Lunaria Academy: Rejected By My Mate, Claimed By Four Lycan Royals Novel - Chapter 165

The arts hall was almost empty when Roxanne walked in with Adrian and Maya, and their display already stood along one side of the stage. Photographs hung in a neat row on the stand, Maya’s illustrations were propped between them on small easels, and printed excerpts from Between Two Worlds lay in a fan on the table below. Maya went straight to the easels and began nudging each one a few millimeters to the left. Roxanne found a chair at the edge of the stage and went through her printed pages, underlining the places where she planned to pause.

When she looked up, Adrian was bending over the photographs again, straightening a frame that had looked straight a minute earlier. He hadn’t said much since they arrived, which was unusual for someone who had an opinion about everything. "Are you nervous?" Roxanne asked. He told her he wasn’t, and that he was only making sure nobody had arranged his photographs incorrectly. Maya, passing behind him with a roll of tape, said he had been checking the same display for ten minutes. Adrian opened his mouth to defend himself, then went back to the frame without a word.

Fifteen minutes before the session began, the screen above the stage flickered and went gray. Adrian crouched beside it with his laptop and tried reconnecting the cable, then restarting the file, then reconnecting the cable again. The presentation refused to load. Maya whispered that they might have to speak without any images at all, and her voice cracked slightly on the last word. Enjoying the story? Read on at novel⁠ceo.com.

Roxanne looked at the display beside them and felt an idea settle. "We already have the prints," she said. "They’re hanging right there." Adrian hesitated, because the photographs weren’t arranged in the sequence they had rehearsed, and the story depended on a particular order. Roxanne reminded him that the story didn’t depend on a screen, only on people being able to follow it. He rubbed the back of his neck, then nodded. The three of them rearranged the prints in a few quick minutes, with Adrian unhooking frames and Maya re-pinning the illustrations between them, until the archway stood first and the empty chairs last, with the sunset at the gates waiting beyond them.

The moderator announced their names while Adrian was still smoothing the corner of the last print. Roxanne walked onto the stage between the other two with her pages held against her chest, and the hall seemed larger than it had during rehearsal, its rows of faces blurring together in the stage lights. Adrian stepped forward first and spoke about the photographs, explaining how ordinary corners of the academy had become the backbone of their story. His voice was steadier than she expected, and by the second sentence he sounded like himself again. Maya followed and described how her illustrations moved between the photographs and held them together, gesturing at the easels as she spoke.