The Sealed Luna: Claimed by Five Alphas

Chapter 2

Odessa's POV

"Say it again," I whispered, so softly it barely counted as sound. I pressed the locket into my palm until the edges bit, and waited, and hated how badly I wanted an answer. Nothing came. Not a word, not a hum, not so much as a breath against the back of my mind, only the road unspooling in the headlights.

Larkspur Falls was gone within the hour, treeline and porch lights swallowed by the dark behind us.

I rolled my sleeve up and angled my arm toward the window. There, faint and silver, a mark curled just under my skin, there and then not there, like it knew I was looking for it and didn't want to be caught. It only rose when the moonlight touched it.

"Did you see that?" I asked the driver.

"See what, miss?"

"Never mind." I pulled my sleeve back down, my heart going too fast to explain any of it out loud.

The locket warmed against my collarbone, a small steady heat that didn't match the cold outside. I wrapped my fingers around it and closed my eyes, and for one dizzy second I swore I heard humming, low and wordless, like a lullaby meant to keep a child quiet.

Sleep, something whispered. You're safe until sundown tomorrow.

"Safe from what?" I whispered back.

Nothing answered. Tomorrow's sundown settled into my chest like a countdown I hadn't agreed to.

"You said something," I tried again, leaning toward the front seat. "Just now. I heard you."

"I haven't said a word since we crossed the county line, miss." The driver's eyes flicked to the mirror, and for a second I thought I saw something careful in them, like a man choosing not to ask a question of his own. "Best try to rest. Long drive yet."

I didn't sleep. I thought about Mom's face when she'd seen that crest. I thought about the word found instead of had. I thought about how much of my own life I apparently didn't know the first thing about, and how strange it was that a stranger's silence could feel more honest than nineteen years of my mother's.

The driver hadn't spoken since we left Larkspur Falls, and I was grateful for that, because I had no idea what I would have told him anyway. Every question I could think to ask sounded ridiculous out loud. Did my mother lie to me my whole life. Is there a wolf sleeping under my skin. Why does a stolen piece of jewelry feel warmer than my own hands.

Somewhere past midnight, exhaustion started pulling at the edges of my thoughts, and I let my forehead rest against the cool glass, watching trees blur into a single dark ribbon.

Then the driver's hands tightened on the wheel.

"Miss. You'll want to sit back."

"Why?"

Headlights swept the road ahead. A black SUV sat parked sideways across both lanes, blocking us completely, and five silhouettes stood in front of it, unbothered by the cold, unbothered by anything at all.

The car jerked to a stop. My seatbelt caught me hard across the chest. For one panicked second all I could think was rogues, the kind of story parents told pups to keep them close to pack lands.

"Stay inside," the driver ordered, already reaching for the door handle, his voice gone flat and careful. "This isn't normal traffic."

He climbed out. I watched through the windshield as one of the shapes stepped forward into the headlights, tall, broad shouldered, moving like he owned the road he'd just blocked.

"This is Academy property," my driver called out. "You need to move your vehicle."

The tall one smiled, easy and confident, like he'd been told no a thousand times and never once believed it applied to him.

"We're not here for you," he replied. "We're here for her."

He pointed straight through the windshield.

At me.

My stomach dropped. Some reckless part of me, the same part that had walked across a crowded dining hall to take a letter nobody thought was mine, wanted to know what it was.

"I need you to identify yourselves," the driver called, tighter now. "This vehicle is under Academy transport protection."

"We know exactly what it's carrying," the tall one countered, unbothered. "That's the entire point."

I unbuckled my seatbelt.

I should have stayed in the car. I got out anyway.

Cold air hit me the second my feet touched the asphalt, sharp enough to sting, and five sets of eyes turned toward me at once.

"Odessa Winslow." The tall one closed the distance before I could decide whether to run. Up close, he was younger than I'd expected, maybe my age, with the kind of easy confidence that only came from never once being told no. "Rafferty Sterne."

