The Tea (Adrian's POV)

The corridor outside Lecture Hall B was too quiet. Two hundred students used it every hour, and not one of them dared to breathe near me.

I stopped at the notice board and watched it happen. Heads turned away as I passed. Eyes dropped to phones or shoes. A third-year girl stepped aside before I came near her. I had been avoided before. I had also been flattered, tested, and waited on. These reactions usually came from being a future Alpha of a powerful pack.

This time, it was not about me. It was about Melica. Three Alphas and a healer had stood around one infirmary bed, and the school had decided that the safest thing to do was to save its reputation.

Locker 114 belonged to Stormborn. I had never needed to check the number. Someone had taped a note to the door. Hope you're okay. Under it, a second note. Under that, a wolf badly drawn in ballpoint.

Highvern's seat in Hall B was empty. Montbeau's was not. He was loitering at the locker area. I did not know how long he had been there before I arrived. As soon as we met each other's eyes, he scoffed. I disliked it more than I could justify.

A second-year slowed beside the notes. He read them. He put one finger on the drawing.

"Leave it," I said.

He took his hand back immediately. His gaze suddenly drifted to my face, and when he recognized me, he left. I had not planned to speak. But everybody seemed to be intentionally testing my patience today.

I told myself it was a household matter. She slept under my uncle's roof. Anything that happened to her at this school would be reported at our table, and I would be the one expected to answer. It was reasonable. I stood beside the locker for the rest of the break and told myself I was waiting for the corridor to clear.

It was empty for a while, until I heard a new set of grating voices.

The rumors came from the water fountain. Two girls, barely whispering.

"My cousin says the candle was laced. So it was just her acting upon a stimulant."

"Nobody turns white normally. It must've been a side effect."

"What if she faked being weak? For attention."

"With three Alphas in the room? She didn't need to."

They laughed. It was a thin sound.

I had heard worse. I turned my head and looked at them until they noticed.

They stopped. One of them became very interested in the ground before all of them had the presence of mind to leave.

Taunting them was not the same as ending the rumors. I knew that. But I had never tried to end it before. Why start now? I did not know why either.

My uncle told me about the arrangement in his study when I was sixteen. After tea. He read it out like a schedule. Succession. A mate with a calm head. And the Stormborn girl, when she came of age. She was fifteen then, three weeks inside our house, grieving and loud. I didn't like her. I didn't hate her either.

In my mind, I put her nowhere. That was easier.

My name was Silverstrung. It was my late father's name, and my aunt's before she married. It was not Arvaunt, and I kept it that way. I didn't need to flex my Alpha connection outside our pack. I used the student entrance. I stood in the canteen queue. I had never sat at the reserved table. People called it humility. It was not. Privilege was a load-bearing wall in somebody else's house, and I didn't want to lean on it.

Until today.

That evening, I drove them home myself. The family driver had offered. I declined, as I always did.

Stormborn sat in the front seat. She held Highvern's jacket folded in her lap. Why didn't she return it there and then? Never mind. I just ignored it as it lay there like it had been issued to her.

Angeline sat behind her. She said nothing. In the mirror she watched the back of Stormborn's head.

I took the main gate out. The service lane was faster.

At the maple tree corner, Stormborn's hand went to the door handle.

It was habit. Her fingers knew the spot on the road before she did.

Nobody said stop.

I drove on. Her hand stayed on the handle through the curve. Then she let go.

Yesterday, Angeline said to stop the car, and I stopped it. Stormborn looked at me in the mirror and said my name. I told the windshield it was Angeline's call.

My aunt taught me that. Years ago, her hand was on my collar. Alphas do not fight every fight, Adrian. If you defend her openly, you make her a target and yourself a favorite. Let the girls sort it out. It sounded like wisdom. I obeyed it for three years and called it discipline.

Today I took the gate. It was the first decision I had made about her that was not somebody else's instruction.

The house was lit and quiet. My uncle stood at the hall window with his back to the door. He did not turn when we came in.

Stormborn went up the stairs without a word. Angeline hesitated at the library door and went inside.

"White," my uncle said.

He was still staring at the glass. One word.

"Uncle?"

"Is she hurt?"

"Fever. Exhaustion. Healer Odile says she will recover."

He nodded and left. He kept the door open as if this conversation was not yet the end of it.

