Novels by Selara

The cold air outside the rink was a shock, but it was clean, scouring the toxic atmosphere of the locker room from their lungs. They walked quickly, shoulders tense, not speaking until they rounded a corner, putting the arena behind them. The bravado of their exit was already cooling, leaving a brittle silence in its place.Julian’s phone buzzed. He glanced at it, then stopped dead on the frost-tinged path.“What now?” Adrian asked, his stomach already tightening into a familiar knot of dread. He was exhausted by the constant barrage, each new alert a potential landmine.Wordlessly, Julian handed him the phone. It was a direct message on a platform Adrian didn’t recognize. The username was a jumble of numbers and letters—xX_Phantom_Xx.xX_Phantom_Xx: That took guts. Walking into the lion’s den.xX_Phantom_Xx: He’s watching you closer than you think. The locker room isn’t clean.Adrian’s blood went cold. The message was too specific, too timely. “Who is this?”“No idea,” Julian said, h

The chime of the processed payment echoed in the silent room, a perverse doorbell ringing on their own personal hell. Adrian could only stare as Julian leaned into the laptop's glow, his face a mask of cold concentration. He wasn't just watching; he was studying, dissecting.Adrian’s own phone lit up again. Not a call this time. A direct message on Instagram, from a teammate, Nate.Nate: Bro. WTF is this? Is this for real?Below the message was a screenshot. It was a post from the hijacked MidnightViper account. The image was a cropped, zoomed-in shot from the promo shoot they’d done—the one the PR manager had loved. In the original, they were smirking, shoulders bumping. This version was edited. Their faces were darkened, their expressions made to look sneering and secretive. The caption read: "They were laughing at you the whole time. All those fans cheering for guys who thought they were a joke. Pathetic."It was genius. It was evil. It was turning their own chemistry against them,

The walk back from the athletic center was a silent, furious march through a landscape that had turned hostile overnight. The campus, usually theirs, felt like occupied territory. Every shadowed corner seemed to hold a whisper, every lit window a judge.Adrian’s skin crawled. He could feel the digital eyes on him, millions of them, scrolling, judging, consuming the most vulnerable pieces of him. It was a violation so profound it made him nauseous.Julian’s phone buzzed incessantly in his pocket, a trapped hornet he refused to acknowledge. His face was a stone mask, but Adrian could see the tremor in his clenched fist.They didn’t speak until they were back inside the stale, charged air of Julian’s dorm room. Julian slammed the door shut, finally pulling out his phone. His eyes scanned the screen, his expression darkening from grim to something truly dangerous.“He’s not just posting,” Julian said, his voice a low rasp. “He’s monetizing it.”Adrian’s blood went cold. “What?”Julian tur

The silence in Julian’s dorm room was no longer charged with possibility. It was thick with the fallout of a detonated bomb. The faint, persistent buzz of their phones on the desk was the only sound, a relentless digital heartbeat counting down their ruin. Adrian stood rooted to the same spot, his mind a white-noise scream. He could feel the eyes of the world already on him, crawling over his skin like insects. Every new vibration from their phones felt like a rock thrown through the window of his life. Julian, by contrast, was a storm of controlled motion. He’d thrown on a black hoodie, the hood pulled up, shadowing his face. He’d commandeered Adrian’s phone, his own, and his laptop, a general assessing the digital battlefield. “First,” Julian said, his voice clipped and devoid of its usual melodic taunt. “Damage control. We don’t confirm. We don’t deny. We say nothing.” He was typing rapidly on his laptop, probably trying to initiate some kind of account recovery process with O

The message glowed on the screen, a digital poison pill: This is just the beginning.Panic was a cold fist in Adrian’s chest, squeezing the air from his lungs. His first, primal instinct was to run—from the room, from Julian, from the catastrophic exposure threatening to vaporize his life. His gaze darted to the door, his body tensing to flee.Julian’s hand shot out, not to grab him, but to slam down on the phone, cutting off the light, cutting off the terrifying words. His touch was an anchor.“Don’t,” Julian said, his voice low and razor-sharp, cutting through Adrian’s panic. “Don’t you dare shut down on me. Not now.” His eyes were blazing, not with fear, but with a furious, focused intensity. “Running is what he expects. We don’t run. We find him.”The command in Julian’s voice—so familiar, so Viper—jolted Adrian out of his spiral. The fear didn’t vanish, but it was met, challenge for challenge, by a surge of defiant anger. He wasn’t in this alone.“Together,” Adrian repeated, the

The door opened slowly. Adrian didn’t move. Julian stood in the doorway, shadowed by the dim hallway light, one hand still on the handle. His expression was unreadable—somewhere between cautious and defiant. The kind of look someone wore when they had just taken a leap they weren’t sure they’d survive. He stepped inside without waiting to be invited. Adrian’s mouth was dry. “You just filmed that.” Julian’s eyes didn’t leave his. “Yeah.” “You were outside my door.” Julian nodded. “Still am.” A silence settled between them like a fog. Heavy. Dense. Unrelenting. Adrian looked away first, heart pounding so hard it felt like something was trying to claw its way out of his chest. “What do you want from me?” he asked, voice low. Julian stepped closer, slow and deliberate. “I don’t want anything from you. I want you.” Adrian’s throat tightened. “You don’t get to say that like it’s simple.” “It is simple,” Julian said, his voice softer now. “You’re just afraid it might be real.” A