Mag-log in"I don't know what you're talking about."The words came out flat and unadorned, exactly as I had intended. I kept my expression at the setting I had maintained since my first week at Silvermoon — baseline: unremarkable, slightly confused, not worth further attention.Vale looked at me in the manner
The rules of the competition translated cleanly.Paint on the head, the heart, the abdomen: elimination. Each team carried their assigned color — the omegas had been given white. The point structure was simple: mark a vital zone, acquire the score. This wasn't so different from an engagement that re
Callan laughed.The sound had the quality of someone filing the statement as: joke, clearly, and waiting for the punchline. He looked at Vale the way you looked at someone who'd said something absurd — expecting, any moment, for the frame to shift and the real meaning to arrive. When it didn't, when
The kick landed before I had processed the approach.I turned around. Delilah Vance stood above Mia with the expression of someone who had just confirmed a theory. Her group was arranged behind her — not stepping forward, not stepping back. An audience, correctly positioned.Mia was already pushing
I had been standing there long enough to hear the whole argument.Not by intention. I'd crossed through the eastern training ground on the way back from the parking lot and tracked the voices the way you track anything that might require attention. Most things don't. This one had my name in it, so I
The bell rang somewhere outside my line of vision.I didn't hear it cleanly. I felt it as a vibration traveling through whatever I was already falling into.My arms had stopped responding in the correct sequence. I registered this carefully and without panic — it was not new information, only newly







