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I might like that, too.
Tearing my gaze away from her hostile expression, I make eye contact with the faculty onstage behind her.
Ms. Frampton winks at me.
I’m going to murder her. That’s how I’ll get out of this. Prison. It’s perfect.
She mimes taking a deep breath and gives me an encouraging smile that’s just warm enough to make me reconsider the murder plan as I manage to reach the base of the stage.
Once I’m beside Mr. Mitchell, he grins like he’s about to hand me a check for five million dollars, but he also seems confused when he notices no one else seems to be as excited for me as he is, Ms. Frampton excluded.
“Er, right. Congratulations again, Ms. Darling.”
He shakes my hand for the cameras, placing a gentle hand on the back of my shoulder to guide me to face the cameras for a clear shot.
I grimace into the lens, squinting through the brightness.
Mr. Mitchell lifts the microphone out of its cradle and dread coils in my gut like a poison slicked snake.
“How do you feel, Maddison, knowing you were selected above hundreds of others to undergo the trials to be bonded to the Royal Pack?”
My heart about gives out when he moves the microphone to my mouth.
Every drop of blood in my head races out.
I’m dizzy, probably about to sway, yet he still waits for an answer.
“I, uh.” A rogue wave of vertigo almost takes me, and I step out, widening my stance in a last ditch attempt to stay standing. “I-I’m honored, and shocked, to be honest.”
The coordinator grins again, laughing in a way that’s meant to put me at ease.
“That’s to be expected. Is there anything you’d like to say to your friends and family at home, to the school, or to your fellow selected Omegas?”
“I,uh, yes,uhm, thank you, and good luck.”
I stop short of quoting fiction about forces being with us or the odds being ever in our favor, but only just.
Mr. Mitchell seems to realize I won’t become any less awkward and blessedly removes the microphone. He hands it back to the Headmistress before rushing me offstage.
“Well, what a joyous day,” Headmistress Hartigan says and the tension in her voice is anything but ambiguous as Mr. Mitchell whispers something in my ear that I’m beyond hearing. I think it was something congratulatory though, so I mutter a thank you as he hauls me out of the auditorium through the back of the stage and the chaos begins.
All the while, I wonder if this nightmare of a morning has been nothing but a dream.
Maybe I’m still in bed next to Kevin.
Maybe when I wake up, it will all…disappear.
FOUR
—
M A D D I E
It did not disappear.
No matter how many times I pinched myself.
I’m in a state of detached disbelief by the time a representative from the Royal Trials Department drops me off at home. Mr. Mitchell had to get back to the RTD offices to do…coordinator-y things after subjecting me to an afternoon of paperwork and questioning. He was horrified when I mentioned I’d better go catch the city bus, so he sent me in one of their cars instead.
