Ruined By The Alpha

The locker screamed at 11:07 pm.Metal doesn't make that sound unless something is tearing it open from the inside. I was standing in the dark hallway outside the varsity locker room with my inhaler in my pocket, and I heard steel give way one slow claw at a time.I shouldn't have been there.My name is Theo Ellis. I'm nineteen. On the roster I'm on the university swim team. In real life I'm the benchwarmer with the asthma file who times laps and learns how to be invisible.That's the hierarchy. Coach at the top. Then the A-relay. Then Karl Maddox above all of them. Then the rest of the team. Then me, somewhere under the bleachers where no one has to remember my name.Karl is twenty-one. Captain. Three school records. The kind of golden boy who walks into a party and everyone moves for him. For two years he has looked through me in the locker room. That's the deal. Gods don't talk to ghosts.I only came back because I'd left my inhaler in locker 14. My chest had been tight since dinne

I hadn't swum a real warm-up in two years.I timed laps. I handed out kickboards. I sat behind the blocks with my stopwatch and my inhaler and watched Karl cut through the water like he was born in it.Now I was standing on the block next to him at 5:17 am in borrowed jammers that were too big, with his blood drying on my neck and his eyes still gold at the edges."Watch me," I'd said.He was."Two hundred easy," he said. "Don't try to keep up. Just don't drown."He dove first. Clean. No splash. I went after him a second later, messy and loud.The water was cold at first, then perfect. My lungs opened up. My arms remembered. For fifty meters I wasn't the ghost with the asthma file. I was just a body moving.Karl stayed half a body length ahead, pacing me. Every time I breathed right, I saw him watching me from the next lane.We hit the wall together.He surfaced and pushed his hair back. "Again."We did four more two-hundreds. By the last one my chest was burning, but not from asthma.

The footsteps stopped outside the bedroom door.Three sets. I could hear them through the wood, through the blood pounding in my ears. My skin was on fire and too tight at the same time. Another cramp rolled through my stomach and I bit down on a groan.Karl didn't move off me. He pulled the blanket higher and tucked my head under his chin, one big hand splayed across my back, the other still on my neck."Stay quiet," he breathed, so low only I could hear. "They can't see you like this."The handle turned.It didn't open. Locked.Jace's voice came through. "Maddox. Open up. Alpha wants the human downstairs."Karl's eyes were full gold now, lit from behind. His voice when he answered didn't sound human. "He's in my bed, Jace. You really want to come in here?"A pause. "He's shifting early. I can smell it from the hall. You didn't even wait for the moon.""Not your business.""It is when you hide a latent in your room on a bleed night," another voice said. "Pack law says—""Pack law say