Lucy
The hall empties out around me. The laughter and sneers follow me like ghosts as I’m handed a simple key and a room assignment. No one meets my eye. I am a specter in their world, a walking, breathing failure they are forced to acknowledge.
My room is a stone box. A bed, a small desk, a wardrobe. Nothing more. It is cold and impersonal, a cell for the lowest ranked contender. I run my hand over the rough wool blanket on the bed. It feels like home. Our blankets are always rough.
I unpack my few belongings. A change of clothes. A small whetstone. The wooden bird Lyra carved for me. I set it on the small table beside the bed, its smooth, familiar shape a beacon in this hostile place.
The loneliness is a physical weight, pressing down on my chest, making it hard to breathe. Lyra’s words echo in my mind. *Be my strength.* I close my eyes and take a slow breath, trying to find it.
A loud gong sounds through the academy, signaling the evening meal. My stomach clenches. Facing them all again so soon feels like a punishment. But not eating would be a weakness, and I cannot afford to show any more than I already have.
The refectory is a cavernous space filled with long wooden tables. The noise of a hundred conversations hits me like a wave. Every pack sits together, a sea of Alphas and Betas laughing, boasting, strategizing.
There is no Clearwater pack table. There is only me.
I get my food, a simple stew and a hunk of bread, and find the emptiest corner of the room. I sit with my back to the wall, a habit learned long ago. Always know what is in front of you.
I eat slowly, mechanically, keeping my eyes on my bowl. I can feel the stares. I can hear the whispers. The words ‘dud’ and ‘wolfless’ drift on the air like poison smoke.
A tray clatters onto the table opposite me, splashing stew onto the wood.
“Oh, gods. Sorry. I am so sorry.”
I look up. A boy with a mop of sandy hair and wide, apologetic brown eyes is frantically wiping up the mess with his sleeve. He’s thin, with a nervous energy that makes him seem like he’s vibrating in place.
“It’s fine,” I say, my voice rusty from disuse.
He slumps onto the bench opposite me, running a hand through his hair. “First day and I’m already redecorating with dinner. My Alpha is going to kill me.” He lets out a short, nervous laugh. “I’m Leo. From the Sunstone pack.”
I just nod.
“You’re Lucy Clearwater,” he says, not as a question. “I saw you at the registration. That was… intense.”
I brace myself for the insult, for the pity.
“I mean,” he continues, leaning forward and lowering his voice, “how you just stood there. My own score was barely high enough to qualify me as a paperweight, and I thought I was going to pass out. You didn’t even blink.”
I stare at him, surprised. He isn’t mocking me. He looks genuinely impressed.
“I’m used to pain,” I say simply.
Leo winces. “Yeah, I guess. Small packs, right? We get used to a lot of things.” He gestures vaguely with his spoon. “Sunstone is on the southern ridge. We mostly just try to keep the mountain trolls from eating our goats.”
A small smile touches my lips before I can stop it. “We have bog lurkers.”
“Bog lurkers are the worst!” he says with an earnestness that’s almost comical. “They get in the water supply. My sister got sick for a week. Said everything tasted of mud and regret.”
I find myself chuckling. A real, actual chuckle. The sound is foreign in the echoing hall. “My father says they’re good for the soil.”
“Your father is a braver man than mine,” Leo grins. “So, a wolfless omega and a beta who’s scared of his own shadow. We’re quite the pair, aren’t we? The champions of the forgotten packs.”
His cheerfulness is infectious. It’s a strange feeling, this lightness. “I suppose so.”
“Look, I know everyone here is… well, they’re all…” He struggles for the word.
“Predators?” I supply.
“Exactly! Predators. All posturing and sniffing each other’s… well, you know. It’s nice to just talk to someone who isn’t trying to mentally establish dominance over you before the appetizers are done.”
For the first time since arriving, the crushing weight on my chest eases. I’m still an outcast. I’m still a dud. But I’m not entirely alone.
Our conversation is cut short by another gong. A stern looking woman in instructor’s robes stands on a raised platform at the front of the hall.
“Contenders!” her voice booms, silencing the room. “I trust you are enjoying your first meal. Do not get comfortable. Tomorrow at dawn, the first trial begins.”
A murmur of excitement and fear ripples through the crowd.
“This trial is designed to separate the strong from the weak. The clever from the foolish. It is called The Umbral Hunt.”
Her eyes sweep across our faces, cold and unforgiving.
