One week until the audition.
One week until everything changes.
The variables spin through my brain, organizing themselves into patterns I can analyze.
If the audition goes well—if, if, if—I get a scholarship. I get to leave Ruthless Academy. I get to dance somewhere that isn't soaked in blood and violence and the constant, grinding effort of survival.
If the alliance holds—if, if, if—Kai takes down his father. The threat against the pack is eliminated. The mission that brought them here in the first place becomes irrelevant.
And then?
Then we're enemies again.
Aren't we?
The thought doesn't land the way it used to.
Doesn't feel as certain, as final, as inevitable.
Because enemies don't catch volleyballs for each other. Don't touch your cheek with gentle fingers. Don't look at you across a crowded gymnasium like you're the only thing that matters.
Stop.
Don't go there.
Hope is dangerous.
I rinse the shampoo from my hair, letting the water carry the suds down my body and into the drain. The sound is soothing—white noise that blocks out everything else, that creates a bubble of isolation in this shared space.
But isolation doesn't last.
I smell them before I see them.
Multiple scents, all female, all carrying the particular edge of hostility that I've learned to recognize over three years of being the academy's favorite target. They're approaching—slowly, deliberately, with the careful coordination of predators who've planned their attack in advance.
Four of them.
Maybe five.
Surrounding the shower area.
How predictable.
I sigh.
Reach for the faucet.
Turn off the water.
The sudden silence is jarring—no more spray, no more white noise, just the distant sounds of the locker room and the too-loud breathing of girls who think they're being stealthy.
Amateurs.
I grab my towel from the hook outside the stall, wrapping it around my body with practiced efficiency. The fabric is rough against my skin—academy-issue, like everything else—but it covers what needs to be covered.
"If you want to do shit," I say, stepping out of the shower stall to face whatever's waiting, "can I at least wear clothes first? Like, that's just common decency."
They're arranged in a semicircle.
