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049— HER HEARTBEAT.
publish date:
2026-05-20 22:20:44
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OFFSIDE MATE: REJECTED BY ONE ALPHA. CLAIMED BY ANOTHER. 049— HER HEARTBEAT.
~KAI~I lost her in under four minutes.Four minutes of walking with my head somewhere it had no business being.Distraction, I'd called it, distraction, what was wrong with me? I looked up and the amber of her lantern was gone and the forest had swallowed her completely.I stood very still, closed my eyes and listened.Nothing. Just the trees doing what trees did at night and the sound of my own breathing and the absence of her footsteps which I had apparently been tracking without knowing I was tracking them.Sloane.I turned and walked fast and then faster and the forest was identical in every direction at night and I was running calculations — how far she'd walked, what direction, whether she'd gone left at the split or straight, and underneath the calculations something else was running that I didn't have clean language for.Fear.Real fear. I swept the lantern wider and caught it on the ground — a flash of red. I crouched.The ribbon. Lying on the leaves, pulled
OFFSIDE MATE: REJECTED BY ONE ALPHA. CLAIMED BY ANOTHER. 048— "HELP."
~SLOANE~I grabbed the lantern and walked.He fell into step behind me without being asked which was annoying because I had been planning to walk fast enough that he'd have to ask and now that plan was ruined.The forest swallowed us quickly. Two minutes from the building and the noise of the team was already muffled and then gone. It was just trees and darkness and the circle of amber light our lanterns threw ahead and the sound of leaves under our feet.I walked faster.He kept up without trying.A red ribbon appeared tied around a tree at the edge of a path to our left. I looked at it."Why are there red ribbons," I said. "What do they mean?""You should have asked Coach Petrov," he said. "He explained everything at the start.""I was being dragged across a courtyard during the start.""You were walking.""Under duress.""You—""Just tell me what the ribbons mean.""Boundaries," he said. "Don't cross them.""Boundaries for what."He said nothing.I looked at him
OFFSIDE MATE: REJECTED BY ONE ALPHA. CLAIMED BY ANOTHER. 047— "YOU'RE WITH ME TONIGHT."
~SLOANE~The team was already outside when Anya and I got there.All of them. Jackets, lanterns, people who had been cooped up in a mountain building for two days and were being given permission to go into a forest with fire. The sky was doing that thing it did at dusk in places with actual darkness — going purple at the edges, stars already bleeding through before the sun had finished leaving.Luka saw me first.He always saw me first. I didn't know how he did it — he was standing at the back of the group and I was barely through the door — but his eyes found mine immediately and held there with that unblinking weight and I held it back because I always held it back and then I looked away because Luka was someone I was choosing not to think about tonight.Coach Petrov was mid-announcement."—known as the Lantern Descent. Each member will be paired with a partner. Together you'll carry your lanterns and use your map to locate three carved tokens hidden in the fore
OFFSIDE MATE: REJECTED BY ONE ALPHA. CLAIMED BY ANOTHER. 046— GOOD.
~SLOANE~My heart did one hard kick against my ribs.Then I frowned."I don't understand what you're—""If you become my mate," he said, "the mark could go away. If the bond is strong enough." His hand closed around my forearm. Warm. He leaned closer. "I'd make sure it's stronger. You'd be okay. You'd be safe. You wouldn't have to—""Stop."I pulled my arm back.He blinked.I looked at him. At his red eyes and his shaking hands and his wrecked face — and felt the anger arrive the way it always arrived when something hurt badly enough. "You don't get to decide that," I said. "You don't get to just walk in here and offer me a solution like I'm a problem on your desk.""Sloane—""I heard you." My voice came out steadier than I felt. "On the rooftop. What you said to Niko."He went still."You said you didn't want to do it," I said. "That you wouldn't. That there had to be another way." I held his gaze. "And now I'm in a hospital bed and suddenly you want to be my mate."
OFFSIDE MATE: REJECTED BY ONE ALPHA. CLAIMED BY ANOTHER. 045— HE RAN.
~SLOANE~I lay in the dark after the bonfire and stared at the ceiling and thought about the way he'd looked at me from across the fire.No emotion.Not the almost-smile. Not the silver threading into his eyes when something was happening underneath the control. Just even and nothing, the way he looked at rooms before he decided whether they were threats or not.He had called everything nothing.Standing in my doorway with that even voice. ‘None of anything happened, I apologize for the inconveniences’, and walked out and I had stood there wanting him to stop, wanting to say his name, wanting to take back the word I'd used because the look on his face when I said it had done something to my chest that I was still feeling three hours later.‘Molest.’I closed my eyes.I hadn't meant it the way it landed. I'd been scared and furious and the word had come out before I could pick a better one and I had watched it hit him and watched him go somewhere behind his eyes tha
OFFSIDE MATE: REJECTED BY ONE ALPHA. CLAIMED BY ANOTHER. 044— "SHE..."
"You're really leaving your girl down there with him?"I was already moving toward the stairs.Niko's laugh followed me through the door. …The bonfire was large and loud and the whole team was arranged around it in various states of relaxation. Someone had found speakers. Someone else had found additional drinks. The coordinator — a third-year called Jae who apparently ran every social event the team had ever attended, was moving around the circle with the energy of someone who had been born for exactly this.I stood at the edge of it and looked for her.Found her in four seconds.She was sitting across the fire with Daniel beside her, close enough that the firelight caught both their faces at once. He said something near her ear and she laughed, the unguarded one that came out before she decided whether to let it, and my hand closed into a fist at my side.I looked away.Found a space at the outer edge of the circle and stood in it and looked at the fire and told
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