“You will be taken to the Shadowwood, an enchanted forest on the academy grounds. Your task is simple. Survive. Within the forest, there are markers, arcane relics you must find. The more relics you collect by sunset, the higher your rank. But you are not the only hunters in that wood. The forest has guardians. And you will be hunting each other.”
The implications hang heavy in the air. This isn’t just a scavenger hunt. It’s a free for all.
“Relying on your senses may betray you,” the instructor continues, a grim smile on her face. “The magic of the Shadowwood is old and fickle. It plays tricks on the mind. It can make a friend look like a foe, a path look like a wall. It tangles the senses of a wolf until it cannot tell up from down.”
My heart gives a hard thump against my ribs.
“Be ready at dawn,” she concludes. “Dismissed.”
The hall erupts in noise. Alphas clap each other on the back, their voices loud with bravado. Leo just stares at his half eaten stew, his face pale.
“A forest that messes with your senses?” he whispers, his voice trembling slightly. “Great. Fantastic. I can barely find my way out of my dorm room.”
Before I can respond, a shadow falls over our table.
“Oh, look. The two zeroes found each other. How sweet.”
Marin stands there, flanked by two of her lackeys. Her silver eyes are fixed on me, glittering with malice.
“Talking strategy, Clearwater?” she asks, her voice dripping with sarcasm. “What’s your plan? Get lost so pathetically that the Game Masters take pity on you and send a rescue team?”
“Leave her alone, Marin,” Leo says, though his voice is small.
Marin doesn’t even look at him. She waves a dismissive hand. “The adults are talking, pup.” She leans down, placing her hands on our table, her face inches from mine. “I heard them talking about the hunt. Placing some friendly wagers.”
One of her friends giggles. “I put five gold marks on you not lasting an hour.”
“Too generous,” the other sneers. “I say she trips over a root and gets eaten by a grumpy badger in the first ten minutes.”
The rage is a familiar fire in my belly. I meet Marin’s gaze without flinching. “And what did you bet?”
Marin’s smile is slow and cruel. “I didn’t bet, darling. I guaranteed it. The Shadowwood is a dangerous place for a real wolf. For a little stray like you… it’s a graveyard. See you at the starting line. Try not to cry.”
She pushes off the table and saunters away, her followers trailing in her wake like hyenas.
Leo lets out a breath he was clearly holding. “Don’t listen to them, Lucy. They’re just…”
“They’re right,” I say, my voice flat. “To them, I’m easy prey.”
His face falls. “Don’t say that.”
But I’m no longer looking at him. My mind is racing, fitting pieces together. *It tangles the senses of a wolf.*
The very thing that has always been my weakness, my lack of a wolf, might be the one thing that saves me.
Back in my room, the stone walls don’t feel like a prison anymore. They are a fortress. Marin’s words echo in my head, but they’ve lost their sting. They are the snarls of a predator that doesn’t understand its prey.
They will all go into that forest relying on their inner wolves. Their superior hearing, their incredible sense of smell. They will trust instincts I do not possess.
But the instructor’s warning was clear. The forest is a liar. It will twist their greatest strengths into crippling weaknesses. It will feed their wolves false scents, phantom sounds, misleading trails.
I walk to the small window, looking out at the dark outline of the forest beyond the academy walls. I spent my whole life compensating. While other children were learning to listen with their wolves, I was learning to listen with my skin, feeling the vibrations in the ground. While they were tracking by scent, I was learning to read broken twigs, displaced stones, the flight patterns of startled birds.
I know how to be quiet. I know how to be invisible. I know how to listen to the world with human senses, senses that the forest’s magic cannot touch, cannot deceive.
Marin thinks I am a stray. She thinks I am a broken, helpless thing. They all do. They see a wolfless omega, a zero on a scoreboard.
They don’t see the girl who can track a deer for two days through dense fog. They don’t see the girl who knows which berries are poison and which mushrooms calm a fever. They don’t see the girl who learned the forest’s language because she could not speak the language of the wolf.
They have their power. Their rage. Their inner beasts.
I have my mind. I have my knowledge. I have the skills born from a lifetime of being less.
And in the Shadowwood, that might just make me more.
I pick up the small wooden bird Lyra gave me. Its weight is solid in my palm. It is a promise.
Let them place their bets. Let them laugh. Tomorrow, the hunt begins. And I will not be the one who is prey.
