Mira's POV
They didn't even let her finish breakfast.
The principal's office smelled like old coffee and bad news. The folder on the desk was thick pages of proof that Mira had cheated on exams she'd never seen before.
The evidence is clear, the principal said, not meeting her eyes. Expulsion is effective immediately.
Mira wanted to scream. She wanted to slam her fists on the desk and shout that Celeste had done this. That every single page in that folder was a lie.
But she looked at their faces. The way they'd already decided.
No one was going to believe her.
She'd known it since last night, standing alone in a parking lot with Damon's words still echoing.
Not human.
Right now, the cruelest thing wasn't werewolves or lies or stolen money.
It was how easy it had been to erase her.
The apartment was worse than she expected.
Someone had already been packing. Box after box of her mother's things lined the hallway books, kitchen things, clothes that still smelled like lavender. A landlord's note on the fridge said the lease was terminated. Paid off by someone. Celeste, probably.
Mira moved through the boxes slowly. Touching things. Her mother's favorite mug. A photo of them at the beach when Mira was six. Small pieces of a life no one else would ever care about.
She couldn't cry. Her body had used up every tear somewhere between last night and this hollow morning.
Then she opened the last box.
It was shoved in the back of the closet, behind everything else. Unlabeled. Inside, wrapped in an old sweater, was a metal box the size of a book.
Mira had never seen it before.
She turned it over. Dark, heavy, locked with a small silver slot in the front. Not a keyhole. A slot shaped like something specific.
She stared at it for a long time.
Then her eyes dropped to her neck.
Her mother's necklace. A thin silver chain with a crescent pendant that Mira had worn every single day since her mother gave it to her. Her mother had worn it before that every day of her life, too.
Mira unclasped it with shaking fingers.
The pendant fit perfectly.
It clicked. The box opened.
Inside was a leather journal. Old, worn soft at the edges, filled front to back with her mother's handwriting small, careful letters packed tight, like she'd been trying to fit everything before she ran out of room.
Mira opened to the first page.
If you're reading this, I'm gone. I'm sorry, baby. But you need to know the truth. All of it. Start here.
Her throat closed.
She kept reading.
The words didn't make sense at first. Werewolves.Packs.Alphas. They sounded like a fantasy novel something Mira would have laughed at yesterday.
But yesterday, Damon had told her they weren't human.
Sitting here with her mother's handwriting in front of her, it didn't sound crazy anymore.
It sounded like the truth.
Her mother wrote about a man named Marcus Ashford. An Alpha, the leader of something called the Ashford Pack. Powerful. Feared. And he had fallen in love with a human woman.
Her mother.
Your father didn't leave us, Mira. He died. He died fighting to keep us alive.
Mira's hands went cold.
Her whole life she had believed her father walked away. That she wasn't worth staying for. That something about her was broken, was not enough.
It had been a lie. The cruelest kind, the kind someone tells to protect you.
She read faster. The journal described a massacre. The Five Great Packs had destroyed the Ashfords completely. Her father had bought her mother and baby Mira enough time to escape. Barely.
They would have killed you too, if they knew you existed. So I hid us. I made you look human. I made sure no one would ever come looking.
Until now.
At the very back, tucked between the last page and the cover, was an envelope.
Inside was a single letter. Thick paper. Dark silver ink. At the top, two words:
SILVERCREST ACADEMY.
Mira's eyes dropped to the date.
Her breath stopped.
It was dated the day her mother died.
She read it twice. Three times. The date didn't change. Her mother had been gone less than twenty-four hours when this letter appeared, addressed to Mira, in an envelope that had clearly been waiting inside this box for exactly this moment.
The letter was short. A place hidden in the mountains. Something called the Lunar Trials. A world Mira had never known existed.
And at the bottom, one line:
Present this letter upon arrival to claim your place.
Mira lowered it to her lap.
And then the letter moved.
Not a breeze. Not her hands. The paper itself shifted, and then it burned.
Silver flames erupted across the page, eating through in seconds. Mira tried to drop it but couldn't, her fingers wouldn't open. The fire didn't hurt. It was warm. Almost gentle. Like a hand closing around hers.
The flames burned to nothing in three seconds.
But they left something behind.
Mira opened her palm.
Seared into her skin, glowing faintly silver, were words burned into her flesh like they'd been written there her whole life.
Lunar Trials begin in three days.
Come alone or don't come at all.
She stared at the mark.
The apartment was silent. The boxes sat where they were. The world outside kept moving like nothing had changed.
But everything had.
She looked at the journal. The empty envelope. The burn on her palm, still pulsing, faint and steady, like a heartbeat.
Her mother had known. Had planned this. Had spent her entire life building a door for Mira to walk through, and had hidden the key around her daughter's neck the whole time.
Pay attention, baby.
Mira closed her fingers around the mark.
Three days.
She had three days to walk into a world full of monsters.
Or stay here, in an empty apartment, with nothing left at all.
It wasn't really a choice.