Veronica’s Proposal

"A whoring thief."

That was what I walked into.

Not the usual low-grade hostility I'd learned to navigate like furniture in a dark room,  this was different. The hallway was silent in the specific way that meant everyone already knew something I didn't, hundreds of eyes narrowing the moment I appeared. That whisper cutting through the quiet like it had been waiting for me to arrive before it said itself out loud.

I stopped walking.

Whoring thief.

I turned the words over slowly, trying to find where they connected to anything I'd actually done. My mind snagged briefly on two nights ago,  the club, the stranger, the cash I'd taken from his nightstand, and I felt the faintest heat rise to my face before I pushed it firmly back down.

Nobody knew about that. Nobody here knew anything about that.

Which meant something else was happening. Something I hadn't seen coming.

I kept walking.

The corridor had gone so quiet I could hear my own footsteps.

"Yeah, that's her." Another whisper, not even bothering to be subtle about it. "The whoring thief."

I stopped again and turned around fully this time.

"Got something to say?" My voice came out steadier than I felt. "Say it properly. Stop hiding behind whispers like cowards."

The silence stretched. Feet shuffled. Nobody quite met my eyes.

Then Bianca stepped forward from the cluster of bodies near the lockers, Lydia and Charlotte flanking her like quotation marks, and the shape of it became clear.

Of course. The three mistletoes. It was always the three mistletoes.

"The audacity." Bianca looked me up and down with the particular contempt she reserved for moments she'd been planning. "You actually showed up today. After stealing my money."

"Stealing your—" I stopped. Breathed. "I haven't been near your money."

"Then explain why it was found in your locker."

The pieces assembled themselves quickly and coldly. I hadn't touched her money. I didn't need to — I had my own, tucked at the bottom of my bag, taken from a nightstand in a penthouse by a girl who'd spent one night feeling like a person and was apparently still paying for the audacity of it.

But nobody in this hallway was going to believe that version.

"You planted it," I said flatly.

Bianca smiled. "Prove it."

"Why should I? To make you feel better? Go love yourself. Watch some YouTube videos or something."

"I know my self-worth quite fine," She countered.

Something suddenly snapped.

Not the careful, controlled anger I'd spent years managing, the kind that lived behind my sternum and knew better than to come out. This was something older and rawer, fed by every morning I'd woken up before dawn, and every night I'd gone somewhere else inside my own head just to survive. It came up fast, and I didn't stop it.

"Let me tell you something about self-worth," I said, loud enough for every phone currently pointed at me to capture it clearly. "Self-worth isn't three people ganging up on one omega and planting evidence in her locker because they have nothing real to feel good about. That's not it. That's fear."

The hallway made a sound — not quite a gasp, not quite silence. Something in between.

Bianca's face went red.

"I'll show you fear," she said and swung her fist.

I was too slow. I knew I was too slow even as it happened. She was one of the pack's best female warriors, and I was an omega who'd never been trained for anything except endurance. The crack of my jaw resounding through the hallway confirmed it.

I saw red.

I didn't make a decision. My body made it for me, launching forward, years of accumulated fury finally finding a direction, fists connecting with everything I'd never been allowed to say out loud. I was distantly aware of the screaming around us, the phones still recording, the specific satisfaction of watching something I'd built up in my imagination actually happening.

Then hands were yanking me backwards, and I was looking up at the principal's face, which was doing something complicated between fury and disbelief.

"Enough." He looked around at the circle of spectators still clutching their phones. "Every single one of you, get back to your classrooms. Now."

"Four of you, follow me. Now!" He spat.

His office smelled like old paper and disappointment.

I sat and let the mistletoes talk, tuning in and out with the practised detachment of someone who already knew how this ended. The principal's face as he listened told me everything, the slight nod when Bianca spoke, the particular set of his mouth when my name came up.

"Selene." He said it like a verdict. "Stealing. Fighting. I expected better."

I didn't correct him. Saving my breath for things that might actually change outcomes was a skill I'd been developing for years.

Detention. Dismissal. The mistletoes shooting looks at me in the corridor afterwards, and that said clearly this wasn't over,  just paused, rescheduled, arriving later in a form I wouldn't see coming.

The class passed in a blur, and hours later, I walked home.

The pack house was quiet when I pushed the door open, that mid-afternoon stillness before everyone returned and the noise started again. Even Veronica seemed to read or see something in my face because she looked at me, opened her mouth, and then closed it again.

A small miracle.

"Pack up the dishes in the Alpha's library," she said instead. "Do that, and I'll let you rest until the others get back."

I nodded and went.

The library was empty when I arrived, or so I thought. I was stacking the last of the dishes when I heard his voice from the adjoining room, low and unhurried, carrying through the gap in the door with perfect clarity.

"Using her as a sex slave isn't enough."

I went absolutely still.

"Atlas." Luke's voice, careful. Measured. "You rejected her. You've already taken more than—"

"I want to use her to breed omegas."

The dishes in my hands were the only thing that kept me in the room. I set them down slowly, one by one, with the concentrated deliberateness of someone who understood that if she didn't focus on something small and physical, she was going to come apart entirely.

Breed.

Like I was livestock. Like the body he already used without permission could be assigned a purpose, a function, a future that had nothing to do with anything I wanted from my own life.

I picked up the tray. I walked out of the library. I kept my face empty and my steps even all the way down the corridor.

I didn't let myself feel it until I reached my room and closed the door behind me.

Then I sat on the edge of my bed and thought about a stranger's laugh and careful hands and the particular way he'd looked at me, like I was something worth being careful with, though I wasn't his mate, and maybe I don't deserve him, but I am sure I don't deserve cruel life. Then, I understood for the first time with complete clarity that I couldn't stay here.

Whatever it took.

However long it took.

I was leaving.