Mira's POV
The gates didn't open for her.
They were already open wide, black, and waiting and Mira walked through them like walking into the mouth of something that had been holding its breath for a very long time.
Silvercrest Academy rose above her. Towers of dark stone and silver edges, pressing against the sky like it owned it. It was beautiful. It was also suffocating the kind of beautiful that made you feel small on purpose.
Mira didn't let herself feel small. Not anymore.
Around her, the other survivors from the Trials filed in, quiet and exhausted. Thirty people who'd made it through the night. They moved through the courtyard like ghosts bleeding, dirty, some of them barely standing. But the students already inside the academy walls were different.
Clean. Rested. Watching.
Hundreds of them. Filling the stone courtyard, leaning against walls, sitting on steps. All of them beautiful in the way wolves were beautiful sharp and alive and dangerous, even when they were standing still.
And every single one of them was looking at Mira.
Not casually. Not the way you glance at someone passing by. They were tracking her. Like animals who'd just caught a new scent one that didn't belong.
Because it didn't.
Mira couldn't smell what they smelled. She didn't know what a wolf scent was supposed to feel like. But she could feel the absence of it on herself like a missing tooth a gap where something should be, and everyone in the room could see it.
She was the only blank space in a room full of signals.
She kept walking. Eyes forward. Face neutral. The way you move when being watched by a hundred predators and showing fear means being chosen.
Then she saw them.
It happened fast a flicker of recognition, a snap of focus, like her eyes had found them before her brain had finished looking. Across the courtyard. Standing near the front of the crowd, close together, dressed in uniforms that matched the color of the banners overhead.
Damon. Celeste.
Together. Polished. Untouchable. Looking exactly like what they'd always pretended to be the kind of people the world was built for.
Mira's chest tightened. For one second just one the girl from the funeral parking lot was back. The girl who'd watched them kiss through a car window and felt the ground crack open underneath her.
Then the second was over.
She breathed. Let the feeling pass through her like cold water. And kept walking.
Celeste saw her first.
It was impossible to miss the way Celeste's face changed. Not a flicker. A crack. Her perfect expression splintered, and underneath it was something raw and real and scared. Her lips parted. Her eyes went wide.
Mira? The name came out sharp. Surprised. Almost panicked. What you can't be here. You're not
Damon's hand closed around Celeste's arm. Gentle. Firm. A signal that said stop talking. He turned to face Mira, and the mask was already back in place smooth, easy, completely in control.
He smiled. The same smile from the parking lot.
Well, he said, loud enough for the students nearby to hear. If it isn't the human from my old school. He tilted his head, playing it up, playing it for them. Someone let you in as entertainment?
A few students laughed. Not all of them but enough. The sound rippled through the courtyard like a stone dropped in water.
Mira felt it land. Felt the familiar sting of it the public joke, the crowd turning, the look on Damon's face that said you're nothing and everyone agrees.
She'd felt this before. In the principal's office. In the hallways of Everwood Prep. In the parking lot where her life ended.
Same weapon. Different room.
But Mira wasn't the same girl holding it anymore.
She stopped walking. Straightened her back. And smiled.
Not a forced smile. Not a nervous one. A real, slow, deliberate smile the kind that said I see you. I know exactly what you are. And you have no idea what I am.
Surprise, she said. Her voice was calm. Bright. Sweet in the way a blade is sweet when it catches the light. Did you miss me, sister?
The word landed exactly where she aimed it. Sister. Spoken in front of a hundred wolves who didn't know the history. Who didn't know the lies. Who would now wonder.
Celeste's face went white.
Damon's smile didn't drop but something behind his eyes flickered. The same crack she'd seen in the parking lot. The one that said he was less calm than he looked. His fingers tightened on Celeste's arm.
Before either of them could respond, the air changed.
A sound rolled through the courtyard not loud, exactly, but deep. The kind of sound you feel in your bones before you hear it with your ears. It silenced everything. The laughter. The murmuring. Even the wind seemed to pull back.
Every head turned.
At the far end of the courtyard, on a raised stone platform, stood no. Not stood.
Sat.
A wolf.
Massive. Ancient. White as bone, with fur that seemed to glow faintly in the grey morning light. Its eyes were gold deep, old gold, the kind of color that had seen centuries pass and kept watching. It was the biggest wolf Mira had ever seen, and it radiated something she could feel even from across the courtyard.
Power. Old power. The kind that didn't have to prove itself.
A voice boomed not from the wolf, but from somewhere beside it. A man in formal robes, reading from a scroll.
The Sorting Ceremony will now begin. All Trial survivors will present themselves for ranking.
The thirty survivors moved forward. One by one. Mira joined the line, her heart beating faster than she wanted it to.
Up close, the wolf was even more imposing. It sat perfectly still, watching each candidate approach with those ancient gold eyes. And as each one stepped forward, it did the same thing.
It leaned in. Inhaled. A single, slow breath through its nose.
Then it pulled back. Nodded or something like a nod. And the man beside it called out a house name.
Apex.
Claw.
Apex.
Fang.
One by one. Scent by scent. Sorted.
Mira watched the pattern. The wolf wasn't reading anything. Wasn't looking at a list. It was smelling them reading something in their scent that told it exactly what they were, exactly where they ranked. Like a lock reading a key.
The line shortened. Candidates moved through. House names rang out across the courtyard.
Then Mira was at the front.
She stepped forward. Stopped. The ancient wolf's gold eyes settled on her heavy, old, completely unhurried.
It leaned in.
Mira held still. The mark on her palm burned faint, sudden, like a warning flare.
The wolf inhaled.
And stopped.
It didn't pull back. Didn't nod. Didn't move at all. It just froze. Its massive body went rigid, and something shifted in its golden eyes. Something Mira had seen before, in a forest, on the face of the most powerful alpha heir in the academy.
Fear.
The wolf's eyes locked on hers. And in the silence the absolute, crushing silence of a hundred wolves holding their breath it spoke.
Not out loud. Not in words anyone else could have heard.
But Mira heard it. Clear as a bell. Quiet as a knife.
Ashford blood, it whispered. Impossible.
The courtyard didn't move.
And somewhere in the crowd, Mira heard the sharp intake of breath that meant someone had heard it too.