CHECK MARK

Wren’s POV

I laughed until my stomach hurt.

Karma is such a bitch!

I laughed and the three most powerful boys at WhiteWood Academy stood in my equipment room and watched me like I had lost my mind.

Maybe I had. I didn't particularly care.

I reached up and grabbed my clipboard off the shelf. Flipped to a blank page. Uncapped my pen.

"Okay," I said, still smiling. "Let's talk about how this is going to work."

Zade's jaw tightened. "Excuse me?"

"You heard me." I wrote his name at the top of the first column without looking up. "You three need my cooperation to survive the bond pressure. I have thirty weeks to decide whether I reject it. You have zero leverage and I have all of it." I tapped the pen against the clipboard, still smiling. "So. Tasks."

The silence in the room shifted from shocked to dangerous. 

"Zade." I rolled my eyes. "Every morning. All eight equipment bags. Full width of campus. You do it in your hockey gear." I wrote it down. "All of it. Every day till I say stop."

His amber eyes went completely still, red leaking into it. “What the hell!?” His voice came like thunder

“I am surprised you aren’t laughing anymore…” I chuckled. 

"Rook." I turned to the next column. He was still leaning against the doorframe but the grin had gone somewhere. Guess who is laughing now. "Every morning you stand outside my first period classroom and you compliment me. Out loud. Sincerely. In front of whoever is watching." I looked up at him briefly. "One smirk and I make the bond pressure your whole personality for the rest of the day."

Rook opened his mouth. Closed it. Opened it again.

“Oh please, shut up!” I countered sharply before he could say anything 

"Cal." I turned to the third column. He hadn't moved. He was watching me with those flat brown eyes and his ring finger was tapping against his thigh. Once. Twice. Three times. "Your private journal. Every day. One full hour. You sit in the same room while I read it and you don't reach for it until I'm done."

I capped the pen.

"Any questions?"

Zade was the first one to speak and it was not a question. "You have lost your entire mind."

"Probably," I agreed.

"I am not carrying your bags."

"Then enjoy the torment." I shrugged. 

"This is …" He stopped. Started again. "You are an omega equipment manager. You do not give orders to Alpha blood."

"I do now." I held up the clipboard. "Funny how that works."

Rook pushed off the doorframe. He spread his hands out in front of him, placating. “Okay. Okay, listen. Let's be reasonable about this. Let's talk about it like adults." He pointed at himself. "Rook is willing to have a conversation. Rook thinks there is a middle ground here…"

I stared at him.

He stopped.

"Did you just…" I looked at him properly. "Did you just refer to yourself in third person?"

"Rook does not know what you're talking about."

I genuinely wondered if he was okay. Like medically. Then I decided it wasn't my problem and turned back to my clipboard.

"I am not standing outside your classroom," Rook said, dropping back to first person, embarrassed. "Do you know who I am? I am the starting point guard for the WhiteWood Falcons. I average twenty-two points a game. I have a reputation…"

"You have a task," I said. "Starting tomorrow."

Cal had not said a single word this entire time. His ring finger was still going. Tap. Tap. Tap. Weirdo

"You'll give me the journal," I said to him directly.

He looked at me for a long moment. Then he said, very quietly, "Yes."

Zade turned to look at him like he was insane. "Cal."

"The bond is real," Cal said simply. "She has the upper hand. We don't." He tapped his ring finger one more time and then stopped. "We do the tasks."

The argument between Zade and Rook that followed was loud and I stopped listening halfway through because I had already won it and we all knew it. I tucked the clipboard under my arm, picked up my bag from the hook by the door, and walked out.

The laugh faded somewhere around the second corner. I didn't notice it going until it was already gone and then I felt the wet on my face and realised I was crying and I genuinely couldn't tell you which one I had meant to do. The laugh or the tears. Both felt true. Both felt like they had been sitting in my chest for three years waiting for somewhere to go.

I bit my cheek. Counted to five.

Three years of writing names in The Ledger and drawing empty checkboxes and waiting.

The moon goddess had just dropped three Alpha-blooded wolves into my equipment room.

I wiped my face with the back of my hand and kept walking.

That night I opened The Ledger to the first blank page I could find. I wrote three names afresh. I drew one checkbox next to each name.

Then I went to sleep smiling for the first time in longer than I could remember.

*** 

The next morning was genuinely one of the better ones I'd had in a while.

I whistled on the way to the cafeteria. Quietly, to myself, but still. I couldn't remember the last time I had whistled anywhere. I was in a good mood and I was not going to apologise for it.

The Voss brothers hadn't shown up to school yet for their tasks and I had been privately entertained all morning imagining what that conversation had looked like after I left. Three Alpha-blooded wolves sitting somewhere trying to figure out how an omega equipment manager had walked out of the room with everything. I hoped Rook had kept the third person going for at least another ten minutes. I hoped Cal tapped his fingers till he passed out. And Zade, I hoped he did whatever weird thing he did when he got nervous. . 

I joined the lunch queue still whistling, tray in hand, thinking about which box I was going to check first.

Suddenly, I felt something trickle down my hair, burning my scalp

Full bowl. Hot. Right over my head. It ran down my hair, my neck, my uniform, soaked through to my skin in about four seconds flat. The queue went quiet first and then immediately, horrifyingly loud. Phones came out. Of course they did. Fucking wolves!

I stood very still.

I turned around slowly.

Eden Thorne looked back at me rolling back her shoulders with a face so blank. Athletic build, five foot five; same height like the other two sisters, short blonde hair, grey eyes She was holding the empty bowl like it had simply slipped.

"Oops," she said.

I wiped a slow line of broth from my cheek with two fingers.

Shit! This animalistic fighter!

The cafeteria was loud and getting louder; laughing, filming. The soup was cooling fast and starting to feel deeply unpleasant against my scalp.

And I stood there dripping and something clicked into my brain

Eden Thorne.

Betrothed to Rook Voss since they were kids

Vera Thorne, the eldest. Betrothed to Zade.

Lyra Thorne, the youngest. Betrothed to Cal.

Three sisters. Three brothers. An arrangement that had probably been signed and sealed before any of them were in secondary school.

And then there was me. Standing in a cafeteria full of phones and laughter with hot soup running down the back of my neck, bonded to all three of them by something neither I nor the Voss brothers had asked for.

I looked at Eden Thorne's blank, furious, carefully controlled face and understood exactly what I was looking at.

I had shattered her entire future and she wanted revenge 

And she had two sisters who felt exactly the

same way.

I was in so much trouble.

Let’s say, I am in deep shit!