My aunt stood by the hall table where the kitchen had sent up a tray. She set a cup into its saucer with great care. Nothing rattled. Her hands were steady. I had never seen them otherwise.

"Adrian. You've had a long day." She came to me and straightened my cuff, though it didn't need straightening. She was the only person who touched me without asking. I had stopped minding it years ago. She had always been motherly to me. Maybe because she had always wanted to be the one to bear the heir to Alpha Arnold.

"How is she?" she said.

"Awake. Feverish. She is not talking."

"She wouldn't." My aunt lifted the cup from the tray and held it out. "A calming blend. The healers recommend it for the blood weakness her mother had. Take it up to her."

"Why not Angeline?"

"Angeline has had enough today. And Melica will take it better from you."

"Why?"

"Because you won't fuss." She smiled. It was warm. Like always.

I took the cup. The tea was amber, with a pale film on top that did not stir in. It smelled of honey. Under the honey was something bitter-smelling. It was like root and wet slate.

Her medicine always smelled like that.

Melica's room was at the end of the east corridor. It was smaller than the others. I had not been inside since the week she arrived.

I knocked. "It's Adrian."

"Come in." Her voice was a lot more collected than I expected.

She sat on the bed with her back against the wall and the jacket still in her lap. It was a narrow bed. Beside it was a desk. At the top was a shelf with one trophy on it, the Lycan History Quiz Bee, turned to face the wall.

I looked at the trophy.

"Aunt Cordelia sent tea." I held out the cup.

"Thank you." She did not take it.

"Drink it."

"Is that an order?"

"It's tea."

She took the cup. But she still didn't take a sip. She must have still been traumatized.

"In the infirmary," she said. "You said a claim built on choice doesn't need a mark. Whose choice?"

"I was making a point."

"To who?"

I did not answer. That was an answer, and she knew it.

"How long have you known?" I said. "About the arrangement."

She turned the cup in her hands. "Since I was fifteen. Through a study door."

I had not known she knew. Three years. She had sat at our table for three years knowing.

"I didn't ask for it either," I said.

"Were you asked?"

"No."

"Then we agree on something." Something pinched inside me.

I tried to retain my seriousness.

"I don't like you."

"Good," she said. "It saves time."

"It's not personal."

"You said it to my face. It's very personal."

"I said it to your face because it's true."

"That's not better."

She finally drank. She knew that refusing my aunt's tea would have been rude. And she knew that she couldn't afford to be rude. I knew that about her. Growing up together, I think I had known her before I even knew myself.

Two minutes later.

She set the cup down. The saucer rattled. "Adrian," she said. "I think."

She did not finish.

The color left her face. The crescent on her wrist flared silver, then dimmed in stages, like shutters closing one at a time. For half a second, her eyes went gold. Then they went dull.

Her skin was burning when I touched her. I put my hand on her forehead. I needed to call for help.

Her pulse beat in the hollow of her temple. Fast. Then slower. Through the door I could hear the clock in the hall.

"Melica?" Finally.

"Angeline!" I said, louder.

She was in the room before I finished. She dropped to her knees by the bed and put both hands on Melica's ribs. A pale light ran under her palms.

Melica said nothing. She looked at the wall with her jaw clenched. She let Angeline's hands glow over her with her eyes on the trophy that faced the wall. She stayed quiet throughout the session.

I had watched her take a lot of things from the edge of a room. Yesterday I would have called this an inconvenience and left it to the healer. Today I could not make myself stand up.

Angeline's hands stopped over Melica's ribs. Her face changed. She reached past me for the cup, lifted it, and breathed in.

"It's chamomile," she said.

She said it too fast. Chamomile smells like hay. This had smelled like wet slate. Her thumb pressed the rim of the cup until the nail went white.

"I'll take it to the kitchen."

"No."

I took the cup out of her hand. Angeline looked at me. For once she did not smile.

She sulkily went back to healing until the fever broke. Melica's breathing slowed. Then she slept with her face turned to the wall.

Angeline stood and glanced at Melica, who hadn't looked at her once. Defeated, she left without a sound.

I carried the cup to my own room. I wrapped it in a handkerchief. I put it in the bottom drawer of my desk and turned the key.

I did not know what I was keeping it for. I knew Angeline had lied, and she lied badly.

Down the hall, a light showed under Melica's door. I stood in the dark corridor with one hand on the wall. It was my house.

I told myself I was just making sure the fever did not return.