"You blocked the road."

"We wanted to meet you before campus. Less of an audience." His gaze dropped to my wrist, and something in his expression sharpened, the way a hunting dog goes still when it catches a scent. "May l?"

He took my hand before I finished asking what he meant, and the second his fingers closed over my wrist, his eyes flashed gold.

"Mate," he breathed, like the word had been sitting in his chest for years waiting for permission to come out.

I yanked my hand back. "Excuse me?"

"You heard me."

"I heard a stranger say a word that means nothing to me."

Behind him, a boy with gray eyes and a jaw carved from stone went rigid, like something had punched the air out of him. He didn't move closer. He just stared at me.

Another, pale with wire-framed glasses, went completely still, watching me the way you'd watch a puzzle rearrange itself.

A third, green-eyed and smirking, stopped smiling entirely, his posture straightening like someone had pulled a string down his spine.

And the fifth, silver-eyed and black-haired, standing apart near the edge of the headlights, simply murmured, "They sealed her for a reason."

"Sealed?" I looked between all five of them, my pulse hammering. "Sealed what?"

Nobody answered.

"That's twice now somebody's used that word around me tonight," I pressed. "Sealed. Like I'm a jar. Somebody want to tell me what's actually inside it?"

"I don't know what's happening right now," I countered, taking a step back toward my own car, "but I am not anybody's mate. I don't even have a wolf. So whatever this is, you've got the wrong girl."

The gray-eyed one finally spoke, his voice low and rough. "We don't get it wrong. Not about this."

"That," the silver-eyed one added, stepping into the light for the first time, "is exactly the problem."

My driver cleared his throat behind me, ready to force his way through five Alpha heirs on stubbornness alone. I almost laughed.

"You're all Alpha heirs," I murmured slowly, putting the pieces together out loud. "Which means you've each got a pack, a territory, a whole future waiting for you somewhere. And you drove out here in the middle of the night to block a car over some feeling."

"It's not a feeling," the gray-eyed one, Lachlan, cut in. "It's a bond. There's a difference."

"I don't have a bond with anyone. I don't have a wolf."

"That's what we came to figure out," the green-eyed one offered, some of his earlier ease creeping back into his voice, though his eyes stayed sharp. "Because as far as any of us can tell, you shouldn't exist. Not like this."

The words landed harder than I expected. I'd spent nineteen years being told I was lacking something. Nobody had ever suggested I might be something else entirely.

"We're not letting you go anywhere until you're at least ready for what's waiting on campus," Rafferty offered, and for the first time all night he sounded less like a boy showing off and more like someone genuinely worried.

"I'm Idris," the pale one offered, adjusting his glasses. "That's Lachlan. Dashiell. Emeric." He nodded at each in turn, quick and precise.

"And I'm supposed to just trust five strangers who ambushed my car at midnight," I said.

"You're supposed to trust yourself," Dashiell offered, the green-eyed one, flashing the first real grin of the night. "We're just the inconvenient part you have to get through first."

"Wait." Emeric's voice stopped me with one foot already back in the car. He hadn't moved from the edge of the headlights the whole time. "Whatever they tell you at Halloran Crest tomorrow, whatever anyone tells you about what you are, you get to decide what you believe. Not them. Not us."

"Why would you say that?"

"Because I know what it's like to have your whole life decided before you're old enough to have an opinion about it."

Rafferty shot him a look somewhere between confusion and unease, but didn't argue.

"We'll see you on campus," Lachlan offered, the first full sentence he'd given me all night. "Try to get some sleep. Tomorrow's going to be a lot."

"You blocked a highway in the middle of the night," I reminded him. "Tonight was already a lot."

That earned the smallest flicker of something from him, not quite a smile.

I climbed back into the car, hands shaking, my wrist still burning where Rafferty had touched it, and watched through the rearview mirror as all five of them stood in the road until the trees swallowed them whole.