CHAPTER FIVE: THE NEW PACK SCHOOL

Derek's hands stayed easy on the wheel, but his voice had shifted into something different. Not threatening, not cold. Instructional. Like he was briefing a soldier before a mission.

"I'm not asking you to perform," he said. "I'm not asking you to smile at everyone or laugh at my jokes or pretend we grew up together. That would look fake, and people here can smell fake from across a room." He glanced at her. "Literally."

"I know how wolves work," Lily said flatly. "I've been one my whole life."

"Then you know what I'm about to say." He returned his eyes to the road. "You're new. Omega. No known pack history, no established rank. To everyone at Silver Creek High, you appeared out of nowhere and moved into the alpha's house. That makes you interesting. It also makes you a target."

Lily's fingers tightened around the strap of her backpack. "Targets."

"Not dangerous ones. Mostly just curious wolves who want to know where you fit." He paused. "And some who'll want to make sure you fit below them."

"Wonderful."

"All you have to do is follow my lead. You're my stepsister. You're new. You're quiet because you're adjusting, not because you're weak. There's a difference, and they need to see that difference." He drummed his fingers once on the steering wheel, a single restless beat. "Don't worship me. Don't avoid me. Don't flinch when I talk to you."

That last one landed like a small stone in still water.

Don't flinch.

As if he knew she'd been practicing flinching since yesterday afternoon.

"And if someone asks questions I don't want to answer?" she said.

"Redirect. Say you're still getting settled. Say the move was a lot. Both of those are true." He turned off the main road onto a narrower one lined with birch trees, their white trunks catching the early light. "The goal is boring, Lily. We want to be the least interesting story in that building."

"You're the future alpha. You're never the least interesting story."

His mouth curved, just slightly. Not quite a smile. An acknowledgment. "Then you want to be the least interesting part of my story."

Lily looked out the window and said nothing.

The birch trees gave way to a wide clearing, and Silver Creek High School appeared at the end of the road like something out of a catalog for small-town dreams. It was two stories of dark brick and tall windows, older than it looked, with climbing vines gone red at the tips and a lacrosse field stretching out behind the east wing. A banner above the front entrance read GO WOLVES in faded green and silver.

She almost laughed. Go wolves. Sure.

The parking lot was already half-full, students gathered in loose clusters, leaning against cars, scrolling through phones, throwing their heads back in laughter. A normal Monday morning. A normal school.

Except every single person in that lot had a wolf sleeping just beneath their skin.

Derek pulled into a spot near the front—of course he did, she thought; the future alpha probably had a reserved space—and cut the engine. Neither of them moved for a second.

"You ready?" he asked.

"You're going to ask me that whether I say yes or no, and we're getting out of this truck either way." Lily reached for the door handle. "So why bother—"

"Wait." Derek's voice was quiet, not commanding, just quiet. She went still. "I'll come around."

"I don't need you to open my door."

"It's not about need." He was already unbuckling his seatbelt. "Half this parking lot is looking at us right now. You step out alone, you're just the new girl. You step out after I open the door, you're someone I've already decided to take care of." He met her eyes across the center console. "Those are two completely different things at this school."

Lily stared at him.

He looked back at her, patient. Waiting.

This was the thing she hadn't expected about Derek Stone—that he would be logical. She'd built him into something in her mind over three years, something with teeth and cruelty and careless violence. She hadn't built him into someone who thought ten steps ahead and explained every move like she deserved to understand the reasoning.

She let go of the door handle.

"Fine," she said.

He got out. She watched through the windshield as he circled the hood of the truck, and she watched—tried not to, but did—as the parking lot responded to him. It wasn't dramatic. Nobody stopped talking, nobody pointed. It was subtler than that, the way attention shifted, the way a few heads turned and then held, the way conversations dropped a register without quite stopping. A boy near the steps lifted his chin at Derek in acknowledgment. A girl by a silver sedan smiled. Somebody called his name from across the lot, and Derek raised one hand in a brief wave without looking over.

