Chapter 6: Girl Who Couldn’t Shift

The central hall was packed by the time Roxanne and Isla arrived, students crowded around the enchanted ranking board glowing at the far wall.

Isla practically vibrated with excitement. "Come on, let’s see where we landed."

Roxanne followed without much enthusiasm. She already knew what her results would say. Dormant wolf. Poor physical scores. Near the bottom.

They pushed through the crowd until Isla found her name first.

Then went quiet.

"What?" Roxanne asked.

Isla pointed, reluctant.

Roxanne Silver. Near the very bottom of the board.

Somewhere behind her, whispers started up again.

"That’s her. The one who was rejected."

"Can’t even shift."

Roxanne kept her face still and refused to give any of them the reaction they wanted.

Instead, she studied the breakdown beneath her name. Strength, poor. Speed, mediocre. Wolf synchronization, nonexistent.

Then her eyes caught on one line she hadn’t expected.

Tactical assessment: exceptional.

She blinked. She hadn’t even realized they’d been measuring that yesterday.

"See?" Isla said, brightening. "You’re not completely hopeless."

"Thanks," Roxanne said dryly. "Exactly the encouragement I needed."

A cluster of students nearby had clearly been listening. One of them laughed loud enough to be heard.

"Tactics don’t matter if you can’t actually fight," the girl said, tossing her hair. She’d ranked near the top. "Maybe Dorian knew exactly what he was doing when he let you go."

Roxanne’s jaw tightened, but she said nothing.

"Why’d you even bother coming here?" the girl pressed.

Roxanne finally turned to face her. "Because I was admitted."

The girl’s smile thinned. "Prove it, then. Beginner’s course. You and me."

Around them, students immediately perked up, sensing entertainment. Someone joked it would be over in seconds.

Roxanne walked over to study the course before answering. Moving barriers, hidden traps, narrow paths, shifting platforms, a marker at the end.

It wasn’t built for speed. It was built to punish anyone who ran without thinking.

"Fine," Roxanne said.

Just then, the crowd shifted, students stepping aside automatically. Four familiar figures entered the training area.

Liam spotted her first, grinning. Roshan’s attention moved to the course itself, studying it. Kai’s eyes settled on Roxanne and stayed there. Lucien said nothing, watching with unreadable calm.

The instructor gave the signal.

Roxanne’s opponent shifted partially and exploded forward, claws catching the first barrier and vaulting clean over it. Roxanne started slower, watching instead of running.

Students laughed at the gap already forming between them.

Roxanne ignored it, tracking the way the first trap had triggered, timing its reset. She took a different path around the second one, losing a few seconds but avoiding it completely.

Her opponent relied entirely on speed, muscling through obstacles instead of reading them. Roxanne started noticing a pattern, a rhythm to when each mechanism activated.

She ducked under one barrier right as it dropped. Stepped around another a half second before it triggered. Used a training dummy to set off a trap early, clearing her own path.

The crowd’s laughter faded into confused murmuring.

Then her opponent noticed the gap closing and panicked, pride taking over. She cut sharply across Roxanne’s path, shoulder-checking her hard enough to send her stumbling into the dirt.

The crowd gasped. The girl laughed.

Roxanne got back up, anger flaring hot beneath her ribs. But she didn’t charge. She watched her opponent’s stride instead, the direction she was already committing to for the final obstacle.

She knew exactly what was coming next.

Roxanne moved toward the obvious route, letting her opponent think she’d win the race to the final marker. At the last second, she cut sideways instead, using the girl’s own momentum against her.

The girl overshot completely, stumbling past the marker.

Roxanne crossed it first.

Silence swallowed the training ground.

"Roxanne Silver wins," the instructor called out.

For a second, she didn’t believe it. Then Isla’s scream of excitement broke the silence, and the crowd erupted into stunned whispers.

Later, checking the board again, Roxanne found her overall rank had climbed. Not dramatically. She wasn’t suddenly one of the academy’s strongest students.

But she wasn’t at the bottom anymore either.

The girl who’d mocked her earlier wouldn’t meet her eyes now.

Roxanne didn’t gloat. She just felt something settle quietly in her chest, something that belonged entirely to her. Not Dorian. Not a mate. Just her.

As she walked past the Moonstones on her way out, Liam fell into step beside her.

"Not bad," he said.

"I wasn’t competing for your approval."

He laughed, delighted.

Roshan tilted his head. "You noticed the course pattern before anyone else did."

"Were you watching?"

He didn’t answer directly, which was somehow an answer anyway.

Lucien spoke without looking at her. "You shouldn’t have won."

Roxanne raised an eyebrow. "Is that your version of congratulations?"

"No."

She rolled her eyes and kept walking.

She barely made it out of the training area before Dorian appeared, clearly having heard the news already.

"It’s just a beginner’s exercise," he said, like that explained why he’d bothered showing up.

"Then why come congratulate me?"

He didn’t have an answer for that either.

Arabella arrived a moment later, arms crossed. "You got lucky."

"Then you should be happy for me," Roxanne said. "I finally got lucky."

She left them standing there and didn’t look back.

Her afternoon class was sensory training, students learning to identify scents and subtle shifts in their surroundings. Roxanne expected to struggle here too, given her wolf had never given her anything to work with.

The instructor set several samples on the table, and students took turns naming them.

Roxanne got the first one wrong. Then the second.

That felt right. Expected.

Then the instructor presented something more complicated, and before he’d even finished setting it down, the answer arrived in her mind, immediate and certain.

"Wolfsbane mixed with cedar," she said.

The room went quiet.

The instructor looked at her carefully. "How did you know that?"

"I don’t know. I just... knew."

He tested her again with something else entirely. She named it just as fast.

Whispers broke out around the room. The instructor’s expression shifted from curiosity into something closer to unease.

"Did I do something wrong?" Roxanne asked.

He didn’t answer. Instead, he pulled her academy file from his desk and studied it in silence, flipping back to a page near the front.

Roxanne caught a glimpse of the header. Wolf status: dormant.

He looked at her. Then back at the file. Something wasn’t adding up, and it was written all over his face, though he said nothing to the class.

"Stay after," he told her simply.

"Why?"

He hesitated. "Because according to your file, you shouldn’t have been able to do that."

The classroom felt suddenly smaller.

Students filed out slowly, throwing glances back at her, whispering among themselves. Roxanne stayed seated, hands pressed against her knees, watching the instructor close the door once the last student had gone.

He set the file down on the desk in front of her and studied her face for a long moment before speaking.

"Roxanne Silver," he said quietly. "Who told you your wolf was dormant?"

Roxanne froze.

Nobody had ever asked her that before.