Bloom

Revelation

Three Years Earlier — Azeo

The report lay open on my desk.

McKenna Rochester. Assessment score: 0.5. No significant abilities detected. No notable physical strength. No specialised gift.

I read it twice.

I had seen hundreds of disappointing assessments. Most young wolves possessed something worth developing, even if it was only determination or the sense to know when they were outmatched.

A score of 0.5 was different. It was the sort of number people remembered—and whispered about long after its owner had left the room.

“Another weakling?” Rex asked from the other side of my desk.

My Beta dropped a report onto the pile.

“Apparently,” I said.

“Then why are you still looking at hers?”

I had no answer I was willing to give him.

Three years earlier, a seer had come to me with a warning I had never forgotten. She had spoken as if the words were being dragged out of her from somewhere beyond her understanding.

She will be overlooked, discarded, a shadow among the strong. Yet within her, flame and storm will awaken. She will either unchain you—or unmake you.

I had asked for a name. She had given me none. I had asked what the warning meant, but she had looked at me as though she feared the answer as much as I wanted it.

Then she had left.

Since that day, I had searched reports, rumours and assessment results for something I could not properly define. I had found nothing that matched the warning closely enough to hold my attention.

Until McKenna Rochester.

Her score should have made her unremarkable. Instead, I kept returning to her file.

“Perhaps she simply has nothing to offer,” Rex said.

“Perhaps.”

“You don't sound convinced.”

“I haven't decided what I think.”

Rex glanced at the report. “She has a twin. McKayla. A healer with a strong assessment. The contrast is obvious.”

“I'm aware.”

“Then what do you want with McKenna?”

I closed the file. “To meet her.”

Rex raised his eyebrows.

“Arrange a private interview,” I said.

“And if she refuses?”

“Then I'll have my answer to that question.”

It was not the whole truth, but it was close enough.

I wanted to see the person behind the number. If she was truly ordinary, I would know. If she was hiding something, I might discover why. And if the prophecy meant nothing at all, I would finally have one less uncertainty to carry.

I had no idea how much trouble a single interview could cause.

---

McKenna — The Day of the Assessment

There were many ways to be humiliated. Receiving an assessment score of 0.5 was one of the more lasting ones.

The number followed me through the corridors, into conversations that stopped when I approached, and into sympathetic smiles people seemed to think were kinder than outright laughter.

I had tried to convince myself it didn't matter.

I was becoming very good at lying to myself.

McKayla found me outside the assessment hall, pretending to be deeply interested in a crack in the wall.

“You're doing it again,” she said.

“Doing what?”

“Looking at something as if you could intimidate it into disappearing.”

She slipped her arm through mine.

“You know your score isn't everything.”

“It's the first thing everyone sees.”

Her smile faded.

“Kenna…”

“Don't. If you tell me I'm special, I'll have to ask for evidence.”

“You're my sister. That's evidence enough for me.”

I looked at her. Sometimes a pain in one of us echoed in the other. Sometimes we understood each other without speaking. Our connection felt stronger than the bond people expected twins to share, but we had learned not to ask too many questions about it. The elders had a talent for turning questions into warnings and warnings into silence.

I squeezed her hand.

“I'm glad one of us has a good assessment to celebrate.”

“I'm not celebrating. People need you too.”

I had no answer to that. For a few seconds, things felt almost normal.

Then an official approached us.

“McKenna Rochester?”

“Yes?”

“Alpha Azeo of Black Mountain Pack has requested a private interview with you.”

I stared at him. “Alpha Azeo?”

“The visiting Alpha.”

Everyone knew who Azeo was. His pack had a reputation that made even confident wolves choose their words carefully. He was powerful, feared and accustomed to being obeyed. The fact that he had requested an interview with me made little sense.

“Is there a reason?” I asked.

“You will have to ask him.”

I glanced at McKayla. She looked as startled as I felt.

“Tell Alpha Azeo I appreciate the request,” I said. “But I must decline.”

The official's expression changed. “Decline?”

“Yes.”

“Do you understand who has requested this interview?”

“I do.”

“Then perhaps you should reconsider.”

I took a breath. I could already imagine the stories if I refused. Arrogant. Ungrateful. Too foolish to recognise an opportunity.

But I wasn't refusing because I thought myself too good for him.

I was refusing because I believed the opposite.

