Chapter seventeen
Jessica
The invitation says formal attire, and the six of us stare at it like it's written in a foreign language, because in a very real sense it is.
"I own hiking boots and this uniform," Renzo says flatly. "That's my formalwear. The boots are the fancy ones."
"I have one nice dress," I offer, "and it's in England, in a drawer, possibly. I haven't seen it in two years."
That's the problem, and it's the same problem for all of us.
Half this academy grew up in Great Houses that have owned exactly-correct formalwear for a thousand years.
We grew up serving coffee and volunteering for mountain rescue.
We are going to walk into our first formal Great House Dinner looking like exactly what we are, and everyone will know it before we've said a word.
Except when we get to the room Jon told us to meet in, it's not a classroom.
It's a fitting room. And it is full.
Racks of clothing line every wall — gowns and suits in deep jewel tones, shoes, boxes of accessories, a jeweler's case glinting under the lights, a professional stylist already steaming something on a rack.
Sophia makes a sound I have genuinely never heard a human make before and grabs my arm hard enough to leave a mark.
Jon's standing off to the side, hands in his pockets, looking faintly pleased with himself.
"You did this?" I ask.
"You're learning an entire civilization in a single year," he says simply.
"You'll be judged tonight on a hundred rules no one has bothered to teach you.
I'm not going to let the clothes be one more disadvantage before you've even walked through the door.
" He nods to the stylist. "She's the best. Whatever you choose is yours to keep.
Have fun with it." And he leaves us to it, which is its own kind of kindness — no hovering, no making it a lesson.
Sophia is already gone, vanished into the racks with the focus of a woman on a sacred mission. "I am trying on things I have absolutely no business wearing," she announces from somewhere inside the gowns, "purely because I can."
And I let myself have it. That's the thing — I decide, right there, that I'm not going to be shy about tonight. I've spent this entire year in leggings, uniforms, and combat gear that smells like the arena. For once, I'm going to enjoy this.
I find the dress near the back.
It's a color I don't have a name for at first — burnt orange, deep and warm, the exact shade of the last hour of an autumn sunset, the color of banked embers.
It's not fussy. It's not trying to make me look like Great House royalty pretending at elegance I don't have.
It's just striking — clean lines, a long v-neckline, a skirt that moves — and the second I hold it up against myself in the mirror, something in my chest goes yes.
The stylist pauses when she sees it in my hands.
"Oh," she says, surprised. "That one. I almost didn't bring it — nobody's requested that shade in…
honestly, I can't remember. It's an old color.
Very old. You don't see it anymore." She tilts her head, studying me.
"But with your coloring — the amber in your eyes, the chestnut — it might be made for you. "
It is. When I put it on and finally look in the mirror, I actually stop.
Whoa.
Because the woman looking back at me is — okay.
She looks amazing. The burnt orange lights up the amber in my eyes and the warmth in my skin, my hair's been swept up with a few pieces loose, and I look strong and soft and a little dangerous all at once, and I don't feel like I'm pretending to be someone.
I feel like the best possible version of exactly who I already am.
"Damn, Jessica," Sophia says behind me.
I turn. She's in a deep sapphire gown that makes her look like a goddess, and for a second we just stand there grinning at each other in the mirror, appreciating the transformation, appreciating us. We see Freya found a dark charcoal silk dress that flows.
"The men of Luftis," Sophia declares solemnly, "are not prepared for this. Emotionally. Physically. In any way."
She's not wrong, and it goes both ways, because when the guys emerge from their side of the fitting they clean up spectacularly.
Declan in a fitted dark suit looks like he could be on the cover of something.
Torres in black looks — I have to consciously stop looking.
Renzo looks like he was born in a tuxedo and is deeply smug about it.
I take one look at all of them and reach a scientific conclusion. "Okay. Apparently wolves look extremely yummy in formalwear. Nobody warned me about this."
"Nobody warns you about anything here," Sophia agrees fervently, and then, watching Renzo adjust his cuffs, drops her voice. "I'm just saying. If he looks like that all night, I may have to climb him like one of those trees at orientation."
I choke on absolutely nothing.
"What are you two laughing about?" Renzo calls over.
"Nothing," I manage.
