall, smoking like it had been fired from the heavens.

And Heidi... his Heidi, is still standing there. Wide-eyed and frozen. Her fist slackens at her side as though her body refuses to admit what it has just wrought. She looks both fragile and unstoppable, like the gods touched her and left their mark.

The hall is silent.

Silent the way cathedrals are silent. Silent the way graves are. Silent the way men are when they realize they’ve seen something holy... or something monstrous.

But she tripped, Amias ponders. He saw it. She barely even hit anything. How on earth did that shaky impact she made on the striker create such an explosive effect? What if she had used the required amount of energy?

Someone coughs.

A whisper cuts through: "Impossible."

Another, trembling voice gasps: "The striker has never... never..."

Amias barely hears them. All he hears is the thunder of his own heartbeat. All he sees is her.

Her green dress dusted in stone powder, her eyes too wide, her lips shaking as if she’s holding back either a scream or a sob. She looks like she doesn’t even know who she is anymore.

And fuck—she’s beautiful. So beautiful it hurts. Beautiful in the way of disasters and miracles, in the way of fires that consume forests just to make something new.

The hall is trembling, and it’s not just from the dust settling. It’s from voices—hundreds of them, rising and colliding in a storm of awe, fear, and disbelief. What was silence a breath ago is now a frenzy, the kind that makes the walls themselves feel too narrow for the noise inside them.

Everywhere Heidi looks, mouths gape open. Eyes are wide and shining, as though every last one of them has glimpsed the face of something divine—or monstrous.

"Dio mio," someone breathes from the front row, and then the ripple begins.

"She is... godly powerful."

"...no, she couldn’t have—"

"It’s impossible, I saw it, she barely touched the striker!"

"...the Goddess, she must be..."

Morgan Bellamy is the first to climb above the noise. He pushes off the edge of the bench like it’s a stage and throws out his arm with a theatrical flourish that only he could make look natural. His voice thunders across the chaos like a trumpet.

"I told you!" he crows, delight flashing across his sharp features. "I told you she was an impossibility. Nobody listens to me—nobody ever listens... but here we are! Look! Behold! Heidi-the-Nobody just cracked the uncrackable."

Amias is too stunned to even think, but Morgan’s declaration still earns a sidelong glance. Since when had Morgan prophesied Heidi as special? Since never. The bastard was shameless.

He drags a hand down his face, wondering how the hell shameless idiots like the twins shared his Alpha blood.

One thing he’d like to do now is stuff Morgan’s lying mouth with the shattered remains of that stupid striker machine.

Meanwhile, gaps rise and chase themselves like dominoes all around. Heidi’s cheeks are flaming red. Grayson also doesn’t let the moment die. He leans forward, elbows on his knees, and his green eyes burn with a mischievous kind of reverence.

"What if..." he begins slowly, drawing the crowd into his orbit, "what if she isn’t a Moon Blessed at all? What if..." He lets the pause stretch, lets the whispers tangle themselves tight. "...What if she’s the Moon Goddess herself? Disguised? Walking among us?"