He didn't seem to notice any of it. Or he'd stopped noticing years ago, which was somehow worse.

He reached her door and pulled it open.

Lily climbed out.

The October air was cold and bright, tasting of pine and something electric, the particular sharpness of a morning after rain. Her sneakers hit the asphalt and she straightened up, and for one breathless moment she felt the weight of two hundred pairs of instincts swinging toward her like compass needles finding north.

Not staring. Not exactly. Just—noticing.

Werewolves didn't stare with their eyes the way humans did. They catalogued. She could feel it, the way they were quietly pulling apart her scent, reading what she was, filing it away. New. Omega. Unknown. The mental calculation of where she ranked, happening in a hundred minds simultaneously, as automatic as breathing.

Her hands were shaking.

She pressed them flat against the sides of her thighs, willing them still.

Don't let them smell your fear.

Derek closed the truck door behind her and stepped up beside her—close, but not touching. She was aware of him the way you were aware of a fire in a dark room. Warm. Potentially dangerous. Impossible to ignore.

"Breathe," he said under his breath. His lips barely moved.

"I am breathing," she said through her teeth.

"You're not. Your shoulders are up around your ears." He started walking toward the building at a pace that was unhurried without being slow. "Breathe. Shoulders down. You're bored, remember? Not scared. You've moved schools before, it's annoying, whatever, you'd rather be somewhere else."

"That last part isn't even a lie."

"Good. Hold onto it."

She fell into step beside him and she breathed, properly this time, pulling the mountain air all the way down. She let her shoulders drop. She thought about being bored. She thought about Luna, still at the cabin, watching the forest through the window—

And then, like something warm being pressed against her sternum from the inside, Luna's presence pulsed through the bond.

It wasn't words. Luna didn't do words. It was pure sensation, steady and golden, the wolf equivalent of a hand held in the dark. I'm here. You're not alone. You can do this.

Something loosened in Lily's chest.

She lifted her chin.

They were halfway across the parking lot now, and she kept her eyes forward, resisting the pull to look at the clusters of students around her. She could see them in her peripheral vision, faces turning toward her and away, that same fluid, unhurried assessment. She caught the flash of a girl with red hair whispering to someone beside her. A tall boy near the building's entrance was watching her with open, uncomplicated curiosity. A group near the bike rack had gone slightly too quiet.

"That's Jonah," Derek said, barely audible, as they passed the tall boy by the entrance. "Beta. Good guy. He'll come find you at some point, don't be weird about it."

"Define weird."

"Don't tell him you hate it here before lunch."

Lily almost said I make no promises but swallowed it.

They reached the steps. The boy who'd lifted his chin at Derek from across the lot was waiting there, arms crossed, backpack slung over one shoulder. He had dark skin, close-cropped hair, and the particular easy confidence of someone who had grown up standing next to power without being consumed by it. He looked at Derek first, then at Lily, and his expression opened into something genuinely warm.

"So it's true," he said. "You actually brought her in the truck."

"Where else would she be?" Derek said.

"I told Marcus you'd make her take the bus on principle." The boy grinned at Lily and held out his hand. "I'm Caleb. I lose a lot of bets about this guy."

Lily shook his hand. "Lily."

"I know. The whole pack knows." He said it without malice, just fact. "Don't let that freak you out. Small territory, news travels fast. By tomorrow everyone will have decided what they think about you and moved on to something else."

"Caleb," Derek said, a note of mild warning.

"I'm being helpful." Caleb held the front door open and gestured for Lily to go first. "Welcome to Silver Creek High. I'll give you the actual tour, since Derek's version will just be emergency exits and pack hierarchy."

"The emergency exits are important," Derek said.

"There it is." Caleb grinned at Lily like they were already sharing a joke. "I'm your people. Remember that."

Despite everything, despite the shaking hands and the borrowed courage from a wolf two miles away and the strange crackling awareness of Derek moving through the door beside her, Lily almost smiled.

Almost.

