Chapter 55: Not Their Shadow

The academy posted the mixed-team assignments overnight, and by breakfast the entire hall was buzzing with reactions. Roxanne scanned Team 7’s roster twice, her stomach dropping slightly when she found Joanna’s name listed second from the top.

Her first instinct was to ask for a reassignment. She let the thought pass without acting on it. If the academy wanted to see whether she could actually compete without four royal brothers standing beside her, she’d give them exactly that.

Across the table, Liam was still grumbling about his own assignment. "Team 3? I don’t even know these people."

"That’s the point," Lucien said, not looking up from his own roster. "Fixed teams were making us predictable."

Roshan glanced toward the far end of the hall, where Roxanne sat surrounded by unfamiliar faces. "She’ll be fine."

"I know," Kai said. His eyes stayed on her table longer than the conversation needed.

Roxanne’s new teammates were polite enough, though she caught the assumptions running underneath their politeness almost immediately. One of them, a broad-shouldered boy named Corin, seemed to expect her to naturally take charge, mentioning offhand that they’d "follow her lead since she was used to running with the Moonstones."

"I’m not here to command anyone," Roxanne said. "What are you good at?"

The question caught them off guard. She went around the table asking each person the same thing, watching their strengths take shape in her head the way Lucien had once mapped out a battlefield, the way Roshan had taught her to separate one thread from a tangle of competing signals. She wasn’t trying to be the strongest person in the group. She was trying to figure out how everyone fit.

The first event was a relay combining sprinting, obstacles, and wolf control, and Roxanne wasn’t the fastest runner on her team by any measure. She stationed herself near the transition points instead, watching each teammate’s rhythm as they cycled through practice runs. She noticed one girl kept losing speed every time she hit a turn, overcorrecting instead of leaning into it.

"Switch positions," Roxanne said. "Put her second instead of third. The second turn is wider."

Corin looked skeptical. "That’s not how we planned it."

"Try it once."

They tried it. It worked, shaving nearly two seconds off their previous time, and by the actual event they finished near the top of the standings. Her teammates looked at her differently walking off the field, something like respect settling into the space where skepticism had been.

Across the grounds, Lucien noticed the results posted on the scoreboard. Roshan smiled to himself. Liam loudly announced to anyone nearby that he’d personally taught Roxanne everything she knew, which nobody bothered to correct.

Kai just watched.

The next event pitted Team 7 directly against Joanna’s team, and this time Joanna’s group edged them out by a narrow margin. Roxanne felt the loss more than she expected to, a flicker of annoyance tangled up with something closer to grudging respect.

Joanna caught her afterward near the water station. "You’re better when you stop looking around for them," she said, nothing sharp in her tone, just an observation.

Roxanne glanced instinctively toward the far field where the Moonstones were competing, then back at Joanna. "Maybe."

It wasn’t friendship. But it wasn’t hostility either, and that shift felt like something worth noticing.

The final event of the day was a strategy course that required the whole team to solve a series of obstacles together, and Roxanne’s group hit a wall almost immediately, everyone pulling in different directions with no clear plan holding them together. Corin wanted to force through the middle. Another teammate insisted on splitting up entirely.

Roxanne thought back to something Lucien had told her weeks ago, about assigning roles based on what people were actually good at rather than what seemed obvious.

"You," she said, pointing to Corin, "take the front. You’re the strongest, you break the path. You two handle the scent trail since you spotted the false one earlier without me saying anything. I’ll coordinate timing."

Nobody argued this time. The plan came together smoothly, each person settling into a role that fit them rather than fighting for the same position, and Team 7 crossed the final checkpoint first, well ahead of the next closest team.

This time, none of the Moonstones had anything to do with it.

Afterward, the four brothers found her near the equipment tent, and Liam immediately launched into mock outrage.

"You replaced us in one day," he said. "One day, Roxanne."

"You weren’t invited," she said, laughing.

Roshan offered a genuine, quiet congratulations, and Lucien told her plainly that she’d made good decisions out there, the kind of praise that meant more coming from him than a dozen enthusiastic ones from anyone else.

Kai waited until the others had wandered ahead toward the dining hall before speaking.

"You didn’t need us," he said.

"Was that supposed to surprise you?"

"No." A faint smile crossed his face. "It wasn’t."

But she could tell he liked watching her prove it anyway, something steady and unbothered in the way he looked at her, no trace of the possessive edge she might have expected from him weeks ago.

Walking back to her dorm that evening, Roxanne turned the day over in her mind. She’d spent the entire afternoon surrounded by people who weren’t the Moonstones, working through problems without their guidance, and she hadn’t felt abandoned once. She loved being with them. She’d missed Kai’s quiet presence more than she wanted to admit, missed Roshan’s dry commentary and Liam’s chaos and Lucien’s steady calm.

But she hadn’t needed any of them to function today. That distinction settled into her chest and stayed there, something she wanted to hold onto.

When she reached her door, something small sat waiting on the floor outside it. Not one of Roshan’s anonymous care packages, not anything from Liam’s usual ridiculous gestures. A small medal from the mixed-team challenge, its ribbon still crisp, with a folded note tucked beneath it.

TEAM 7 — DON’T DISAPPEAR ON US.

Roxanne smiled, turning the medal over in her hand.

Then Liam’s voice echoed down the hallway before she’d even opened her door.

"SILVER! WE’RE STEALING YOU BACK TOMORROW!"

She opened the door to find all four brothers standing there, bags of takeout food balanced between them, looking entirely unbothered about interrupting her evening.

Roxanne looked down at the medal in her hand, then up at the four of them crowding her doorway.

She sighed. "Fine. Five minutes."

And walked toward them anyway.