Chapter 4

Charlotte pov

Mooncrest rose out of the dark like something built to intimidate, black stone, spires, banners snapping in a wind that felt colder than the drive here.

The car dropped me at the edge of a courtyard lit gold by hanging lanterns, and the driver was gone before I could ask a single one of the hundred questions I'd been saving.

Students moved across the stones in crimson and silver uniforms, laughing, shoving each other, existing like people who'd never once had to wonder if they belonged somewhere. Every one of them turned to look at me the second I stepped out of the car, duffel bag on one shoulder, still wearing the clothes I'd left Silver Falls in.

"Wolfless," someone whispered, loud enough to carry across half the courtyard.

"That's her? The one all five of them stopped for?"

"No way. Look at her. She's nobody."

A girl in a perfectly pressed uniform bumped my shoulder hard enough to spin me half around. She didn't apologize. She just smiled and kept walking like I'd already stopped existing.

I stood there a moment longer than I needed to, duffel strap cutting into my shoulder, telling myself the whispering was just weather. Something to walk through, not something to answer.

A girl with a clipboard finally pointed me toward the administration building, where a bored looking woman handed me a room key, a folded uniform, and a campus map without once making eye contact.

"Crimson Hall," she announced flatly. "Room 412. Curfew's at ten. Don't be late for orientation tomorrow."

"Is there anything else I should know?" I asked. "About any of this?"

She looked up at me for the first time, something almost like pity crossing her face before it vanished again. "You'll figure it out. Everyone does, one way or another."

I found the hall, tall and draped in ivy, and let myself into a room barely big enough for the narrow bed and battered desk crammed inside it. I dropped my bag on the mattress, sat down hard enough to make the springs creak, and let myself have exactly thirty seconds of feeling completely out of my depth.

Then my stomach growled loud enough to embarrass me in an empty room, and I made my way to the dining hall.

The hall was enormous, all stone arches and long tables and candlelight. I'd barely made it three steps inside before a blonde girl detached herself from a cluster of friends and crossed toward me, arm already looping through Kaiden's before I'd registered he was there too.

"So you're the wolfless girl everyone's talking about." Her eyes went over me slow, head to shoes. "I'm Selene. Kaiden's cousin." She delivered it like a warning label. "Kaiden, don't waste your time. She won't last a week."

"She's standing right here," I said. "You can talk to me instead of about me."

Selene's smile didn't waver. "I am talking to you, sweetheart. I just didn't expect you to talk back."

Kaiden didn't answer her. He was watching me from across the table with an intensity that made the back of my neck heat up.

"I don't need anyone to protect me," I told him, sliding into an empty seat as far from Selene as the table allowed.

"I know." He almost smiled, and it did something unfair to his whole face. "I still might."

"Don't bother." I kept my voice level, loud enough for the closest tables to hear whether I liked it or not. "I'm not interested in being anybody's fated anything. Not tonight. Maybe not ever."

The whole hall went quiet, forks pausing halfway to mouths.

Selene's smile widened like I'd just handed her exactly the ammunition she'd been hoping for.

Across the room, near a raised dais, an older woman in dark green robes watched me over the rim of her glass, unmoved by the sudden silence.

"The Lost Luna has finally returned," she murmured, to no one, or maybe to everyone, her voice carrying just far enough for me to catch it and no farther.

I had no idea what that meant.

Selene followed my gaze toward the dais and gave a short, humorless laugh. "Headmistress Morwenna. She talks like that sometimes. Old riddles, old prophecies. Nobody pays attention to it anymore." She delivered it lightly, but her fingers tightened around Kaiden's arm, and she didn't look at the dais again for the rest of the meal.

I picked at my food, aware of every eye still flicking my way. Elias had appeared without my noticing, a book open beside his plate, though he wasn't reading it.

"You're not eating," he observed.

"I'm not exactly relaxed."

"Understandable." He closed the book. "Most of what happens here in the first few weeks won't make sense yet. I'd focus on getting through tonight before worrying about the rest of it."

"That's supposed to be comforting?"

"It's supposed to be honest." He almost smiled. "I find people appreciate honesty more than comfort, in the long run."

"Then be honest about something else," I said. "What did that woman mean? The Lost Luna."

"I don't know yet," he admitted. "But I intend to find out. So, I suspect, do you."

I finished the rest of my meal in a silence that felt, for the first time all night, almost bearable.