Sloane’s POV
The shunning evolves on a Monday.
Not the cold-shoulder treatment I've learned to navigate—the blank stares, the pulled chairs, the conversations that die when I enter a room. This is different. Active. A pack that's tasted blood and wants more.
It starts small. My locker jammed with raw meat, the smell hitting me when I open the door between classes. MUTT scratched into the paint of my dorm room door sometime during the night. My equipment clipboard disappearing from the training facility, found later in a toilet, pages soaked through.
By Wednesday, they've stopped pretending it's subtle.
I'm carrying a stack of medical supply boxes across the dining hall during lunch—my father asked me to restock the sideline kits, and the storage closet is on the far side of the building. The boxes block my peripheral vision, which is probably why I don't see Derek until his foot hooks my ankle.
I go down hard. Boxes scatter across the tile, gauze and tape and ice packs sliding in every direction. My palms burn where they caught the fall, and laughter erupts from the wolf section—loud, ugly, the kind that feeds on itself.
"Oops." Derek towers over me, grinning. "Clumsy little mutt. Should watch where you're going."
I start gathering the supplies. Hands steady. Face blank. The routine is so familiar it's almost boring.
"Leave it." Another wolf kicks a box out of my reach. "Halfbloods should eat on the floor anyway. Isn't that where your vampire boyfriend had you? On your knees?"
More laughter. The dining hall is watching—wolves, vampires, everyone in between. Nobody moves. Nobody intervenes. The vampires look through me the way they did before Rhys claimed me, and the wolves have graduated from ignoring to hunting.
"Enough."
The voice cuts through the noise and the laughter dies. Not slowly—instantly, like someone pulled the plug.
Rhys stands at the edge of the vampire section. No jersey. No teammates flanking him. Just a boy in a dark shirt, walking toward the wolf table with his hands at his sides and his jaw set.
Derek straightens. "This isn't your business, Vance. Everybody heard the rumors. She's not yours anymore."
"You're right." Rhys stops three feet away from Derek, and the size difference is negligible—they're matched in height, in build, in the kind of physical threat they represent. "She's not mine. That's not why I'm here."
"Then why are you here?"
"Because five grown wolves are tormenting one girl who can't shift on command, and every person in this room is watching it happen." His voice carries without rising. Calm, measured, stripped of the usual venom. "That's not pack business. That's cowardice."
Derek's grin hardens. "Careful. You're on the wrong side of the room without your fangs to back you up."
"I don't need fangs for this." Rhys doesn't move. Doesn't posture. Just stands there, steady and open. "Leave her alone. Not because she belongs to anyone. Not because of who her father is or who she dated. Leave her alone because she's a person who doesn't deserve to eat her lunch off the floor."
The silence stretches so thin I can hear my own heartbeat from the ground. Derek's pack mates shift behind him, restless, waiting for the signal.
"You've gone soft, Vance." Derek's lip curls. "The halfblood really did a number on you."
"Maybe." Rhys doesn't flinch. "Or maybe I just got tired of watching people like you punch down and call it strength."
Derek's fist connects with Rhys's jaw before the last word lands.
The crack echoes through the dining hall. Rhys's head snaps to the side, and he staggers—one step, two—before catching himself. Blood blooms on his lower lip, bright crimson against pale skin.
He doesn't hit back. Doesn't raise his hands. Doesn't bare his fangs or summon the cold fury I've seen him weaponize a dozen times. He straightens, wipes the blood with the back of his hand, and looks at Derek with an expression that makes the wolf take a step backward.
"Feel better?" Rhys asks quietly.
Derek's fist is cocked for a second swing when a coach's whistle shrieks from the faculty table. My father is on his feet, pointing at Derek with the kind of authority that freezes even the most aggressive wolf mid-motion. The pack scatters, suddenly fascinated by their lunches.
Rhys turns and walks away. Blood drips from his chin onto his shirt, and he doesn't wipe it. He passes my scattered supplies without looking down, passes the vampire table without acknowledging his teammates, and pushes through the dining hall doors into the corridor.
He didn't look at me once. Not during the confrontation, not when he got hit, not when he walked away. He did it without wanting credit. Without expecting anything in return.
Something shifts behind my ribs. Something stubborn and bruised that I've been holding in a clenched fist for days.
I find him in the empty corridor outside the gym, leaning against the wall with his head tipped back and his eyes closed. Blood still seeps from the split in his lower lip, trailing down his chin, staining the collar of his shirt.
"You're bleeding." I stop two feet away.
"Astute observation." His eyes stay closed. "I'll heal."
"You're healing slowly." I pull a gauze pad from the supply box I grabbed on my way out—one of the few that survived the fall. "Sit down."
He opens one eye. Looks at the gauze. Looks at me. Then slides down the wall until he's sitting on the floor, legs stretched out, head tipped back against the stone.
I crouch in front of him. His split lip is swelling, the cut deeper than I thought—Derek put some real force behind that punch. I press the gauze against the wound, and his jaw tightens under my fingers.
"Hold still."
"I am holding still."
"You're clenching." My thumb settles against the corner of his mouth, steadying the gauze. His lips part slightly beneath the pressure, and the exhale that escapes him ghosts warm across my wrist.
We're close. Too close. His gray eyes are open now, fixed on my face with an intensity that makes my hand falter. Blood stains the gauze between my fingers, and his tongue traces the edge of the cut—catching my thumb for one electric second before I pull away.
"Sorry." His voice has dropped to gravel. "Reflex."
"Sure it was." I press the gauze harder. He winces. I don't apologize.
Silence stretches between us. Not hostile. Not loaded. Just two people sitting on a corridor floor, one bleeding, the other pretending her pulse isn't racing.
"You didn't have to do that," I say finally. "In there."
"I know."
"You could've stayed out of it. Nobody expected you to—"
"I know." His eyes hold mine. "I wasn't doing it for expectations."
I finish cleaning the wound. The bleeding has slowed, his vampire healing finally kicking in. I sit back on my heels, gauze crumpled in my fist, and he reaches into his pocket.
"Here." He holds out a key. Small, brass, old-fashioned. "To the cottage. Our training space."
I stare at it. "What?"
"It's yours. Whether we ever train again or not." He sets it on the floor between us when I don't take it. "Somewhere on this campus that belongs to you. Where no one can touch you or follow you or make you feel like you don't deserve to take up space."
My throat closes. "Rhys—"
"No strings." He pushes himself to his feet, pressing the gauze to his lip. "Just wanted you to have it."
He walks away. The key sits on the cold floor between his bloodstain and my shadow, and I pick it up with fingers that won't stop shaking.