The day couldn’t get any worse.
I had left Darius’s office with my heart pounding and my pride barely intact. Every word he’d said kept replaying in my head, twisting deeper like a thorn I couldn’t pull free.
By the time I reached the courtyard, the afternoon sun had slipped behind a veil of gray clouds, heavy with the promise of rain. I wanted to disappear into them.
But instead, I found Selene waiting.
She stood near the fountain, flanked by two of the visiting she-wolves both of whom I’d seen gossiping by the dining hall earlier that week. The moment her eyes met mine, her lips curved into that familiar, venomous smile.
“Well, if it isn’t the little stray,” she purred. “You look rather… disheveled. Rough morning?”
I walked past her without replying, hoping silence would sting her
