Three days of silence and I'm crawling out of my skin.
Rhys respects my boundaries—no texts, no visits, no casual touch in the hallways. He walks past me in the dining hall without looking. Sits on the far side of the classroom. Trains with the team while I organize equipment ten feet away, and the distance between us hums like a live wire.
Grayson watches from his side of the field, satisfied. His wolves have started acknowledging me again—small nods, brief eye contact. The shunning thaws by degrees, a calculated preview of what "coming home" would feel like.
I should be relieved. Instead I lie awake at night replaying every moment, cross-referencing every conversation, trying to separate what was real from what was performance. The screenshots said one thing. His trembling hands said another. His clean phone could mean innocence or a guilty man who planned ahead.
I need the truth. Not his version. Not Grayson's version. The actual truth, observed without either of them knowing I'm watching.
Tuesday after practice, I follow Rhys.
He heads toward the vampire wing—a section of campus I rarely enter without him beside me. I keep my distance, using the after-practice crowd as cover, slipping behind pillars when he pauses to check his phone. He pushes through the doors of a common room I've never been inside, and I catch the door before it closes, pressing myself against the wall just outside.
Aaron's voice drifts through the gap.
"—need to talk about the arrangement, man. This is getting out of hand."
My stomach drops. I press closer to the door.
"There's nothing to talk about." Rhys. Flat. Controlled. The voice he uses when the mask is firmly in place.
"Nothing to talk about? You've been a wreck for three days. Half the team thinks you're losing it." A pause. Aaron's voice drops. "Was it worth it? Honestly? Grayson's face when he sees you two together—that was the whole point, right? Was the look on his face worth what it's costing you now?"
Silence. Long enough for my nails to carve crescents into my palms.
"You don't understand." Rhys's voice, barely audible. "It's not—it was never just about—"
"Never just about Grayson?" Aaron laughs. "Mate, you pitched this to me yourself. Use the sister, destroy the brother. Your words."
I pull away from the door. My lungs have stopped working and the corridor tilts sideways. Use the sister, destroy the brother. Your words.
His own friend. Confirming exactly what the screenshots said. Not planted evidence, not manipulated audio—Aaron sitting three feet from Rhys, referencing the plan like it's common knowledge.
I shove through the door before I can think better of it.
They both freeze. Aaron half-rises from the couch, eyes wide. Rhys turns toward me, and I watch his face cycle through recognition, horror, and the desperate calculation of someone trying to figure out how much I heard.
"Sloane—"
"Use the sister." My voice comes out dead. Stripped of everything. "Destroy the brother."
"That's not—you're taking it out of context—"
"Out of context?" The dead voice cracks, and what comes through is molten. "What context makes that okay, Rhys? What magical context turns 'use the sister, destroy the brother' into something that doesn't make me a fucking pawn?"
Aaron mutters something about giving them space and disappears through a side door. Coward. They're all cowards.
"It started that way." Rhys's hands are up, palms open, the universal gesture of surrender. "I won't lie to you about that. When I first proposed the arrangement, yes—part of it was about Grayson."
"Part of it." I laugh, and the sound is ugly. "I was a toy. A weapon you picked up because she was convenient and desperate and too stupid to see what was happening."
"You were never stupid—"
"You never loved me!" The words rip out of me so loud they echo off the walls. "Every touch, every kiss, every time you held me and I thought—I actually thought—"
"It started that way!" His composure shatters, matching mine. "Yes! I hated your brother and I wanted to destroy him and you were the perfect way to do it. Is that what you want to hear?"
"Yes! I want the truth for once in my—"
"But it stopped!" He's shouting now, voice cracking. "It stopped being about him the moment you looked at me in that elevator and didn't run. It stopped being fake the first time I kissed you without an audience. It stopped—"
"But what?" I step closer, fury and grief tangling together until I can't tell them apart. "You realized you actually liked fucking the halfblood?"
He flinches. Actually flinches, like I've driven something sharp between his ribs.
Then he crosses the distance between us in two strides and kisses me.
Wild. Desperate. His hands grip my face and his mouth crashes into mine with the force of someone who's lost the ability to communicate in any other language. I shove against his chest—hard—and he doesn't let go. I shove again, and my fingers betray me, twisting into his shirt, pulling him closer instead of pushing away.
My back hits the wall. His body pins me flat, every hard edge pressed against every part of me that remembers what this feels like. His mouth drags across my jaw, my throat, back to my lips, and I taste salt—his tears or mine, I can't tell anymore.
"Does a man who doesn't love you kiss like that?" His voice is raw, destroyed. His forehead drops against mine, and his whole body shakes. "I never—it stopped being fake for me months ago. You're the only real thing I have."
My fingers are in his hair, pulling him closer even as sobs crack through my chest. His hands slide beneath my shirt, palms desperate on my skin, and I arch into the contact because my body doesn't care about betrayal—my body only knows his hands and his mouth and the way he holds me like I'm the last solid thing in his world.
His hips press forward. My legs start to wrap around him—muscle memory, instinct, need that bypasses every rational thought. His mouth opens against my throat and the sound I make is half moan, half sob.
I stop.
My palms flatten against his chest and I push—not hard, but final. He resists for one agonized second before stepping back, his hands falling from my body like severed ropes.
We stare at each other. Both wrecked. His cheeks are wet, his lips swollen, his shirt twisted where my fingers clawed the fabric. I look the same—I can feel it. Mascara burning my eyes, chest heaving, every nerve ending screaming for me to close the distance I just created.
"If you want me." My voice shakes so badly the words barely form. "Really want me—then win me. Not my brother. Me."
His throat works. "What does that mean?"
"It means the arrangement is over." I wipe my face with the back of my hand. "No more fake girlfriend. No more using me to hurt Grayson. No more whatever this was."
"Sloane, please—"
"If what you feel is real, then prove it." I hold his gaze, and the effort it takes not to reach for him nearly splits me in half. "Without leverage. Without schemes. Without an arrangement that gives you an excuse to touch me."
I walk toward the door. His voice follows me—broken, barely audible.
"How?"
I stop with my hand on the frame. Don't turn around. Can't turn around, because if I see his face I'll go back and I can't go back. Not until I know for certain.
"Figure it out."
The door closes behind me. I make it around the corner before my knees buckle, and I press my back against the cold stone wall, sliding down until I'm sitting on the floor.
His taste is still on my lips. His tears are still drying on my cheeks. And the worst part—worse than the screenshots, worse than Aaron's confirmation, worse than everything—is that I believe him.
I believe him, and I still walked away.