Chapter 3
Emery
It’s nothing like the images online on Royals Anonymous, or the stories whispered in the blue-lit dorm rooms at finishing school.
Ravencroft Hall is larger, older, and infinitely more alive.
Each cobblestone on the welcoming path to the atrium pulses with history.
Every inch feels sacred to everything about the life of royals with an alpha or omega designation.
The silhouette of the hall rises above it all and is something from a fairytale.
One with sharp teeth.
Eloise is at my elbow, nudging me with her bony shoulder as her car idles at the curb. “Your hands are shaking,” she whispers, peeling my fingers from the edge of my coat.
I want to say it’s the cold but my skin burns.
Eloise checks her phone to make sure we’re not late and touches up her up-do. “It’s going to be okay, Emery. None of them can honestly look at you and not see a beautiful omega so very ready to join a pack.”
I give her a soft smile that I don’t really feel and exit her car. Eloise does the same, and then all too soon a valet drives off with my only real escape from today.
We’re not escaping. My nerves are high, but this is my dream. And I’m going to get the fairytale I’ve been training for.
We head up to the entry gates of Ravencroft Hall and enter into the atrium. A tide of voices, perfume, and heat overwhelms us, but I take it in stride. My smile grows wider.
This is it.
Eloise loops her arm with mine and we walk past other omegas and their families.
I try not to stare at the crowd, especially the royal omegas weaving within other finishing school graduates like me, but I can’t help it.
Socialites in silk, their hair twisted into perfect glossy loops.
Royal alphas in perfect rows, backs against the wall, watching the room like it’s a territory map.
Families eager to see their lines joined as new packs are made.
A royal tradition for countless generations.
I studied hard in finishing school to be able to recognize the royal omegas and alphas here today.
Between our coursework and the Royals Anonymous blog, I feel like I know everyone’s stories—both what’s public and what’s only rumored.
It feels a bit like walking past a fishbowl you’re about to jump into.
I have to wonder if the royal alphas look into eligible omegas as much as the finishing school preps us.
I wonder which version, if any, of myself is circulating the room ahead of my appearance. Probably “the commoner with the cotton-candy-colored hair and not a penny to her name.”
Eloise leans in and whispers in a sing-song voice, “Stop staring.”
“I can’t help it.” Especially not once my mind clings to every comparison where I fall short.
My dress is nowhere near as expensive as the ones the other omegas wear.
My make-up is an off brand. I had training at the finishing school, but these royal omegas were born into all of this.
They have the upper-hand in almost every way.
I swallow hard and pause my steps. Eloise won’t have any of it. Without saying anything, she leads me further into Ravencroft Hall toward where the actual Selection proceedings will be in short order.
The ballroom is lit by several crystal chandeliers strung along the ceiling like a constellation.
Waiters weave through with trays, and as I watch, an omega in shimmering gold throws back a flute of something pink and immediately flushes red.
Her alpha prince or lord escorts her to the corridor, one hand pressed to the small of her back.
The rest of the pack follows at a polite distance, ignoring the stares.
For a moment, I imagine myself in her place, and my knees buckle—stupid, but the thought alone is enough to tighten every inch of my skin.
Along with the more wholesome parts of having a pack, things I very much desire are also the decidedly not so wholesome parts. The heat-easing. The fantasies I’ve made of myself with a whole pack of alphas…
Someone brushes past us. His scent is sharp, winter mint and bourbon. I pull myself from the reverie and note he’s the head of Starling House. He’s tall, with a dark suit and blue eyes, and although he doesn’t make eye contact, the tilt of his jaw says he knows exactly where we are.
“Did you see that?” I hiss, elbowing Eloise. A scent match for me.
She’s half a glass in already, thanks to a passing waiter, and giggles at me. “See what? The walking jawline?”
“Do you think he’s here for the Selection?” I ask, but Eloise is already distracted, her gaze darting from face to face as if she’s scanning for threats. Or opportunities. Probably both.
A flash goes off to our left, and I almost jump. Reporters. They’re not allowed past the first atrium, but they stick their cameras through the open windows anyway, hungry for drama. I duck my head and pray I don’t look too much like a deer in headlights.
We’re corralled with other omegas in an area toward the front of the beautiful ballroom and stand together until Eloise is whisked away to where the other families of other omegas are.
And then it’s just me. Me and every other eligible omega in this room and only a few royal alpha packs with openings.
It’s me against them with the weight of every dollar Mom and Dad spent investing in this very future. The same parents I can see in the crowd now, waving Eloise over to where they stand.
At least they’re here to support me even if they don’t agree with me.
“Good luck,” Mom mouths.
I nod and then return my attention to the ballroom as a man in a plain silver suit steps up to a microphone stand and welcomes everyone to Selection Day.
No one warned me how slow the Selection moves. Three Council members at the dais, each one a study in pale stone and ceremonial silk, reading from their scrolls with grave, priestly diction. It’s supposed to be formal, reverent. To me, it feels like watching a python uncoil.
The room hushes for every name. For some, there’s applause—the prodigies, the legacy lines, the rare few who pair with high-demand packs.
