CHAPTER 63: _ AWAKENING CEREMONY (HEIDI’S STRIKE)

What if I hit too hard?

Heidi didn’t expect the thought. She thought she would be terrified of failing, of hitting too low, of Sierra’s laughter ringing through the hall. But now another fear coils in her chest. What if she hits too high? What if the pillar explodes upward the way it had for that boy? What if she shows too much and has to die for it in the labyrinth?

She pictures it; light blazing, gasps erupting, the headmaster’s delighted face. Attention. Clawing hands. Demands. The world is caving in on her. And then, worse than all that: The Bellamys. Everyone she’s been trying to avoid narrowing their eyes in suspicion.

Her stomach churns. But it was Morgan and Grayson who wanted her to hide because just like Lucan, they think survival should come before proving oneself.

But the other side of her whispers viciously, and what if Sierra’s right? What if you slam your hand down and nothing happens? What if you can’t even scrape the bottom rung?

That would be humiliation in front of everyone. Laughter. Mockery. Being marked as weak before she even takes her first step into uniting with her wolf.

A bead of sweat slides down her temple. She can’t breathe.

Behind her, someone mutters impatiently. A shuffle of feet. The seniors lean forward, eyes hungry, as though they can smell the fear rolling off her in waves. Sierra’s snicker floats sharp as glass through the charged silence.

Heidi’s fingers curl tighter against the pad.

Do I hide... or do I prove myself?

The question tears at her chest, ripping her in two. She can almost hear her wolf growling as it has begun to awaken with the slowest pace. She just knows it is and it’s not just because she’s read about how full it feels to have a wolf—your other half, but because she can hear it low and restless inside her. Not weak. Never weak. Her mid-awakened wolf pushes against her ribs, urging her to hit, to strike, to show them.

Her throat closes. She shakes her head almost imperceptibly. If she gives in to that urge, everything changes. She can’t afford that. She will be sent to the labyrinth where she might die.

The headmaster’s voice booms across the silence. "Well? Strike, child."

Her lungs seize. Time seems to stretch into strands, sticky and unbearable. She feels Junie’s eyes on her from somewhere in the crowd. She feels Sierra’s smirk burning into her back. She feels the Bellamy boys whom she has begun to feel more closely regardless of the distance between them.

Most of all, she feels the weight of destiny dangling by a thread and demanding a choice.

Her knuckles whiten as she grips her fist tighter. She draws in a sharp breath, her chest heaving.

Do it small. Controlled. Enough to pass, nothing more.

But her wolf snarls, unwilling to be caged. Her whole body trembles with the force of the conflict, like a bowstring pulled too tight. She doesn’t know what will happen when she lets go—whether the string will snap or the arrow will fly.

The silence grows unbearable.

Then, in one motion, Heidi pulls her fist back. The crowd inhales as one. Her pulse drums against her ears so hard she can barely hear herself think.

Now.

Her chest is a cage too small for her heart. Every beat pounds against her ribs like a drum, shaking her from the inside out. She licks her lips, dry despite the sweat slicking her temples, and swallows a lump that feels larger than her throat.

"I’ll hit it," she tells herself. Anyhow. I don’t care. Let it laugh, let them sneer. I’ll hit it.

She winds her arm back. The whole hall leans forward. It’s as though time itself leans with them, waiting for the inevitable. However, anxiety digs its claws in deep, twisting her muscles into knots and tangling her balance. The harder she grips onto control, the slipperier it becomes, until...

Her foot slips.

It happens in the most undignified way possible: a squeak of heels on polished stone, the kind of sound that echoes like a bad joke across the silent room. She jerks forward too fast, too awkwardly, momentum yanking her like a badly thrown puppet.

Her fist connects with the striker in a weak, crooked arc. It can’t even be called a push. It’s like a nudge.

And yet she had poured so much nervous energy, so much desperate force into the motion that when her hand bounces off the cold surface, the striker lets out a sound...

A creak.

It groans like an old door hinge in a pitiful, straining wheeze. The ball rattles halfheartedly, scraping up a few inches as though embarrassed on her behalf before it collapses back down with a dull thunk.

What...

At first, there’s utmost silence before laughter follows.

It starts with a snicker, and grows sharp, cruel, too eager. Then another and the flood breaks.

The hall roars with laughter.

It’s merciless like a wave that crashes and crashes again, battering against Heidi’s ears until she feels deaf with humiliation. Boys slap their thighs, girls clutch their sides, some nearly choking on their own hysteria.

"Did you see that?!" one of the seniors howls, shaking with uncontrollable laughter. "She almost tripped into

the striker!"

"She hit it like she was swatting a mosquito!" another cries.

"Even my grandmother hits harder than that!"

And then—oh, the dagger in the ribs is when someone shouts loud enough for everyone to hear:

"Maybe she doesn’t have a wolf at all. Maybe she’s just... an Omega after all!"

The words rip through the laughter, seeding it with sharper edges. Heidi feels them cut, every syllable digging into her skin like claws.

Her face burns hotter than the forge fires. Her fists clench, nails biting into her palms. She wants to disappear, sink into the ground, vanish into smoke. Anything but this... this humiliation.

Her mind claws at excuses. I slipped. The floor is slick. My shoe caught on something. But each thought crumbles to dust before it forms. Nobody will believe her. Not with the striker standing tall and smug, runes dim, ball still resting at the bottom as if mocking her weakness.

"Lowest of the lows. Told you she’d embarrass herself." Sierra bellows from her spot.

Junie covers her mouth with both hands, eyes wide with horror, sympathy painted across her face. But sympathy is worse. Sympathy is poison. Heidi doesn’t want it.

Her breath shudders in her throat. Her heart is hammering so loud she can’t hear herself think. The humiliation presses in from every side, suffocating, relentless. She knows by now, the Bellamy brothers will be grateful they treated her like trash and would rather die before being mated to her.

She doesn’t even dare to look back or take a peek at them.

The instructor clears his throat. "Young lady, step aside. Join the Omegas."

The words stab deeper than the laughter. They are final. Condemnation. Judgment. Heidi blames them all. She blames Sierra for inflicting the fear in her from day one. She blames Morgan and Grayson for making her doubt herself and letting their words haunt her until this moment.

She blames Darien for the pressure, Amias for the silence, and Daphne for the condemnation.

Her body moves on instinct, numb, dragging her feet toward the corner where the Omegas stand in a small, defeated lineup of hunched shoulders and averted eyes. Every step feels like walking through mud.

She has barely stood when a tremor begins to resound.

It begins softly, so faint that at first it seems like imagination. A hum beneath her feet, a low vibration through the floor. Heidi freezes. The Omegas glance at one another, puzzled.

Then the striker rattles. It’s a single shiver at first, a metallic clink as though something deep within its core has been disturbed. The laughter dies. People frown, look toward the pillar. The runes flare twice like lightning blinking awake after a long slumber.

And then it explodes.