The School That Looked Away

Spurn’s POV

The day before our eighteenth birthday, I almost made it through lunch without being noticed. Almost. I had waited until the cafeteria line was nearly empty, hoping the crowd around Morgan would be too busy laughing to look my way. My tray held a small sandwich, a bruised apple, and a carton of milk. It was more food than I usually saw before evening, and my stomach cramped hard enough that I had to force myself not to eat while I walked.

I kept my eyes down and aimed for the last table near the windows, the one no one used unless every other seat was taken. Three more steps, I told myself. Two. One.

Morgan stepped into my path.

The cafeteria quieted around us in that cruel way crowds did when they sensed entertainment coming. Dominik stood behind her with Camron and a few warriors-in-training, all of them wearing the same bored smiles, like my humiliation was something scheduled between classes.

“Where do you think you’re going, slave?” Morgan asked.

My fingers tightened around the tray. “To eat.”

Laughter spread around us like spilled poison. Dominik looked me up and down, his lip curling. “Eat? You mean steal pack food?”

“I paid for it with school credits,” I said before I could stop myself.

Morgan’s smile sharpened. “Listen to her. Acting like credits make her equal to us.”

Then she slapped the tray from my hands.

The sandwich burst open across the floor. Milk splashed over my shoes and soaked into the hem of my jeans. The apple rolled beneath a table, and someone kicked it back toward me hard enough to bruise the skin. For one heartbeat, no one moved. Then the cafeteria exploded with laughter.

My hunger twisted into something humiliating and sharp. I stared at the ruined food and told myself not to cry. Not here. Never here.

“Clean it up,” Morgan said. “That is what slaves are for.”

I knelt. My knees pressed into the milk-slick floor, and my hands shook as I gathered the broken sandwich back onto the tray. The apple had rolled beneath a table, just out of reach. When I stretched for it, Dominik stepped forward and kicked it back at me with the toe of his boot. It struck my fingers hard enough to make me flinch, then rolled through the puddle of milk and crumbs. A cruel smirk tugged at his mouth as he watched me crawl for it. Laughter broke around us, louder now, braver because the Alpha heir had joined in. Someone whispered that I should eat it off the floor like the stray I was. Dominik only smiled wider. That was all it took. One smirk from him, one small act of cruelty, and the whole room remembered what I was to them. Unwanted. Untouchable. The slave no one had to protect. I swallowed the shame, picked up the bruised apple, and lowered my eyes before anyone decided I had looked too long. This was normal for me. This was expected from them. This was only one more humiliation I had to survive.

I reached for the tray and forced my legs beneath me. My knees slipped once in the milk, and more laughter snapped through the cafeteria. I kept my head down anyway. If I could get to the trash, if I could throw the ruined food away, if I could make myself disappear before Morgan got bored enough to make this worse, then maybe I could still make it to class before the bell.

I only made it two steps.

Dominik’s hand clamped around the back of my arm and yanked me to a stop. Pain shot from his fingers straight into the bruise already forming beneath my sleeve. The tray tilted in my hands, milk dripping from the edge onto the floor between us.

“Where do you think you are going?” he asked.

I swallowed around the knot in my throat. “To throw it away.”

His smirk sharpened. “Did Morgan say you were finished?”

Morgan laughed softly behind him. “No. I was still enjoying the show.”

Before I could answer, Dominik shoved me.

Not hard enough to break anything. He was too careful for that. Dominik knew how to hurt without leaving evidence a teacher could not ignore. His palm hit my shoulder, and my feet slid out from under me on the wet floor. The tray flew from my hands. My hip struck the tile first, then my elbow, then my cheek. Pain flashed sharp behind my eyes.

The cafeteria went quiet for half a breath.

Then Camron snorted.

The laughter came back louder than before.

“Careful,” Dominik said, his voice full of false concern. “Slaves should know better than to walk where real wolves are standing.”

My cheek burned against the cold tile. Milk soaked into my sleeve. Crumbs stuck to my palm. Around me, shoes shifted, but no one moved to help. I could feel every stare like fingers pressing into my skin. Teachers stood near the cafeteria doors. I knew they saw. I knew they heard. But seeing me had never been the same as saving me.

Morgan crouched beside me, close enough that her perfume cut through the sour smell of milk.

“Do not forget your place tomorrow, Spurn,” she whispered. “Eighteen will not change what you are.”

Tomorrow. Our birthday. My stomach twisted, but not from hunger this time. Everyone talked about eighteen like it was freedom, like a wolf coming forward could change everything. But I had learned better than to trust days on a calendar. Birthdays belonged to Morgan. Freedom belonged to wolves who were wanted.

I pushed myself up slowly, refusing to look at Dominik, Morgan, Camron, or anyone else. If I looked, they would see too much. Pain. Shame. Hunger. The tiny, stubborn piece of me that still wanted to survive out of spite.

When they finally let me go, I carried the tray to the trash and threw away the only meal I would probably see that day. My elbow throbbed. My cheek stung. Milk dried cold against my sleeve, and the bruised apple hit the bottom of the trash can with a soft, final sound that made my stomach cramp.

The bell rang while I was still wiping my hands on a rough brown napkin. Chairs scraped back. Students flooded toward the doors, and I slipped into the edge of the crowd because being swallowed by bodies was safer than standing alone.

It did not matter.

The whispers followed me into the hall.

“Did you see her fall?” someone laughed.

“Fall?” another voice answered. “Dominik put her where she belongs.”

“On the floor?”

“Where else would a slave go?”

I walked faster, but the hall had never felt longer. Lockers blurred on either side of me. The smell of milk lifted from my clothes every time I moved. My cheek pulsed with each heartbeat. I could hear my own breathing, shallow and careful, under the laughter that rose and fell behind me like a tide.

At my locker, someone had already smeared a line of cafeteria milk across the metal door. Beneath it, written with a marker in jagged letters, was one word.

UNWANTED.

For a second, the hallway disappeared. All I saw was that word. All I heard was Morgan’s laugh, Dominik’s voice, my father calling me thief, my mother saying nothing at all. I pressed my sleeve over the letters and wiped until the marker smeared black across my cuff instead of the locker.

Then I gathered my books, walked into math class, and sat in the back with one arm pressed against my aching ribs and the other curled around my pencil like it was the only weapon I owned.

A math test waited on my desk. I picked up my pencil with aching fingers and answered every question. They could take my lunch. They could take my pride. They could make the whole school look at me like I was less than nothing. But they would not take my mind. I would graduate. I would earn my way out. If no one was coming to save me, then my grades would have to be the rope I used to climb out myself. We graduate next month, and I have counted every day like it is a stone in my pocket.