They Forgot My Awakening, So I Took the Pack novel · Chapter 1 of 24
Chapter 1: Forty Minutes at the End of the Table
Odette's wolf comes out gold and the whole hall forgets Katja went into the trial room; her mother reads her sealed card, announces brown fur, and a stranger outside says he watched her wolf come out white.
On our eighteenth birthday, my twin sister's wolf came out gold, and our whole pack stood up to cheer.
Before that, we had each laid a palm on the great Stone in the middle of the hall, as every eighteen-year-old does.
It glowed gold under her hand.
Under mine it flickered white for a breath.
My mother caught my wrist and pulled it off.
"Mind your dress, Katja," she said. "That rock is filthy."
Then the old elder who reads the results led us into the trial room, one at a time, and the doors closed behind us.
An hour later I came out holding a sealed envelope with my name on it.
The Moon Elder had pressed it into my hand and said, "This goes to your father, Katja. Do not let anyone else open it first."
I walked out into a hall that had forgotten I existed.
The whole pack was packed around the long table at the front.
My twin, Odette, sat in the middle with a ribbon pinned to her dress that read ALPHA-GRADE.
"Silvermoon," my brother Garrick said, tapping the top of the registry list. "Obviously. I'm twenty-one and I'll be forty minutes away. I can watch you."
Emmett Sorley, who had lived next door to us since we were four, slid a different folder under her nose.
"Don't listen to him, Odette. Come to Ironfang with me. Two more years of us."
"Both packs are in the capital," my father said, and he laughed. He is the Alpha, and when he laughs the room laughs. "Somebody there can look after you. We can finally stop worrying."
My mother was crying happy tears into a napkin.
I stood at the end of the table with the envelope for forty minutes.
Nobody looked down the table.
At last Mom glanced up and found me, and her smile slipped for half a second before it came back.
"Katja, honey. I almost forgot you went in. How did it go?"
"The Elder gave me this," I said. "It's for Dad. It's sealed."
My father did not turn his head.
"Give it to your mother, kitten. We're picking an internship."
Mom held out her hand, and I gave her the envelope.
She tore it open right there and read the card inside.
Her face went very still.
She folded the card in half and put it in her purse, and when she looked at me again she was smiling.
"Brown," she said, loud enough for the table. "Plain brown fur, no rank. It's all right, baby. Not everybody can be like your sister."
The people near us made small sad sounds.
Garrick winced at me and patted my shoulder twice.
"Well, that's fine," Dad said. "You'll stay home and help your mother with the kitchens. Somebody has to."
"Unranked wolves don't get an internship," Emmett told me, and then he turned back to Odette.
I didn't cry.
I couldn't even tell which of them I was angry at, because every one of them had said something kind.
I walked down the hall to the registry window, because every wolf has to file her result the same night.
The clerk looked up the name Katja Hallam and turned her screen toward me.
Rank: none. Fur color: brown. Filed 11:02 p.m.
"Your mother brought this in herself," the clerk said. "Is something wrong?"
"The Elder gave me a card an hour ago," I said slowly. "My mother took it. She never showed me what it said."
The clerk's mouth tightened.
"I can only file what the Luna hands me, dear."
I stood there with my hands flat on the counter.
Behind me the whole hall laughed at something Odette said.
Nobody turned to see where I had gone.
The side door was open, so I went through it into the cold.
A man was leaning against the stone wall with his arms crossed, and he had plainly been there a while.
He was tall, maybe twenty-seven, dark hair pushed back, a black coat with a silver pin on the collar.
I knew the pin.
Every kid in the country knew it.
"Katja Hallam," he said. "I watched your trial through the gallery glass."
"You're not supposed to do that," I said.
"No," he agreed.
He held out a card, and I took it before I thought.
CORWIN STRAKE, ALPHA, BLACKTHORN PACK, HIGHMERE.
"Your wolf came out white, Katja," he said. "I have not seen white in my lifetime, and neither has the Council."
"My mother said brown."
"I know what your mother said."
His voice dropped, and I felt the hair stand up on my arms.
"I was in the hall when she opened your card. I watched her read it, and I watched her put it in her purse."
He glanced toward the lit doors, then back at me.
"Then I watched her smile at you and lie."
My hands were shaking, so I closed them around his card.
Inside, my family was still laughing.
"Blackthorn takes two interns a year," Corwin said. "Your rank earns you a seat at my table, whatever your parents write down."
"They'll say no," I said.
"Then don't ask them."
I looked at the lit doors, and at the card in my fist.
So I turned my back on my family's party and told him yes.
Want to keep talking to characters like these? Chat with AI romance characters: AI Boyfriend · AI Girlfriend · Dark Romance · Fantasy Romance · BL (Boys’ Love) · Billionaire Boyfriend · Mafia Boyfriend · Possessive Boyfriend · Hockey Boyfriend · Older Boyfriend · K-Drama Boyfriend · Anime Boyfriend · Vampire Boyfriend · Werewolf Boyfriend · Demon Boyfriend · Fae Romance · GL (Girls’ Love) · Anime Girlfriend · Goth & Alt Girlfriend · Gamer Girlfriend · Tsundere Girlfriend · Fantasy Girlfriend