“Alpha Azeo has my assessment report,” I explained. “He knows my score. He knows I have no remarkable strength or recognised ability. I can't imagine what he hopes to learn from interviewing me that isn't already written there.”

The official said nothing, so I continued.

“I don't want to waste his time, or mine, pretending there's something extraordinary to discover. If he wants to speak to my sister, I understand why. She's a healer, and she's good at what she does. But I have nothing to offer him.”

The words hurt more when spoken aloud, but I kept my face composed.

“Please tell him I am grateful he considered me. I simply don't believe an interview will change the facts.”

The official gave me an uncertain look. “As you wish.”

He turned and left.

McKayla stared at me. “You just refused an Alpha.”

“An Alpha who could discover in person that I'm exactly as disappointing as the report says.”

“You don't know that.”

“No,” I admitted. “But he does have the report.”

Her hand tightened around mine.

“You really believe there's nothing else inside you?”

I hesitated.

There were things I had never told her, not because I had a secret worth keeping, but because I had no sensible way to explain them.

Every so often, my body felt unfamiliar. It wasn't pain, and it wasn't quite discomfort. It was more like a pressure deep beneath my skin, appearing without warning and disappearing before I could understand it. Sometimes it seemed to gather in my chest; other times, I felt a strange warmth in my hands or a brief, inexplicable heaviness in my bones.

It never lasted long enough for me to examine it properly.

I had wondered whether it was stress, exhaustion or simply another reminder that something about me didn't work the way it did for everyone else.

I had no evidence that it meant anything. No special strength. No recognised ability. No explanation. And certainly nothing I could present to an Alpha as proof that I was worth his time.

“Sometimes I feel… strange,” I admitted.

McKayla turned towards me. “Strange how?”

I searched for words and found none that sounded reasonable.

“Like I'm waiting for something to happen, but I don't know what. It passes.”

“Does it hurt?”

“Not really.”

“Why didn't you tell me?”

“Because I don't know what it is. And I refuse to give the elders another reason to look at me as if I'm a problem they need to solve.”

Concern replaced her surprise.

“Kenna, you don't have to figure everything out alone.”

“I know.”

But knowing something and believing it were two very different things.

I squeezed her hand before she could ask more questions.

“I should stop expecting people to find something I can't prove exists.”

The words sounded convincing.

I wished they felt that way.

---

Azeo

“She refused?” Rex reported when he returned.

“She did,” he continued. “She said you already had her assessment. She didn't want to waste your time or hers.”

I looked towards the door.

“Did she say she was too good for the interview?”

“No.”

“Did she demand anything in return?”

“No.”

“Did she attempt to manipulate the situation?”

“Not that I could tell.”

“Then why are you annoyed?”

“Most people would jump at the chance to speak with you. She declined without even asking what you wanted.”

I considered that.

It would have been easier if she had been arrogant, if she had tried to make herself seem important or refused simply to provoke me. Those behaviours were familiar. I knew how to deal with them.

But McKenna Rochester had looked at an invitation from an Alpha and seen another opportunity to prove herself inadequate.

“She meant it,” I said.

Rex's expression shifted. “Yes. I believe she did.”

I opened the report again.

The number had not changed. Neither had the findings. Nothing in the official assessment explained why the seer's words had returned to me with such force when I read her name.

Perhaps I was looking for meaning where there was none. Perhaps the prophecy was a warning about someone else. Or perhaps I was assuming that whatever mattered about McKenna Rochester would be recorded in an assessment hall.

“Should I insist?” Rex asked.

“No. She has the right to decline an interview. I won't make her refusal an offence.”

“And if you still want to meet her?”

“Then I can wait until she has a reason to speak to me.”

“You realise this could be nothing.”

“I do.”

“And you still intend to remember her?”

I looked once more at the name on the page.

“Yes.”

Not because she had refused me, because she owed me an explanation, or because a prophecy gave me the right to decide who she was before she had a chance to speak for herself.

I remembered her because she had looked at a door most people would have begged to enter and walked away believing she had no place behind it.

I wanted to know how she had learned to see herself that way.

And somewhere beneath that question was another, one I could not yet answer.

What if the report had measured everything it knew how to measure—and still missed something important?

I closed the file.

For now, McKenna Rochester would remain what the assessment said she was: an ordinary young wolf with an extraordinary lack of recognised ability.

But I would not mistake that conclusion for certainty again.

Not until I knew more.