They made a sport of looking at me the way a predator studies prey it has not yet decided whether to kill or keep. The courtyard had been a battlefield of stares from the moment I stepped past the great oak doors; the dining hall was worse. It was a place of voices—warm, daily comforts—and now every chair, every plate, every corner held eyes that fed on my shame.
Selene squeezed my hand once before pulling me into the hall, and that small pressure steadied me more than I wanted to admit. She walked like she owned the room, as a Beta has a right to do, but even her presence couldn’t drown out the murmur that followed in our wake. Conversation folded into silence wherever we went; the clatter of cutlery fell away like falling rain. It felt obscene to be moving through such normality when my