Sophia gives me a look that is definitely not nothing, and I have to physically walk away before I lose it.
The Great Hall has been transformed into something out of a dream — hundreds of candles, crystal catching the light. The banners are the part I can't stop staring at — three of them, each dropping the full height of the wall, and even I can tell they're the whole point of the room.
Deep forest green, a grey wolf sitting sentinel between two crossed spears.
Dark navy, a silver wolf caught mid-leap over a single sword.
And a deep, royal purple, a snarling wolf's head crowned in gold flame — that last one looks exactly as proud as I'm starting to suspect its House is.
Three colors, hung like they've always been here and always will be, like the room was built to hold them.
And I'm so busy drinking it all in that it takes me a second to clock the way the room ripples as we enter.
Then I notice the princes.
And — holy hell.
Formalwear should be illegal on wolves. It should come with a warning label. Soren, enormous in perfectly tailored black, looks like a mountain someone dressed for a coronation. Ander looks like the storybook prince the academy clearly thinks he is. And Luke—
Luke looks up. Catches sight of me.
And just… stops.
I'm used to Luke composed. In the arena he always has something to say — correct your stance, again, faster, stop bracing for the hit.
He is never, ever without a next word. But right now, across a candlelit hall, Prince Lucian Draeven is looking at me in my burnt-orange dress and saying absolutely nothing at all.
His gaze travels down and back up to my face, and his expression goes almost comically blank, like someone unplugged him mid-sentence.
I become suddenly, acutely, delightedly aware of exactly how good I look.
I smile at him. He still doesn't say anything. And then I watch it spread — Soren notices Luke noticing. Then Ander notices. Then people near them notice, heads turning, and I don't fully understand why a prince being briefly speechless is apparently A Thing, but I can feel that it is.
So I give him a little wave.
That snaps him out of it. He blinks, and the smallest smile tugs at his mouth, and I turn back to my friends feeling roughly ten feet tall.
It's when we cross toward our seats that I catch Jon.
He’s watching me come—and his eyes drop to the dress. His expression shifts, startled at first, then still and careful. Almost recognition. It’s there and gone before he smooths it into a polite nod.
Huh.
Dinner is a masterclass in rules I didn't know existed.
Assigned seating, of course — the Great Houses at the prominent tables, everyone else arranged in a hierarchy I can feel but can't see, and the scholarship six seated together like a little island.
And once the food starts, it just keeps coming, the invisible rules.
Certain people get greeted first, and everyone seems to know the order.
Nobody touches a particular course until a higher-ranking wolf has begun it.
Conversations physically change shape when someone important drifts near, voices adjusting, postures shifting.
"I'm starting to think," I whisper to Sophia, "that wolf society is like ninety percent invisible rules and ten percent actual dinner."
"I am very concerned about the fork situation," Sophia whispers back, staring at her place setting like it's a trap. "There are four. Why are there four."
"Start from the outside?"
"Is that a real rule or did you make it up?"
"Ninety-nine percent chance I made it up."
We muddle through together, and honestly it's the most fun I've had at a formal anything, mostly because Sophia keeps up a running commentary under her breath.
After dinner, the music starts, and the whole evening loosens a degree. The tables clear from the center of the hall, couples begin to drift onto the floor, and the rigid formality softens.
I watch for a while. And then I spot Luke, off to the side with Soren and Ander.
And here's the thing. Somewhere in the last several weeks — every afternoon, in that arena, him drilling me until I stop flinching, him being the first person here to see something in me worth his time — Luke stopped being Prince Lucian Draeven in my head.
He became Luke. The guy who knows exactly when I'm about to flinch.
The guy who makes me do it again, and again, and again, until I get it right. My friend.
So I do what I'd do with any friend at a party.
I walk over.
Luke sees me coming, and Soren and Ander turn too, and I smile. "Want to dance?"
Silence.
I wait. Luke looks genuinely surprised — and then that small, amused expression I've learned to recognize in the arena starts to surface.
"What?" I grin. "Afraid I'll step on you? I've gotten a lot better at footwork. Someone's been drilling me."
Luke's mouth opens like he's about to answer—
"Unbelievable."
I turn. Natasha, of course, immaculate in cream silk, looking at me like I've spat on the floor.