CHAPTER 99: _ MATES!

A girl with pink curlers in her hair waves daintily. "Don’t forget to scream loud enough so your parents can hear you from the grave!"

Someone up ahead stumbles in their step. Another girl actually whimpers. Heidi’s pulse races faster. She stares at the tiles under her feet, willing herself not to look as if she’s unraveling, too.

But the seniors aren’t done.

"Wrote your wills yet?" a broad-shouldered boy jeers, balancing his coffee cup on the balcony rail. "Oh, right... You’re all Moon Blessed. No one’s going to mourn you anyway."

An apple core sails through the air, landing with a wet smack at the feet of the boy in front of Heidi. He jumps, mutters a curse, then stumbles back into line. The laughter from above grows louder.

Junie mutters under her breath, "I swear, if I survive this, I’m coming back here and peeing in their shampoo bottles."

Heidi almost chuckles, but the sound lodges in her throat.

Valentina, on her other side, lifts her chin high, trying to look unbothered, but Heidi sees the rigid tension in her shoulders. "Pathetic," she hisses. "Mocking us like it’s a sport. Do they not realize half of us might not come back?"

"They realize," Junie says grimly. "That’s the point."

The taunts rain down harder. Some seniors start tossing small things like crumbled paper, coins, and empty plastic bottles. A few land on hair, on shoulders, at the feet. It doesn’t hurt, but the humiliation hits deep. Heidi feels it like a blade across her pride.

Around her, the fear of the Moon Blessed spreads like wildfire. Someone retches violently to the side, the sound wet and gagging. A tall boy clutches at the sleeve of his friend, muttering rapid prayers under his breath. A smaller girl keeps blinking rapidly, as though trying to hold back tears.

Heidi swallows thickly. She tries to tell herself she won’t cry. She won’t. But the back of her throat burns.

The seniors chant now, rhythmic and merciless: "Dead wolves walking. Dead wolves walking."

The words drum in her ears, matching the pounding of her heart.

Her wolf stirs again, not in comfort but in agitation, restless as though she senses what’s coming. Heidi wants to scream at her to either wake fully from her sleep or shut up.

The line moves forward, and suddenly the sound of the seniors’ laughter fades beneath a new noise: the crack of a microphone switching on.

"All Moon Blessed, proceed to the Convergence Grounds."

The taunts don’t stop, but they grow fainter as the group moves away from the dorms and toward the massive building looming at the edge of campus. The Convergence Grounds stands like a giant block of stone and glass, its reflective windows catching the dim light of morning. Beyond it lies the field where Heidi guesses the portal will open.

The crowd grows quieter as they near it. The laughter behind them fades, but the silence that replaces it is worse. Every shuffle of feet echoes like a gunshot. Every heartbeat feels loud enough to give them away.

Heidi risks a glance around. She sees pale faces, trembling hands, lips pressed into thin lines. She doesn’t need to hear their thoughts to know they’re all thinking the same thing: This could be my last walk.

Junie bumps her shoulder lightly, trying to shake her out of it. "Hey. If I die, delete my browser history, yeah?"

Heidi huffs out a laugh despite herself. "What’s in it?"

"Secrets the world isn’t ready for." Junie’s grin is wobbly, but it’s there.

Valentina groans. "You two are unbelievable. Do you have no sense of gravity?"

"We have too much of it," Junie retorts. "That’s why we’re trying not to sink."

For a moment, the banter helps. But as the massive gates of the Convergence Hall come into view, any illusion of comfort shatters. The gates are wrought iron, etched with claw-mark designs that glint like scars. They’re taller than any building Heidi has ever stood near, and beyond them, the faint outline of the labyrinth stands like a waiting monster.

The air changes again and the group halts before the gates.

The silence is unbearable now. Even the seniors’ voices from behind are gone, leaving only the sound of wind rustling faintly through the iron bars.

Then the gates creak and they all step in until it swallows them whole.

The clang as the iron shuts behind their backs reverberates through Heidi’s spine like the toll of a funeral bell. No one talks now, not even Junie, whose mouth usually runs like a faucet. The air inside the Convergence Hall is different from outside.

It smells of stone and burning herbs, as though centuries of rituals have seeped into the walls themselves.

They march into a wide expanse that looks almost like a modern stadium, but darker. The walls are elegantly polished stone, embedded with strips of blue light that glow like veins of energy. Tiered seating curves upward in a circle, with every row filled with teachers, staff, and headmaster Halric himself whose hands clasped behind him like the executioner awaiting the order.

Heidi’s throat goes dry. She expected cold stone, flickering torches, and maybe even silence. She didn’t expect all of them. Teachers, who are to lecture them in classrooms now here to witness them walk into near-death. She feels like a specimen, laid bare for study.

But her wolf doesn’t care. Her wolf doesn’t even see them. Because the next heartbeat, the air sweetens and starts to pull.

Her wolf lunges at her ribs so suddenly that Heidi almost staggers. The hair at the back of her neck prickles.

"Mates."

And then she sees The Bellamys.

They stand together at the edge of the Grounds, near the glowing circle where the portal will open like a family of sin carved into reality.

Four brothers, two sisters. The infamous dynasty. And though the NAY boys are nearby, Heidi’s focus locks like a target scope onto the Bellamy boys. She doesn’t even look at her brother, Lucan, yet...

Her pulse trips. Her stomach drops. Her lungs don’t work right.

"Mates!"