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052— IN HIS BEDROOM.
تاريخ النشر:
2026-05-24 17:43:19
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OFFSIDE MATE: REJECTED BY ONE ALPHA. CLAIMED BY ANOTHER. 052— IN HIS BEDROOM.
~SLOANE~The last note fell and the room applauded and I stood there with tears running down my face and couldn't move.Daniel appeared at my side. "Sloane? Hey — what's wrong?" His hand touched my arm and I felt nothing except the lump sitting so heavy in my throat. "Sloane, talk to me. What happened?"I shook my head because it was all I had. I couldn't explain it, couldn't even begin to find the shape of words for it, so I just turned and walked and pushed through the nearest door and the cold night air hit me like a wall.My knees found the ground before I'd decided to sit.And then I just — broke. Completely. Coming from somewhere below your ribs and taking everything with it on the way out. My hands were pressed to my face and my shoulders were shaking and I was thinking about her hands. The way her fingers felt over mine on the keys, the way she'd hum slightly off-key and never notice or never care. He had listened. He had stood in that corridor and lis
OFFSIDE MATE: REJECTED BY ONE ALPHA. CLAIMED BY ANOTHER. 051— HE HAD LISTENED.
Warmth. That was the first thing I noticed in the mirror — not the gown, not the silver, not the way the fabric caught the light. Just that I looked warm. My hands found the clasp without thinking. Elena had taught me months ago and apparently my fingers remembered even when my brain was elsewhere. The zip sat right, the side panel covered the rejection mark completely, and I stared at my neck for a long moment before I let myself look at the rest.Then I did, and I smiled. A real one.The Grand Hall was the kind of enormous that pressed against your chest when you walked in. Chandeliers hung from ceilings that seemed to dissolve into their own shadow, crystal throwing light across carved gold walls in patterns that shifted every time someone moved through them. It smelled like candle wax and white flowers, and the sound of it rose all the way up the staircase to where I stood and took one slow breath.Then I walked down.I felt the room notice before I saw it happen. Conversation
OFFSIDE MATE: REJECTED BY ONE ALPHA. CLAIMED BY ANOTHER. 050— THE SILVER ONE.
~SLOANE~Warmth.That was the first thing. Just warmth, everywhere, the kind that went all the way through instead of sitting on the surface and I wanted to stay near.I kept my eyes closed.My cheek was against something solid and warm and rising and falling slowly and I was wrapped in something that smelled like — him. Cold air and something that was just him, specifically him, and I had been cold for so long that the warmth felt like something I deserved to stay inside for a little while longer.Then reality arrived.My eyes snapped open.Cave ceiling. Kai's face, eyes closed, jaw relaxed, his arms around me and my cheek against his chest and his jacket wrapped around my entire body.WHAT THE HELL!I sat up and put both hands around his throat.His eyes opened slowly. Blinked and found my face.He looked completely unbothered by the hands around his neck which was somehow the most infuriating thing about this entire situation."You pervert," I said.His eyes snap
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
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