The inside of Silver Creek High smelled like every school she'd ever been in, industrial cleaner, chalk dust, the warm press of too many bodies in not enough space, and also like nothing she'd been in before. Underneath all of it ran a low current of pack, the particular layered scent of wolves who had grown up together, whose histories were wound around each other's, whose instincts had been reading the same territory for years.

She was an unfamiliar note in a song that already knew all its parts.

The hallways were busy with the loose, loud energy of a Monday morning. Lockers slammed. Someone laughed too hard at something. The squeak of sneakers on linoleum echoed off cinderblock walls painted a deep green. Silver Creek's colors were everywhere, green and silver, go wolves, the banners and the bulletin boards and the painted paw print on the floor at the main corridor's intersection.

Lily stayed close to Derek, and she hated that staying close to Derek was the right call.

He moved through the hallway the way he'd moved through the parking lot: without effort, without performance, like water finding the lowest path. Students parted slightly without seeming to mean to. Conversations redirected. Eyes flicked to him, to Lily, back to their own business. Nobody stopped them. Nobody needed to. Derek's presence was its own announcement.

The alpha's son. The future leader. And the girl walking beside him.

"Main office is down the left corridor," Derek said quietly, for her ears only. "You'll have to go in first period to get your schedule finalized. Caleb can wait with you if you want."

"I can find an office on my own."

"I know you can." A pause. "But you don't have to."

Lily glanced at him sideways. His profile was unreadable, eyes forward, jaw easy. He looked like a boy walking through a familiar hallway on an ordinary Monday.

He didn't look like someone who had spent the night holding a secret hostage.

She looked away.

They reached a corridor intersection, and Derek stopped. "This is where I leave you for first period. Caleb will walk you to the office." He glanced at her one last time, and there was something in those gray eyes she couldn't quite name—not concern, not quite, but something adjacent to it. "You did fine in the parking lot."

"I haven't done anything yet."

"You walked across it without running." The corner of his mouth moved. "For some people, that takes a while."

Then he turned and walked away, and the hallway closed around him like he'd never been in it at all.

Lily stood at the intersection and breathed.

Caleb appeared at her elbow, cheerful as a weather forecast she hadn't asked for. "So," he said, steering her gently toward the left corridor, "fair warning: everyone's going to ask you what Derek's like at home."

Lily thought about last night. Derek in her doorway. Derek's voice, quiet and certain. You owe me a life-debt, omega. The handshake. The spark.

"What do I tell them?" she asked.

Caleb considered this seriously. "Boring," he said. "Tell them he's completely boring at home. Watches nature documentaries. Goes to bed at ten. Boring."

"Is that true?"

Caleb smiled, slow and thoughtful. "Honestly? I have no idea. He doesn't let most people close enough to find out."

He pushed open the office door and held it for her.

Lily walked through it, chin level, hands steady at her sides, Luna's warmth still pressed like a small sun behind her ribs.

One morning, she thought. Just get through one morning.

The office smelled like old coffee and paper. A woman at the front desk looked up with a kind, professional smile.

"You must be Lily Morgan-Stone," she said. "We've been expecting you."

Morgan-Stone. Her mother's name and Kane's name, hyphenated, official. Already in the system. Already on file.

Already belonging to this place whether Lily wanted it or not.

She smiled back and stepped up to the desk, and somewhere down the hallway, in a classroom she hadn't found yet, she knew Derek Stone was sitting down and opening a notebook and beginning another ordinary day.

An ordinary day of keeping her secrets.

An ordinary day of making her pay for them.

One morning, Lily reminded herself, accepting her schedule from the woman's outstretched hand.

She looked down at the paper.

Second period: AP Literature. Room 14.

She found Room 14 on the class map, traced the route with her finger.

Then she looked at the name printed beside it on her schedule.

Instructor: Mr. Voss. Also enrolled: Stone, D.

Of course.

Lily folded the schedule in half and tucked it into her pocket.

She had seven minutes before the bell.

She used all of them standing by the office window, watching the birch trees at the edge of the parking lot catch the morning light, thinking about nothing at all.