They Forgot My Rank, So the Lycan King Claimed Me novel · Chapter 6 of 24

Chapter 6: Rank Day

By noon, everyone at the Academy knew my name, and none of them thought I deserved it.

I found out in the dining hall, where a girl at the next table said it loudly enough for me to hear.

"She didn't even get a White Wolf. The King came down to the gate for that?"

"It must be a clerical error," her friend said.

My roommate set her tray down across from me.

She was a thin second-year with ink on her fingers, and she had been kind to me for exactly one hour.

"Ignore them," she said. "They're mad because nobody gets Rank Day wrong. You'll be put in the ring at four, and the instructors will see what you are."

"What if I'm not what they think?"

"Then at least you'll know," she said, and stole a grape off my plate.

At four o'clock every early-arriving first-year stood around a sand ring in the sun.

Two hundred cadets, a row of instructors in grey, and a balcony above us with one empty chair.

The instructor with the clipboard read out names.

Most cadets shifted, wrestled for a minute, and got a number.

I stood at the edge with my arms folded and my stomach tight.

"Carrow," the instructor said. "Nessa. Against the third-year with the ribbon."

A tall boy with an Academy ribbon on his sleeve stepped into the ring.

He was a third-year and a White Wolf, and the girls near me made small admiring sounds.

He grinned at me and cracked his neck.

"Don't cry when I put you down," he said. "I'll go easy, since you're the King's little pet."

A few cadets laughed.

I stepped into the sand.

I thought about the kitchen table.

I thought about a car with no seat in it and a gold bracelet and a card nobody read.

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