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I nod instead of rolling my eyes at her thinly veiled attempt at not stating the obvious. She doesn’t think I’ll last past the Scenting Ceremony. Just a few minutes ago, I didn’t think I would either, but now, I’m determined to last at least a few days longer.
“Thank you, Headmistress.”
She waves toward the door. “We’ll be watching, Ms. Darling. Remember what I said.”
In other words, if I embarrass the school, she’s pulling my scholarship.Good to know.
Feeling like Atlas with the weight of the world on my shoulders, I leave her office and find Clara guarding my suitcase that I was told to leave outside. She gives me a simperingly sweet smile when I pick it up. “Good luck, Maddie. You’ll need it.”
Luckily, I don’t have to hold back my eye roll this time, so I don’t. “I’ll be seeing you, Clara. I’ll let you know what the palace is like inside.”
She scowls, her hand already lifting to give me the middle finger when Mr. Mitchell appears in the doorway to the headmistress’s outer office. She immediately drops her hand back to her side.
“Are you ready, Maddison?”
“It’s Maddie,” I repeat for the umpteenth time since I met him, but I doubt it’ll stick this time, either.
As we emerge from the administrative building, a different private car waits at the bottom of the stairs, but that’s not what catches my eye first.
I slam to a stop just outside the wide double doors as I stare at the scene playing out on the other side of the fenced-off perimeter. Hundreds of people are gathered there. They burst into cheers, hollers, and applause when they see me.
My breath leaves me in a rush. Spots dance across my vision again, but then Mr. Mitchell takes my arm in a gentle grip, grinning as he leans in to speak quietly in my ear. “Smile and wave, Maddison. Just smile and wave.”
And so I do.
I smile. I wave. And when a man with a massive video camera sticks the lens in my face and a microphone to my mouth, I even manage to say a few words about how wonderful the Academy is before Mr. Mitchell tells the interviewer that we need to leave. I’m stuffed into the backseat of the car, the cheers from the crown outside the academy gates—muffled from the interior of the car—turns to background noise as we pull away and I watch Clara waggle her fingers at me in the rearview mirror, a devious smirk twisting her pink-painted lips.
FIVE
—
W O L F
The palace buzzeswith preparations for the welcoming of the Selected and the Scenting Ceremony to take place later today. The constant drone of conversation and rushed bodies in the hall is reminiscent of a beehive. The noise just as annoying. What it foreshadows is just as violent as a bee’s sting.
I sniff, rubbing my itchy nose as I lift a glass of Tai’s famous hangover remedy smoothie to my lips. Tastes like absolute shit, but it lives up to the name.
Footsteps outside the door to the pack quarters wander close and my ears prick, but then they fade away again. Tai’s mum and my parents have flown in for the occasion, so they’re around here somewhere. I should go try to find them, but it’s all I can do to sit here and nurse this smoothie right now.
I catch the faintest whiff of Omega coming from the open window I’ve holed up next to and somehow manage to both cringe and salivate at the same time. I haven’t seen them in person yet—the Omegas—but roaming around elsewhere in this very building is the one we’ll be bonded to before this spectacle is over.
While we watched the announcements yesterday morning, I spotted a few candidates I wouldn’t mind warming my bed, but none I can picture spending the rest of my life with. Since the latter is inevitable, though, I plan on making the most of the opportunity I’ll have over the next month to indulge in the former.
Trying the milk before buying the cow and all that.
“Wolf,” a warm voice calls from the doorway of the lounge in our pack quarters. I wince slightly when my head throbs as I lift it up to see who’s there.
Yeah, drinking again last night was not a good idea.
Regardless of my slight hangover, I grin when Tai’s mum sweeps into the room with him hot on her heels. Yua Althorpe is one of the people I love most in this world, along with my own mother and my pack. And maybe my sisters, but heaven forbid they ever find out about that.
Immediately lifting my lazy ass off the couch I’ve been crouching on, I open my arms to throw them enthusiastically around her narrow shoulders. “Yua! You’re a sight for sore eyes. How have you been?”
“I’m good.” She chuckles when I take her hand and make her do a little twirl to show off the elegant, emerald-green dress she has on. “Aren’t you supposed to be saving your charms for the Omegas?”
God, I love that lilt of the Japanese accent.
Hearing it takes me back to my teenage years when we visited Tokyo with her as often as we could. We escaped the monotonous drone of palace life and hit the vibrant streets. I wished we could jet off there now, avoid this whole ridiculous spectacle.
