"I will accept no wolfless girl as my leader."
The sentence didn’t simply arrive, it struck.
Clean.
Cold.
Precise as any thrown blade, and twice as vicious because it drew no visible blood.
It ca from the bunk imdiately to our right.
The speaker made no effort to lower his voice.
He didn’t whisper. He simply spoke, and the words carried, flat, unhurried, deliberately audible to every corner of the room.
The space collapsed into sudden, suffocating silence.
A boy I had barely registered until this mont eased himself upright on the lower bunk. Lean to the point of wiry, skin so pale it almost glead under the overhead lights. Silver-blond hair scraped back into a loose, careless knot; a few rebellious strands frad features that looked honed rather than grown, cheekbones like knife edges, a jaw that could have been planed from marble. Nothing about him was soft. Nothing invited rcy.
His eyes were the worst part.
Winter ice. Flat. Cold. Predatory in the way that doesn’t snarl... it simply waits.
The girl hanging dresses in the wardrobe froze, blue silk still pinched between thumb and forefinger, fabric trembling faintly as her hand stilled. The brown-haired boy who had spent the last twenty minutes trying to disappear into the background. Even the soft rustle of soone shifting luggage in the far corner died
Air thickened like the mont before a storm breaks.
I felt Elion shift beside , shoulders rolling forward, spine straightening into sothing protective and dangerous. His jaw ticked once. He was coiled, ready to leap in if this turned ugly.
But I didn’t need his shield.
My eyes stayed locked on the silver-blond boy.
I held his stare.
Let the silence stretch until it hurt...
Then I answered.
My voice ca out calm.
Quiet.
So cold it should have left frost on the window behind .
"Thank the Moon you said it out loud. Saves the trouble of wondering how long it would take for soone to say the quiet part loud.... And guess what? This wolfless girl isn’t interested in being the leader of an arrogant werewolf like you."
I didn’t wait to watch his face change.
I simply turned, gripped the ladder rungs, tal cool and slightly gritty under my palms... and climbed.
Each step upward felt heavier than the last.
My arms burned faintly; my legs still carried the dull ache of the day’s earlier humiliations.
I hauled myself onto the thin mattress of the upper bunk, dropped onto my back, and stared up at the blank white ceiling.
Honestly?
I had nothing left.
No strength to fight over a title I never asked for.
No strength to lead anyone when I couldn’t even steer my own miserable existence in a straight line.
Not today.
Maybe not ever.
From below, Elion’s voice rose... half exasperation, half disbelief... clearly displeasure.
"Are you seriously going to just climb up there and say nothing proper to him? After that?"
I closed my eyes.
Ignored him.... Utterly.
But soone else refused to let the mont die.
"Don’t you think that’s a bit too much?"
The voice rolled in from the doorway.
Thorne.
He’d straightened from where he’d been leaning...casual observer turned sudden participant, and now strode toward the silver-blond boy with the loose-hipped confidence of soone who’d never lost a fight he cared to win.
Irritation surged under my skin like hot oil.
I was done.
Done with this entire circus.
And the single most infuriating part was Thorne..
Thorne... of all people deciding this was his fight to join.
My ss.
My insult.
My humiliation.
Not his.
And yet here he was, inserting himself like he had any right.
Curiosity, or maybe just bone-deep annoyance... made sit up, legs dangling over the edge so I could see.
I swung my legs over the edge of the bunk so I could see.
"I am only saying the truth" The silver-blond boy said and dropped from his bunk in one smooth, silent motion. Boots kissed the floor without sound. He stepped forward until the distance between him and Thorne shrank to nothing comfortable.
Face to face.
A terrible idea.
Because if Thorne decided he wanted to shatter bone tonight, the blond would be eating through a straw for weeks.
And right now Thorne looked precisely like a man asuring soone’s face for fractures.
This protectiveness, this sudden willingness to bleed for , made no sense.
"What fucking truth are you talking about?" Thorne demanded, voice pitched low and dangerous.
The silver-blond boy didn’t so much as blink.
"Isn’t she wolfless?" he said, the words flat and final.
He lifted one hand and pointed across the room... straight at the brown-haired boy who had been doing everything in his power to beco furniture.
