CHECKMATE

Wren’s POV

The full moon was doing its thing outside and I was doing mine in here. I couldn’t care less. 

The whole school was screaming and laughing on the main field. This damn compulsory full moon party every month! I hated it. Tell me about “ fostering relationship between IronPeak pack and LakeDale pack, and encouraging mate bonding,” rubbish 

I had been in here for four hours organising shin guards by size and I had zero regrets about missing it. I’ve never dreamed of a mate and I hope I don’t get one, ever

The equipment room was mine. Not officially. Officially it belonged to the athletics department, which meant it belonged to whoever was loudest and most important, which meant it would never belong to me. But nobody cares about this room. And since I had stayed in it the longest, it was mine in every way that counted. Hell, I designed it to my taste and nobody had ever once thanked me for the work I put in there; but who cares

In here, everyone forgot I existed. I was fine with that. Mostly.

The red notebook on the top shelf was mine too. I called it The Ledger. In there I wrote every wrong, every name, every moment, and checked off when I was done with it. It is a very fulfilling habit, you should try it sometime

My phone buzzed on the shelf above the skate bag rack.

Grandma flashed across the screen and I picked up before the second ring.

"You outside with the others?" Her voice was thin but warm, the way it always was after nine, when that sickness of hers is smothering her. I’d rather be with her than be at school. She sounded tired. 

"I'm working," I said.

"Wren."

"I'm fine, Grandma."

"You said that last month. And the month before." She coughed once, short and sharp, and I stared at the shelf in front of me and waited for it to pass. "The moon is pretty tonight. I can see it from the window. You won’t find a mate…"

"How's the pain?"

"I didn't call to talk about the pain. I called to hear my granddaughter's voice." A pause. "Did you eat?"

"Yes," I said.

"What did you eat?"

I looked at the half-empty protein bar on the shelf beside my clipboard. "Food."

She made a sound that meant she knew I was lying and had decided to let me keep the lie. "I'll make the pepper soup by morning ."

"Fine," I said. "Get some sleep."

"Love you, baby."

"Love you."

I held the phone for a second after she hung up. Then I set it down, picked up my clipboard, and went back to the shin guards.

I was almost done when the door opened.

I didn't turn around. I knew it wasn't maintenance because maintenance never came at night. I knew it wasn't a coach because coaches knocked, at least once, out of some leftover instinct toward manners. The people who walked into rooms like they owned them without checking first were always the same people. I'd learned to identify them by sound alone.

Three sets of footsteps. Heavy, unhurried. The particular silence that came with Alpha blood walking into a space and rearranging the air pressure.

Of course.

Of course it was them.

"Equipment check," Zade Voss said, behind me. 

I kept sorting shin guards.

He was six foot two and the captain of the IronPeak Wolves and he had brown hair and amber eyes and a jaw that looked like it had been put together by someone with a grudge against ordinary people. I knew what he looked like. The whole school knew what he looked like. That did not make him less irritating. I cursed under my breath. 

"Nobody scheduled an equipment check," I said.

"I'm scheduling one now."

I heard Rook before I saw him, because Rook Voss was constitutionally incapable of being in a room without filling it with noise. He was leaning against the doorframe when I finally turned to grab the next bag, six foot two like his brothers, green eyes, blonde hair, the kind of easy grin that made people trust him easily; well except me. He was pointing at me.

"Still in here alone on full moon night," he said. "Every single month. Is this a bit? Is she doing a bit?"

"She does the same bit every month," Zade said.

The third one said nothing. Cal Voss was standing slightly apart from his brothers, watching. Brown eyes, sandy hair, angular face. He tapped his right hand against his thigh once, his ring finger leading. I had no idea what that meant. I had seen him doing that before, but I also didn't care.

"The gear is logged and sorted," I said. "You don't need to check anything."

"She speaks," Rook said.

"She always speaks," Zade said. "Unfortunately."

Rook chuckled 

"You know what your problem is?" Zade's voice moved closer. "You take up too much space in places that don't want you."

I was a size sixteen. I was five foot seven and I had dark auburn hair and grey-green eyes and I weighed more than the beauty standard at WhiteWood Academy said I should. I was reminded every fucking single day

I kept my back to them and kept working. These old insults don’t hurt me anymore 

"Seriously," Rook said, and his voice had shifted into the tone that meant the joke was coming. "How does she fit in here with all the equipment? Isn't it crowded?" He said the last sentence with deep bass, gesticulating with his arms spread out

Ouch! That hurts. Instinctively, I bit my lips and counted to five inside my head. At five, the tears stinging at the corners of my eyes goes away. 

They kept going. I kept working. This was the arrangement. They talked. I did not react. I had stopped reacting in year one when I figured out that my reaction was the whole point.

Suddenly, I felt something as I was reaching for the last bag 

It felt like the floor stopped being flat. Like something inside my chest cracked open in a direction I didn't know existed. I staggered, catching the edge of a table before I went down. A helmet bounced off the floor. I stayed bent over the shelf, both hands gripping the metal, breathing.

Behind me, they all went silent. 

Hmm… that was new. 

The Voss brothers had not been silent in my presence in three years. 

I stayed where I was. My whole body was ringing, shaking. I knew what this was. Everyone at WhiteWood knew the legend. Everyone in every pack knew it. The triple bond was the rarest thing in recorded pack history and it hit all four wolves at the same time and the only person who could end it was the omega it chose. Now I am that omega. 

Thirty weeks refusal window.

Their cooperation with me was the only way they survived the bond's pressure.

I had the upper hand.

I straightened up slowly. Fixed my ponytail. Picked up the helmet from the floor and put it back on the shelf. Then I turned around and looked at all three of them for the first time.

Zade Voss. Rook Voss. Cal Voss. Standing in my equipment room with their mouths closed, staring at me like I had just b

ecome the only thing in the building.

I started laughing.