For others, only the click of a pen as the Council member records the outcome.
The odd cry or muffled sob, but mostly silence.
It’s as if everyone’s holding their breath, waiting for the axe to fall or the sky to open.
My palms are sweating so badly I nearly drop my number card. Steady now, I tell myself like I’m some wild animal. I want to laugh, but my tongue is glued to the roof of my mouth.
A few feet away, a girl with gold-threaded hair and perfect posture steps up.
The Councilor intones: “Lydia Hale for Whitby Pack—do the parties accept?” She nods, her would-be pack nods, and the room actually breaks into clapping.
Lydia beams, winks at someone, and glides away as if she were born for it.
I try to mimic her posture. I feel like a scarecrow in a charity shop dress.
Name after name. Some get matched, some do not. Each time an omega is rejected, the tension spikes. I wonder if it’s possible for a room to burst from so much hope and failure crammed inside it.
Finally, it’s my turn.
The Councilor—tall, lantern-jawed, reading glasses perched on his nose—draws a breath and lets it out, as if this one is going to be a problem.
“Emery Grey for consideration by Everhart pack.” There’s a rustle in the crowd, like wind through dried leaves.
Heads turn. A few girls whisper behind their hands.
I’m supposed to walk to the dais. My legs are a suggestion, not a reality, but I manage to put one foot in front of the other. My pulse is a siren. The lights are a million daggers, the crowd a sea of judges.
I don’t dare look at Eloise. I don’t dare look at my parents.
I look at them.
Everhart Pack stands at the far end of the hall, each in a suit so severe it looks like it could cut. Ranier is front and center, Bastion just behind him, and Wyatt a half-step back and to the left. It’s like a police lineup, if police lineups were conducted by supermodels.
My scent is supposed to help, supposed to draw them in. Instead, I’m sure it’s betraying every scrap of terror running through my blood. I see Bastion wrinkle his nose, see Wyatt’s lips twitch in something like amusement.
But I already know one of them is a scent match for me. And I’m starting to realize the other two are as well.
“Everhart pack, do you accept the match?” The Councilor’s voice reverberates. There’s an extra lilt to it, as if he’s as curious as the rest of the room.
Ranier takes his time stepping forward. He’s taller than he looks in the press photos, and when he smiles it’s wide and…
cruel. Not friendly. “We reject,” he says, loud enough for the back row to hear.
He doesn’t bother to couch it in the polite phrases everyone else has used.
“We’re not interested in a charity case. ”
There’s a gasp followed by the scuffling sound of every omega in the room trying not to look too delighted. I stand frozen, the humiliation washing over me so hot I think it might burn right through my dress.
The Councilor blinks, thrown off-script. He recovers. “Noted,” he says. “Any further comment from the pack?”
Bastion steps forward, pushing Ranier aside with a hand to the shoulder. He’s more animated, eyes sparking with mischief or malice or both. “We’re traditionalists,” he says, and the words drip with sarcasm. “We thought the Selection was about excellence. Not… pity.”
I try to speak, but my mouth is dry as bone.
Wyatt’s gaze flickers over me—quick, calculating, almost bored. He says nothing. He doesn’t need to.
The Councilor looks like he wants to crawl into his own robe and die, but he reads the next name with a forced solemnity. Just like that, I am dismissed.
I have never been dismissed before. I don’t know what to do with my hands, my feet, my face. There’s a ripple of laughter somewhere behind me, quickly shushed, but it stings all the same.
I am supposed to step aside. I can barely move.
But something else is happening. Beneath the humiliation is a different burn—a recognition, sharp and awful, that the Everhart pack’s scents mesh with mine in a way I wasn’t prepared for.
Campfire and apples, pine sap and honey, even the storm-bright ocean of the youngest one.
It’s as if my body, traitor that it is, knows something my mind refuses to admit.
I stare right at Ranier, let the anger show in my eyes, and he stares right back. He looks almost… impressed? No, that can’t be right.
Bastion winks at me. The urge to claw his face is nearly overwhelming.
Wyatt—Wyatt won’t meet my gaze at all, as if the outcome was decided before the night even began.
I square my shoulders. My scent floods out, unbidden, a flash of cotton candy so strong it wipes the smile off Bastion’s face. Ranier’s nostrils flare. The entire front row shudders, and for a brief, giddy second, the balance of power shifts.
I turn on my heel and walk, not toward the back of the hall, but past the pack itself, making them see me, making them remember the girl they humiliated. My head is high. My heart is lava.
Eloise catches my hand as I pass. Her eyes are wide, wild, half in awe and half in terror. I squeeze back—too hard, maybe, but she doesn’t let go.
I hear my parents somewhere behind me, my mother’s sharp intake of breath, my father’s muttered oath. I don’t look back.
I keep walking, through the air that’s still vibrating with the aftershocks of my rejection, through the crowd that’s already starting to churn with gossip and re-calculation.
I keep walking because I am not afraid of them—not Ranier, not Bastion, not even Wyatt, who can’t look at me but who, I suspect, already knows how this story ends.
I am not the first omega to be rejected by the Everhart pack. But I will be the last.