Chapter 6

Charlotte pov

By the second week, the whole academy had an opinion about me. Lucky. Cursed. A seductress who'd somehow charmed four Alpha heirs without lifting a finger. I heard all three theories in the same morning.

Nobody asked what I thought about any of it.

Classes were the worst part, sitting in rooms full of people who'd known each other since they were pups, all of them fluent in a world I'd only ever watched from the outside. Combat theory. Pack law. History that assumed everyone already knew the difference between a Beta line and a Gamma line, which I didn't, not really.

Professor Vance started teaching ancient mate bonds and forgotten Luna bloodlines in History, chalk squeaking against the board as he sketched family trees that stretched back centuries. Every class, I caught him watching me instead of the room, pausing a half second too long whenever the lesson touched on sealed wolves or hidden bloodlines.

"You've got a question," he observed on the third day, not looking up from the board.

"I didn't say anything."

"You didn't have to." He set the chalk down. "Stay after, if you want."

I didn't stay. I wasn't ready yet to hear whatever he had to say, not with Selene two rows back staring holes into the side of my head. I told myself I'd catch him another day, once I had a better idea of which questions I actually wanted answered.

Ronan caught me in the hallway after, arms crossed, gray eyes unreadable.

"Selene isn't finished with you," he warned. Not a question. A warning of his own, delivered flat, like he was reporting weather.

"Why do you care?"

He opened his mouth like he had an answer ready.

Then closed it again.

"I don't know," he admitted, and walked away before I could ask him to explain that.

I stood there a minute longer than I needed to, wondering how a boy who barely spoke to me could make silence feel like it meant something.

The rest of the week passed in the same rhythm. Classes, whispers, Selene's friends finding new ways to bump into me in crowded hallways. Kaiden tried to walk me to dinner twice, and both times I told him no, mostly because I didn't know what else to tell a boy who looked at me like I already belonged to him.

"You can't keep saying no forever," he told me the second time, hands in his pockets, that easy confidence flickering into something more careful.

"Watch me," I said, but I softened it with something almost like a smile, and he seemed to notice.

By Friday, I'd started eating lunch in an empty stairwell just to avoid the dining hall altogether. It wasn't much of a solution. But it was quiet, and quiet had become something I needed more than food most days.

I was halfway through a sandwich when Elias found me there, book tucked under one arm.

"You're hiding," he observed.

"I'm eating lunch."

"In a stairwell."

"It's quiet."

He sat down on the step below mine without asking permission, which I'd started to notice was just how he operated.

"For what it's worth," he offered, "the whispering will stop eventually. Something else will happen. It always does around here."

"That's supposed to help?"

"It's supposed to be true." He almost smiled. "I've found people appreciate truth more than comfort, in the long run."

"You said that already. In the dining hall."

"I meant it both times."

I didn't answer that. I just kept eating, and for the first time all week, the silence between us didn't feel like something I had to survive.