"Even him," the blond continued, gesturing again at the stunned human. "Even this human has an identity. Sothing Nyx will never have."
So he knew my na.
Or rather, what I wasn’t.
Interesting.
Apparently I have a reputation for bad reasons.
"I would accept this human as my leader in a heartbeat," he went on, voice dropping colder still, "before I ever accept her."
The accusing finger swung to .
Direct.
Contemptuous.
As though I were dog shit clinging to the tread of his boot.
The brown-haired boy didn’t look flattered.
If anything, he shrank smaller, clearly offended to be used as the superior option in this hierarchy.
I couldn’t bla him.
And this blonde-haired guy doesn’t just have a problem with because from the tone of his words you would know he didn’t even rate human not to talk of a being like
I exhaled... soft, tired... and swung both legs fully over the edge.
"You know what?" I said.
Every head in the room snapped toward .
The girl by the wardrobe.
Blonde-Headed.
Elion.
Thorne.
Even Brown haired.
"You’re just a brainless, arrogant, animalistic little prick hiding behind your pure-blood bullshit and a ridiculous superiority complex." I said, calm as though I were reading a weather report.
I didn’t raise my voice.
I let the words hang for a beat.
"Just because your mommy and daddy fucked under a full moon doesn’t make the rest of us your subordinates. So when you’re done throwing your tantrum like a toddler denied a toy, crawl back into your bunk and pray to whatever goddess listens to entitled werewolves for a single functioning brain cell."
The room went tomb-silent.
"How dare you speak to like that, you useless slut!" the silver-blond boy snarled.
The insult barely left his mouth before instinct took over.
I dropped.
No thought.
No plan.
Just motion.
I hit the floor hard.
Shock traveled up through my heels... ankles.... shins.... knees... hips in a single wave.
My thighs scread.
My kneecaps felt like they’d been struck with hamrs.
For one dizzy second my legs refused to hold ; they buckled inward.
Elion lunged, fast, caught my forearm in a steadying grip before I could collapse completely.
The rest happened in fragnts. Too fast. Too loud.
Thorne surged.
He seized the front of the blond’s shirt in one massive fist and drove his other hand forward in a brutal straight punch.
Knuckle t cheekbone with a wet, aty crack that echoed off the high ceiling.
The blond staggered, blood already welling at the corner of his mouth, but he recovered in half a heartbeat.
He swung back.
Fist connected with Thorne’s jaw... solid, ringing impact.
Then the room detonated.
They slamd together... shoulders crashing, boots scraping hardwood, snarls ripping from both throats.
They dropped.
Hit the floor with bone-jarring force.
Rolled in a tangle of limbs.
Fists flew in short, ugly arcs... Thorne’s heavier, slower, but devastating when they landed; the blond’s quicker, aner, slicing into ribs and kidneys whenever he found space.
Blood speckled the polished wood.
A lamp toppled, glass exploded in a bright, brittle shower.
Grunts.
Curses.
The wet smack of skin on skin.
Thorne clearly had the advantage... raw strength, longer reach... but the blond fought dirty, twisting, clawing, driving knees into soft places.
The others finally reacted.
"Stop!"
"Break them up!"
"Are you both insane?!" I said
Bodies rushed in, hands grabbing shoulders, arms, collars, trying to peel the two apart.
Useless.
They were locked in now.
Montum had its own teeth.
And that was the exact mont the dorm door slamd open so hard it bounced off the stopper.
Two Sentinels strode through.
Black tactical uniforms.
Silver insignia flashing under the lights like warning beacons.
One of them barked, voice cutting through the noise like a blade:
"Enough!"
The room finally... finally... froze.
Thorne and the blond were pried apart, chests heaving, faces sared with blood and sweat.
The taller Sentinel’s eyes swept the room, cold and assessing.
They landed on last.
Wait... why is he looking at I did nothing to be called wrong.
My stomach plumted through the floor.
Oh we are so in trouble.
This wasn’t ordinary trouble.
This was the kind of trouble that ended with cells, inquiries, ....or worse.
We were in catastrophic, docunted, permanent-record trouble.
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