Page 64 of Legacy Found

Every single one of them. Every scholarship student. Nobody in our cohort is below the line.

We start yelling each other's names like idiots. Sophia's crying and laughing at once, Renzo's pointing at the board and demanding someone confirm he's not hallucinating, Declan has picked Freya clean up off the floor, and it takes me a full stunned minute to understand what I'm actually looking at.

The first latent wolf cohort in the history of this academy — mostly kids who a year ago had never heard the word shifter — didn't lose a single one.

"Jessica." Torres grabs my shoulders and turns me toward the board. "You haven't even looked. Look."

I look.

My finger finds the line, and I stop.

Jessica Miller — 108.

I just stare at it. "...A hundred and eight?"

I was behind. I was behind pace half the year, watching Faris carve me back down every week. And then I ran onto a field I'd been ordered to stay off, and pulled Renzo out from under a feral wolf, and the marks they gave me for it are sitting in that number right now. A hundred and eight. Not scraping the line by a hair. Clear of it.

I didn't barely survive this. I earned it. The exact thing I kept getting punished for is the thing that put me over.

Sophia hits me at full speed and nearly takes us both down. Torres scoops me straight off my feet in a bear hug and spins me, and I'm laughing so hard it's most of the way to crying, my face buried in his shoulder, and for a second there's nothing in the entire world but the six of us and a glowing board and the impossible fact that we all made it.

When I finally come up for air, I look across the hall.

Luke's there, near the front with Soren and Ander, the three of them composed as ever, an island of stillness in all the chaos. And Luke's already looking at me.

He doesn't come over. He can't — princes don't cross a room to celebrate with a scholarship girl, not in front of the whole academy, not with the divide between our worlds as real as it's ever been. But he catches my eye, and he gives me the smallest smile, barely there, just for me — and I can see it anyway. He's proud of me. He watched me claw this back mark by mark on that training mat, and he's proud.

I smile back.

And I wish, stupidly, that he could just walk over. Say it out loud. Maybe even hug me, the way Torres just did.

He doesn't. He holds my eyes a moment longer, and that's all we get.

I understand why. I just wish, standing in the best moment of my year, that I didn't have to.

That afternoon Jon asks the six of us to stop by his office, and we all assume it's Trial information, so we file in braced for bad news.

Instead there's a spread on his desk. Nothing extravagant — tea and coffee and a bottle of sparkling cider, pastries, bread, a bowl of fruit. Just enough. He's cleared space and pulled in extra chairs, and it takes me a second to understand that Professor Jon Matthias threw us a party.

He pours the cider around and lifts his glass.

"To the First Cohort," he says.

The room quiets.

"Over a year ago," he says, "I visited an academy in North America. Frosthaven." His eyes flick, briefly, to Torres, who went through that system. "It was full of latent wolves. Kids who'd grown up human, found late, many of them from hard places — and they were thriving. Learning what they were. Becoming who they could be." He turns his glass slowly. "I flew home and I could not stop asking one question. If North America is finding its latent wolves and giving them a place — why aren't we? Why is Europe letting them slip through the cracks alone?"

Nobody says anything. I don't think anyone's breathing.

"That question became this program," Jon says. "And when it was approved, I'll be honest with you — no one knew if it would work. I believed it would." A small, dry pause. "But belief and proof are not the same thing. I've spent my whole career reminding students of that. It's less comfortable when it's your own idea on the line."

He looks around at all of us.

"Today, every member of Europe's first latent wolf cohort qualified for the First Trial. Every single one of you." His voice stays even, but for once, he doesn't quite hide his pride. "I am more proud of you than I have words for, and I have a great many words."

There's a knock at the doorframe. One of the other professors leans in, glances at the six of us, and says, mildly, "It seems your program succeeded, Matthias."

Jon shakes his head. "They succeeded," he says. "I only gave them the opportunity."