Chapter 42: Everyone Is Watching

Astrid

Ivy dragged me toward the ranking board the next morning before I’d even fully woken up.

"You’re looking," she said.

"I’m not."

"You’re literally standing in front of it."

I finally looked. My ranking had jumped significantly, not to the top, but well above where I’d started weeks ago. I stared at my name for a long moment, something warm and unfamiliar settling in my chest.

Then I noticed the students around us, several of them glancing my way, whispering. Not because I was the strange scholarship girl anymore.

Because I was someone worth watching now.

"Look at you," Ivy said, grinning.

"It’s only one assessment."

"Let me enjoy this."

Xander appeared behind us. "I told you."

I turned. "Told me what?"

"You were going to climb." He studied the board. "That’s a pretty impressive jump."

Reed arrived a moment later, his eyes tracking to my name. "Good."

"That’s all I get?" I asked.

"Would you prefer a speech?"

"Maybe."

The faintest smile crossed his face. "I’m proud of you."

My own smile faltered for a second, caught off guard.

"Wow," Xander said. "He actually said it."

Reed ignored him entirely.

"Thank you," I said quietly, meaning it more than the two words could carry.

As we moved through the academy, the stares kept following. Someone whispered about me being on the twins’ team. Another wondered aloud how someone without a wolf had climbed so fast.

"You wanted people to stop underestimating you," Ivy said.

"I didn’t ask them to start staring."

"You can’t have one without the other."

A high-ranking student approached not long after, confident rather than cruel. He congratulated me, then added, "One good assessment doesn’t make you a top student."

"I know," I said.

He smiled. "Good."

I smiled back. "But I’m planning to have more than one."

He walked off, and Xander looked thoroughly delighted. "I like her."

"You’ve said that already."

"I’ll keep saying it."

"He’s right," Reed added quietly.

"You two are becoming unbearable," I said, though I couldn’t fully hide my smile.

Later, waiting outside a classroom, Reed found me sitting alone and asked whether the attention was bothering me.

"A little," I admitted.

He sat beside me. "You’ll get used to it."

"I don’t want to."

He looked at me. "You don’t have to." He explained I didn’t need to grow comfortable with everyone’s opinions, only settle into what I actually thought about myself. "You don’t need their approval."

"Do you?" I asked.

A pause. "No."

"Then why do you care what they think?"

He looked at me for a long moment. "I don’t."

The implication sat there quietly between us, unmistakable. He cared what I thought.

I didn’t know what to do with that, so I let it settle without saying anything back.

At lunch, Xander handled the same worry in a completely different way, dropping something onto my tray without warning.

"What’s this?" I asked.

"Dessert."

"Why?"

"You look like you’re thinking too much."

I stared at him. "That’s your solution?"

"Yes."

"Food?"

"Food has solved approximately forty percent of my problems."

"That’s not remotely true," Reed said from nearby.

"The other sixty percent were sleep."

I laughed, and whatever tension had settled in me broke apart entirely.

"Seriously, though," Xander said, quieter now. "Don’t let them ruin this for you."

"Ruin what?"

He nodded toward the ranking board through the window. "You being proud of yourself."

I thought about that longer than I expected to. Before Moonshade, praise had always come with a price. Compliments meant someone wanted something from me. Here, Reed and Xander kept giving me things I hadn’t earned from them specifically, encouragement, food, protection, company, none of it tied to anything I owed them in return.

I didn’t fully know how to process that yet.

But I was starting to trust it.

The Headmaster’s voice cut through the dining hall not long after, announcing a new multi-stage academy challenge, teams accumulating points across several events, the winners receiving a major ranking boost. Students erupted immediately.

"We’re doing this," Xander said, looking at me.

"You don’t even know what it is."

"Doesn’t matter."

Reed studied the announcement carefully. "It’s going to be difficult."

"Good," I said.

"There she is," Xander said, grinning.

We left the hall together, Xander already spinning ridiculous strategies, Reed correcting nearly every one, and eventually I found myself contributing my own ideas into the mix, all three of us arguing loudly enough that a passing student gave us a strange look.

I realized, walking between them, that we weren’t simply three students preparing for an assessment anymore. We’d developed a rhythm. Reed listened when I spoke. Xander expected me to tease him. I expected Reed to correct Xander’s nonsense. Xander expected to annoy Reed just enough to earn a reaction.

And somehow, I fit into it seamlessly.

As we reached the stairs, Xander suddenly stopped, pointing toward the board. "Wait."

I turned. A new line had appeared beneath the competition details.

Team leaders will be selected based on current ranking.

I read it twice. Because Reed and Xander were both senior-ranked, they were expected to lead automatically. My own ranking had climbed enough that I’d been given a secondary leadership position.

I read the line a third time, half expecting the words to rearrange themselves into some other, more familiar sentence, one where my name sat quietly at the bottom where it had always been. It didn’t. The letters stayed exactly where they were, my name printed clean and undeniable beside a title I hadn’t asked anyone to give me.

Xander whistled low. "Looks like they trust you."

I stared at the announcement, disbelief slowly settling into something closer to pride.

"You earned it," Reed said.

I smiled. For once, the academy wasn’t handing me something out of pity for the scholarship case.

I’d actually earned this.

Xander leaned toward me. "You know what this means, right?"

I sighed. "What?"

He grinned. "You’re officially stuck with us."

I rolled my eyes, smiling anyway.

And somewhere deep inside, the thought didn’t frighten me the way it once would have.