LOGINFranklin’s POVI saw it coming and couldn’t stop it.Rydan moved the way he moved when the thing underneath him took over before the rational part caught up… fast and direct, and the teammate in the doorway barely had time to register that the smirk had been a mistake before Rydan reached him.They went down together.The teammate hit the changing room floor and Rydan was on him and the sound of it brought everyone who had been leaving back into the room with the immediate, involuntary response of people hearing something they didn’t expect to hear. The fight was not even in the way that fights between two people of comparable strength are even. Rydan was operating from somewhere that wasn’t entirely him, and the teammate was on the floor receiving all of it, and the other players were grabbing at Rydan’s arms and his jacket and his shoulders and making no progress at all.I watched four of them fail to move him and understood that this was going to go badly in multiple directions sim
Rydan’s POVI didn’t say anything about the mark.I looked at it in the lamplight and registered it with the part of me that catalogued things requiring attention, and then Franklin shifted and the collar of his shirt moved and it was covered again, and I made the decision I had been making more frequently than was good for either of us… to hold the information until I had something useful to do with it rather than introduce it into an evening that had already been enough.He needed rest. He needed to be treated like a person rather than a situation. I sat with the mark in the back of my awareness and let the evening be the evening.Morning arrived and with it the specific weight of a match day, which had its own gravity regardless of what else was happening.Franklin moved through the preparation with the focused quiet of someone who had decided what the day required of him and was aligning himself to it. I watched him from the edge of the room and continued not mentioning the mark,
Rydan’s POVI was off the sofa before Bruno had completed his first step toward the hallway.“Stay here,” I said to Franklin.I didn’t look back to confirm he had heard it. Bruno was already moving and I followed him, which was an instinct I had developed over six years with him… he had never once oriented that way toward nothing.The hallway was lit and ordinary. The coat hooks, the side table, the runner on the floor. Bruno moved along it with his nose low and his ears forward and his tail doing nothing, which was the version of him that I took most seriously.He stopped at a door.The room at the end of the east corridor, which we had been using for storage and overflow since we arrived… boxes, some of my things, equipment bags from the match. Bruno stopped in front of it and sat down, which was not the behaviour of a dog who wanted to go through a door. It was the behaviour of a dog that had decided its job was done and the rest was my responsibility.I put my hand flat against th
Rydan’s POVI went to the window first.The property beyond the glass was dark and still, the security lights casting their fixed pools across the driveway and the gate and the stretch of path between them. Nothing moved within any of the illuminated areas. I extended my awareness through the glass and into the cold air beyond it and followed the scent that had pulled me forward.It was there. Close enough to be deliberate, faint enough to be deniable.Then it moved.Not toward the house… away, laterally, along the outside of the property wall, and then gone, the way these things went, between one moment of tracking it and the next of losing it.I looked at Franklin.He was asleep. Genuinely, deeply, his face turned slightly away from me, completely absent from the present situation in the way that people are when their body has taken the decision out of their hands.I went downstairs.The grounds were cold and the security were at their positions and nothing was out of order in any v
Rydan’s POVThe nozzle was still in the tank when Franklin’s voice came through the window.“Hurry.”I didn’t need the instruction. I had already registered the flicker and the particular quality of silence that followed it… the station’s ambient hum cutting out for the half-second the lights wavered, and in that half-second the absence of it was louder than the hum had been. The other cars at the pumps hadn’t moved. The attendant was still visible through the glass, looking at his phone.But something had changed in the air.I replaced the nozzle and got back into the car and Franklin was already looking straight ahead in the way he looked when he was managing something internally and didn’t have the bandwidth to speak while doing it. I started the engine and we pulled out onto the road and I kept the speed consistent without making it look like speed.I watched the mirrors for a full four minutes.Nothing followed. The road behind us was ordinary… other cars with ordinary reasons fo
Rydan’s POVI moved to the window first.The engine sound was coming from the direction of the road we had turned off, which meant whoever was driving it had found the track. Not stumbled onto it… found it, which meant they had either followed us more carefully than I had believed or had a different means of locating us than headlights and road sense.I went to Franklin and put my hand on his shoulder.“Franklin.” Firm, not gentle. “Wake up.”He made the sound of someone leaving sleep reluctantly, which under other circumstances I would have let him have. Not now.“Franklin.” I squeezed his shoulder. “Now.”He came up blinking, taking in the dark of the cabin and my face and the expression on it and moving through the stages of orientation faster than most people managed. “What…”“Car,” I said. “On the road. Get up.”He was on his feet.I told him quickly… the engine sound, the direction, the conclusion. He listened and nodded and we moved toward the cabin door and the car beyond it,
Calen’s POVI lay in bed that night, staring at the ceiling, trying to make sense of what I was feeling.My emotions toward Karl were growing deeply. Becoming something I couldn’t ignore or explain away as just physical attraction or fear-driven compliance.It didn’t make sense. I should hate him.
Calen’s POVThe words echoed in my head, impossible and terrifying.‘He’ll try to kill you.’“Can I leave?” I asked, my voice barely above a whisper. “Please. I need to go.”Morrison looked at me for a long moment, then nodded slowly. “Of course. You’re free to leave whenever you want.” He paused,
Calen’s POVThe walk back to my dorm felt longer than usual. My mind kept circling back to training, analyzing every interaction with Karl, trying to understand what had changed.He’d been professional. Completely, frustratingly professional. Like I was just another swimmer on his team, nothing mor
Calen’s POVI unfolded the paper slowly, aware of Jeff leaning over my shoulder to read it.A phone number was written across the top in neat handwriting. Below it, a simple message:‘Text me. We need to talk.’No name or explanation. Just a number and a cryptic instruction.“Is that his number?” J







