Chapter 5: Treaty Threat

Leslie POV

"Oh, feisty," she said, watching me stumble backward as I fought to hold the rage curling beneath my skin. "Does anyone know who the hell this person even is?"

I clenched my teeth so hard my jaw ached, every sleepless night she and her mother had cost me rising up my throat like bile.

"You know what, Giselle, let's leave her alone. I'm sure she's a nobody." One of her minions flicked a hand at me and shoved past, and Giselle swept by after her, elegant and untouchable, like I wasn't even worth the effort of a second glance.

That was almost worse than the insult. A nobody. As if the six years I'd spent clawing my way out from under my mother's shadow meant nothing the second I stepped through these gates. As if Stacy had never existed at all — which, technically, here, she didn't. Only I knew how much effort it took to keep it that way.

"Let's go, Leslie, it's time for assembly." Risel appeared at my side like she hadn't just vanished on me for ten minutes. "It's where everyone introduces themselves to the rest of the school."

I barely heard her. My mind was still snagged on Giselle, on how she'd gotten here at all. Only one invitation had been sent to our pack. One.

"Leslie." Risel's voice sharpened, yanking me out of the spiral.

"Right. Let's go." I forced my feet to move, my nails already biting crescents into my palms.

The hall was already thick with bodies by the time we arrived, every pack and creature lined up to introduce themselves one by one. Names blurred past me, Alpha this, Beta that — none of it landing, none of it mattering. My thoughts kept circling back to the same locked door: one invitation, sent to one pack, addressed to one name. Mine. I hadn't imagined it. I'd held the letter in my own hands the night before I burned every trace of my old life to get here.

So how was she standing in this hall at all.

I wasn't really listening — not until a voice cut through the noise and stopped my heart cold.

"I'm Giselle Dominic, only daughter of Alpha Dave of the Adrastea Moon Pack."

The words hung in the air like a slap.

I didn't remember deciding to move. One second I was in line, the next I was across the hall, my hands fisted in the front of her uniform. The room erupted — gasps, someone's chair scraping back, a hundred eyes swinging toward us.

She had no right. No right to that name, that title, that invitation.

She'd stolen it. Stolen my letter.

I don't even remember the first hit landing. I just remember the heat that tore down my arms as my claws ripped free, my ears shifting with them, betraying exactly what I was to a hall full of strangers.

"Hey — it's okay, it's okay." Hands closed around my shoulders from behind, firm enough to hold me but careful, like I was something that might shatter. I fought it for one more second before the fight drained out of me all at once.

I turned, and the words died in my throat.

He was beautiful in a way that made the air feel thinner. Dark eyes that found mine like he already knew something about me I hadn't said out loud yet. "Are you okay?"

I opened my mouth — and that was when the doors banged open.

"Both of you. Detention." An old woman with curling horns and a voice like grinding stone pointed a single finger between me and Giselle, and the whole hall went silent enough to hear my own pulse.

***

The walk to detention should have felt like a punishment. It didn't. Giselle stayed a full step ahead of me the entire way, and even from behind I could see how hard she was breathing, how her hands wouldn't quite stay still at her sides. She was the one who'd played victim in front of the whole school — and yet I had never felt more satisfied with myself in my life.

Right up until she stopped walking, and something in the set of her shoulders told me the satisfaction had never really been mine to keep.

She turned, and the look on her face made every fur on my arms rise.

"You know, Stacy, I never wanted to get involved in your business here." Her voice dropped, sweet and slow, like she was savoring it. "You made the right call, leaving the pack house. But this is my school now. And I will not stop, not for a second — until I watch you get expelled from it."

The world tilted.

Stacy.

Nobody here was supposed to know that name. Nobody but Risel. I had buried it the night I left, buried it so deep even I sometimes forgot it belonged to me. My legs locked where I stood, ice climbing up through my chest, my breath catching somewhere it refused to come back down from.

How.

How did she know.

Giselle just smiled — slow, victorious, cruel — and turned the corner without waiting for an answer, like she'd already won something I hadn't known I was playing for.

My heart slammed against my ribs so hard it hurt, my vision blurring at the edges, and I couldn't tell anymore if I was about to be sick or about to shift right there in the hallway.

That was when he caught my shoulders again from behind, steadying me before my knees gave out completely.

"Hey," he said quietly, close enough that I felt it more than heard it. "Who's Stacy?"