Another day in the hell hole

/Selene's POV/

He was there again.

Not Atlas. Not the rejection.

Him. The warmth of his hands, the pine and woodsy scent of him, his voice low against my ear, saying something I couldn't reconstruct but that made my whole body lean toward the sound.

I woke up flushed, heart beating faster than sleep could explain, a warmth pooling low in my stomach that I had absolutely no framework for.

I pressed my hand against my cheek and felt the heat there. My core was hotter, and I could feel the dampness in my panties.

So that's what that feels like.

Athena made a sound that could only be described as smug.

Don't, I warned her.

She ignored me completely.

Monday. 5:20 am. I sat up, willed my pulse back to something reasonable, and gave myself exactly ten seconds to sit in the remnants of whatever that was before the day began its usual assault.

Ten seconds. Then I got up, because Veronica wouldn't wait.

She was already in the kitchen when I came downstairs, radiating drama as if it were a personal fragrance.

"How gracious of you to join us, Madam Selene." She threw her hands up. "I was just about to come and escort you out personally."

"I actually waited for you," I said sweetly. "I was disappointed when you didn't show."

The scowl she produced could have sent me to an early grave. Her eyes went wide and slightly bulging in a way that reminded me powerfully of an owl that had received bad news.

"Don't get smart with me. You're cleaning my room today on top of everything else." She pointed at the stack of dishes on the counter. "Start there."

I looked at the dishes. I looked at her. I smiled. I enjoyed toying with Veronica because she had never physically assaulted me, and with the way I get away with things, she doesn't plan on doing so anytime soon.

She stormed out before I could say anything else, which was probably wise of her. Or me.

The dishes took less time than she'd hoped, I was sure. The sweeping took even less. I'd cleaned this house so thoroughly yesterday that there was genuinely nothing left to find.

By the time Veronica appeared to send me to her room, I was almost in a reasonable mood.

Then I opened her door.

"What," I paused, "happened in here?"

It wasn't a question. Questions implied there might be a rational answer. What I was looking at defied rationality, clothes colonising every surface, the floor barely visible beneath layers of Veronica's particular brand of chaos, the bed looking like it had witnessed a small natural disaster and lost. She had done this deliberately. This was a Saturday's worth of mess created overnight out of pure spite.

Oh, how Veronica loves torturing me!

I stood in the doorway for exactly five seconds, mourning my life choices.

Then I got to work, because there was nothing else to do.

I sorted the clothes by smell, the only reliable method when someone had apparently thrown both clean and dirty garments into the air and let gravity decide. Made the bed. Dusted every surface from the ceiling downward because doing it any other way was just moving dust from one place to another. Vacuumed. Swept. Organised her belongings with the precise, controlled movements of someone who was absolutely not thinking about how satisfying it would be to throw everything out the window.

The bathroom was its own adventure. I restocked. Scrubbed. Considered, briefly, doing a mediocre job just to make a point, then decided I hated working twice more than I hated Veronica and did it properly.

I emerged from her room an hour and a half later, closed the door quietly behind me, and stood in the corridor doing the arithmetic.

I was going to be late for school.

Not that school was a sanctuary. It was the same pack, just with desks and a bell system. But it was time outside these walls, and that was worth something.

I could hear the pack house filling up, voices, footsteps, the particular energy of everyone moving toward the same exit at once. I went to my room, twisted my platinum blonde hair into a quick bun and hopped in the shower. Quick and efficient. I was out in minutes, pulling on my blue jeans and black tank top, lacing up my worn canvas shoes that were having a structural crisis; they weren't going to survive much longer.

New shoes, I thought, remembering the cash tucked at the bottom of my bag. His cash.

I didn't let myself linger on that. It led to other thoughts — warmer, softer, entirely counterproductive — and I had a school day to survive.

Phone. Earpiece. Bag.

I headed downstairs.

"Special occasion?" Veronica pointed out in the hallway, with the timing of someone who had been waiting. "A new boy to sleep with?"

I didn't break stride.

"Bye, Nica." I sailed past her. "Take good care of the house while I'm gone."

The noise she made followed me to the front door.

Outside, the morning air was cool, and the path to school stretched ahead, familiar, unglamorous, mine for the next twenty minutes at least.

I walked and tried not to think about what was waiting at the other end. The pack members who'd be there. The particular configurations of cruelty that school days offered,  different rooms, same people, same methods, dressed up in different clothes. I knew them all by now. I knew which corridors to avoid and which silences meant danger, and when a smile from someone who never smiled at me meant I should change direction immediately.

I knew the rules of surviving this place the way I knew the rules of surviving everything else.

But something felt different this morning. A low, wordless unease that had nothing to do with Veronica or the dishes or the hour spent on my knees scrubbing someone else's bathroom floor.

Athena was quiet but not in her usual hollow way. She was alert. Coiled. Listening for something I couldn't hear yet.

What is it? I asked her silently.

She didn't answer. She never answered the things that mattered, anyway.

I kept walking, the pack house shrinking behind me, and tried to ignore the feeling settling in my chest like a stone dropping through still water.

Something was coming.

I didn't know what. I didn't know when.

I just knew that the morning felt too quiet, not peaceful, but waiting. The way everything goes still, right before it breaks.