CHAPTER 77: _SIERRA CASTELL

Heidi is consumed with thoughts and worries when Junie bounces up.

Junie’s squeal is loud enough to rattle the rafters. "Heidi! Oh my gods! I screamed when you blew that machine apart! Like, actually screamed. Do you know how hard it is to get me to scream? But you—BOOM!" She mimes an explosion with her hands, eyes wide, and mouth open in awe.

Heidi pinches the bridge of her nose. "Junie, the machine was faulty. You heard them. It wasn’t me."

Junie waves her off. "Yeah, yeah, I know what they said. But still. The memory! You, standing there all calm and serious, and then... kablam! You looked like some goddess of destruction. Honestly? I’m still buzzing."

Oh, please. The last thing she wants to hear right now is talk about her failure with the striker. She still had no idea what the school had planned for her. She knew they weren’t just going to let her off easily when she had broken something so precious.

"Junie, enough." Heidi’s voice is sterner than she means it to be.

Dammit. She’s paranoid and is now taking it out on poor Junie who means no harm?

She softens and forces a beam. "Let’s just leave, okay? The auditorium’s almost empty."

Junie grins, unbothered, and loops her arm through Heidi’s as they head for the doors. "Fine, fine. But you can’t stop me from telling everyone you’re my friend. We deserve to be popular."

Heidi sighs. "Junie..."

Junie only hums. Then, slyly: "So. Are you going to the ball?"

Heidi stops short. "The ball? Junie, are you serious? Should the ball even be on our minds when we’re going into the labyrinth in a few hours? Where death literally awaits us?"

Junie shrugs, lips quirking. "Hey, a girl can multitask. Dance tonight, find our mates, and fight for our lives tomorrow."

Mates? Pfft. If only Junie knew...

Heidi groans. "You have problems."

"Correction: I have priorities."

They push open the heavy auditorium doors and step into the cooler corridor. Their footsteps echo. The air smells faintly of polish and dust, like the walls themselves are sweating after housing so many bodies. They follow the directions Ms. Vesper had given up earlier, heading toward the dorm building reserved for the first years.

But halfway down the hall, Heidi’s blood turns to ice.

Because she sees Sierra waiting and she doesn’t need a PSA to know she’s the one the evil princess awaits. Sierra and her three shadows are leaning casually against the wall like a perfectly arranged portrait. Their smiles widen when they see Heidi.

Oh, no. No. No. No.

Her heart lurches into her throat. The veins in her forehead throb. She knows that look. She remembers Sierra’s promise... how she was "owed a favor," and how she intended to collect it soon.

Junie doesn’t notice at first. She’s still chattering about ball gowns and whether silver or gold looks better under chandelier light and if her mate would buy her one. But Heidi feels the trap closing. The corridor is shrinking. The predators’ smiles are sharpening.

And suddenly, the labyrinth doesn’t feel like the only danger she’ll have to survive.

When Junie finally sees them, she starts to tremble, her knobby knees knocking together like two spoons rattling inside a pot. The way her wide eyes fix on Sierra and her squad screams prey caught in headlights. She doesn’t even wait for the confrontation to escalate.

Sierra Castell doesn’t even speak yet, but her cruel smile speaks volumes like a cat baring its claws for the fun of it. She tilts her head with mock sweetness, her silky hair sliding like liquid down her shoulder. "Do I even need to say it?" she asks, shooting the poor girl a death stare.

Junie knows what that means. She doesn’t need to be told twice. "Nope!" she squeaks, then bolts like a rabbit that’s just heard the crack of a hunter’s gun.

She nearly trips over her own feet in her haste, bag slamming against her back as she disappears down the hall, leaving Heidi stranded in the wolves’ den.

Perfect, Heidi thinks, her chest tightening. Of course, she abandons me. But can she blame the girl? Their last encounter with Sierra got Junie beaten up all because of her.

Now that it’s just her. Her versus Sierra Castell, who radiates danger like perfume, and the pack of mean-girl hyenas at her side Maribel, Ivy, and the other one whose name Heidi can barely remember because they all look like they came from the same copy-paste factory of lip gloss and judgmental smirks.

Sierra takes a slow step forward. Tap. Tap. Her high heels click like a countdown. Then she does something casual, too casual. She lifts a manicured hand and... tap. Tap. Tap. She pokes Heidi on the shoulder. It’s a motion so small but somehow humiliating. Like Heidi is nothing more than an object Sierra is checking for cracks.

"So," Sierra purrs, her smile widening in a way that promises nothing good. "What exactly did you do to make Amias defend you like that?"

Oh, please, not queries about the Alphas again. How can Sierra be so shameless that she doesn’t know how to speak of anything but them? The Bellamy boys who probably barely remember she exists.

Around them, the corridor feels smaller, like the air has thickened with invisible walls. Heidi exhales melancholically, her stomach dropping. It seems her life is doomed to go from one drama to another.

She’s about to blink back tears because she’s so tired. She has a lot to worry about. Too much, and this whole Sierra saga is so unnecessary. Yet, it kind of tops the list of her most demanding problems.

That’s when it happens. It is subtle, at first. Something furry stirs faintly inside her in a restless twitch, like a caged thing bumping against its walls. An itch blooms beneath her skin, and it’s not sharp or painful. It’s just... there. Distracting. It crawls up the inside of her arms like invisible ants, prickling, and demanding her notice.

Her pulse skips. Then quickens. She knows this feeling.

She felt it once before—back at the striker, when she nearly lost control, when her grip had tightened and her breath had gone shallow. It’s that same strange heat curling low in her chest, rising, trying to push through her ribs.

Her wolf.

Could it really be? Could she be stirring, awakening at last?