Claimed By The Banished Alpha

Chapter 7: Whispers.

Sylvia Fenris’ POV

By breakfast, the whole dining hall knew what happened the previous night.

I knew it the moment I walked in, the way the conversation dropped and eyes darted towards me and away again, fast and guilty. Like I was something shameful they didn't want to be caught looking at.

Suddenly, the long tables of students I had known for years felt like a gauntlet. Before, I could even sit down, Nina grabbed my arm.

"Is it true?" she hissed, pulling me down on the bench beside her, eyes bright with a mix of scandal and worry I hadn't seen in her before.

"You kissed Thoros Myr?"

“Where did you get that?” Nina asked.

My stomach dropped through the floor. I didn't tell anybody. I hadn't even admitted it to myself yet.

Everywhere, Sylvia. It’s all over. At least Edwina's face was pale with worry, not judgment, and that was the only thing that kept me upright.

“Rand's friends are telling him you cheated on him. That you have betrayed the Clan by touching a Bloodstone.”

"I didn't sleep with anyone. He was the first to turn me down, with Morgana's mouth around his …"

"Shh!" Nina clamped her hand over my mouth, eyes wide, looking around at us as though the walls themselves might echo it. "You want the whole hall to hear that part?".

Maria, ever silent, pushed a plate of untouched toast toward me without a word, the best she could do to comfort me.

I could not eat it. I had a very bad sore throat and could not swallow at all. I watched the butter melt into the bread and thought how strange it was that the world went on doing normal things, toast turning soft and tea growing cold, while mine had fallen apart at the seams overnight.

Rand sat at the head table across the hall, his father's crest pinned to his collar, Morgana leaning against him as if she had always belonged there.

He didn’t even glance at me. That was worse than if he had done it. I waited for him to look over, to give me some sign that last night had shaken him even a little bit, but he didn't.

I forced myself to eat a few bites, just to keep my friends from worrying any more than they already were. I made myself breathe normally to nod when Nina steered the conversation to something safer.

But, the whispers followed me out of the hall, down the corridor, into my first class, a hundred small cuts I couldn't stop, students I barely knew turning to murmur behind cupped hands, the moment I passed.

Thoros was absent from class. I told myself it didn’t matter. I looked at the empty chair he should have been sitting in for the entire class and heard his voice in my mind.

"You felt it too," until the professor had to say my name twice to get me to focus.

Nina kicked me under the table. "Are you okay?" she mouthed. I nodded when it was a lie, the same kind of lie I had been telling for months about Rand, only this one tasted different. This one had a name that half the school was whispering about with a mixture of fear and fascination.

It was in the midst of combat training, sparring drills in the yard under a sky gone thick and grey, that Headmaster Blackwood called an unscheduled assembly.

My stomach turned to ice as I watched Rand ascend the steps to the platform, Morgana half a step behind him, his father's personal guard flanking the edges of the courtyard in their formal black. Nothing was called for in such an assembly.

“Something is happening,” Maria whispered next to me, her voice usually so quiet, now nervous.

Rand raised a hand, and the whole courtyard fell silent, hundreds of students crammed shoulder to shoulder in the afternoon sun, the air thick with anticipation. Even the wind seemed to pause.

I felt every single eye in the courtyard turn to me at once. It was like they already knew, like they had been told to watch my face for what would come next. My hands were cold in the sun. I pressed them flat against my thighs to stop their shaking.

“I have an announcement.” Finally, he made eyes contact with me across the crowd. His eyes contained nothing warm. Nothing that recalled three months of quiet dinners and stolen glances, there was nothing like the boy who used to escort me to my dorm and tell me about the future.

“On my future as Luna-elect of the Crescent Moon Clan.”

My mouth dried out. Before I knew why, my hands clenched into fists by my sides.

“I officially reject Sylvia Fenris as my chosen mate,” he said to the whole academy, to the wind itself that would carry it to every pack in the territory.

"She isn't good enough to stand next to me." The crowd gasped.

I think Edwina put her hand on my arm, but I didn't feel it. All I could feel was the word “unworthy” hammering into me like a physical blow, over and over, in front of everyone I had ever known, every teacher, every classmate, and every rival clan representative who had come to visit for the season.

“I declare my intent," Rand continued, pulling Morgana along by the hand, victorious, chin up like a man announcing good news rather than a public execution.

"to court Morgana Balkin as the next Luna of Crescent Moon.”

The world went crazy. Somewhere in the crowd I thought I heard a growl that was not any wolf I knew. When I turned my head, dizzy, burning with shame, I saw Thoros standing at the edge of the courtyard, half in shadow, utterly still, his eyes fixed and burning.

He wasn't aiming at Rand. He was looking at me like he was going to do something, we had both regret, and some reckless part of me almost wanted him to.