All Chapters of PUCKING MY EX BOYFRIEND RIVAL FOR REVENGE: Chapter 81 - Chapter 90

TANYA'S POVMy mother came to campus on Saturday.Not because anything was wrong. No emergency, no appointment, no crisis pulling her away from work. She came because I asked her to, and for the first time all semester, she said yes without doing that mental math she always does about shift coverage and bus fare and whether the money could be better spent on something else.I met her at the south gate right at ten.She looked smaller than I remembered. Not actually smaller—she was still the same height, same build, moving the same way she always did, like there were ten things waiting and she only had time for eight. But standing there on campus with all the big buildings and open lawns around her, she just seemed... out of place. Like she belonged in our little cabin kitchen or the hospital hallways at night, not here in all this space.She pulled me into a hug the second she saw me. A long one. Not the quick hello kind. The kind that says you're really here and you're okay without a

TANYA'S POVThree weeks went by.Not in total silence or anything. Life still had its rhythm—little stuff piling up, adjustments, the kind of small changes that happen when you're actually living instead of just surviving a crisis. But compared to everything that came before, it felt quiet. Peaceful, even. You only really notice how good the quiet is when you've been stuck in nonstop chaos for months and suddenly the air doesn't feel like it's pressing on you anymore.The second-phase proposal kicked into gear. Elias and I spent Tuesday and Thursday mornings in the lab, hammering out the new sample collection protocol. We had to line up the pack medical division's Beta clinic, the campus wellness center, and one more spot Elias pulled through a contact at the regional hospital. I took the wellness center stuff because I'd already built a decent rapport with their admin during phase one. Priya—she's this cheerful Omega-rank woman who apparently read my first paper and had actual though

TANYA'S POVThe cabin looked different in December.Not in a way that would surprise anyone who’d never seen it before. It was still the same weathered wood, the same small windows, the same porch Max built that one summer because he decided we needed somewhere to stand while kicking off muddy boots. But winter changed the feel of it. The trees were bare, the sky was this flat white-gray, and the whole place sat in the clearing like it had grown there instead of being built. Low and sturdy and completely sure of itself.I’d been coming home to this cabin for nineteen years, but I’d never brought anyone here who wasn’t family. Or close enough that the line had blurred. The one time Jess and Gina came early in the semester had been different. That was the cleaned-up version of home. This was the real one.Gideon climbed out of the truck and stood there studying the cabin the way he studies every building. Not like an Alpha checking out territory. Like the nine-year-old who wanted to be

TANYA'S POVCampus looked different in January.Not in any big obvious way. The buildings were still exactly where they'd always been, the paths followed the same routes, and the perimeter lights clicked on at the same time every evening. But something about it felt fresh. Like I'd been away long enough to forget the small details, and now they were all coming back at once. The low hum of the main building's heating system. That faint old-book smell on the ground floor of the library. The way the east quad looked under the flat January light, plane trees still bare, fountain still shut off for winter.I stood at the south gate on the Sunday before classes started and just looked at it all. I know this place. Not the automatic, half-blind way you know somewhere after months of walking through it every day. This was deliberate. I'd stepped away, come back, and was choosing to really see it again.The week at the cabin had helped. It hadn't fixed everything. The tiredness still had layer

TANYA'S POVMax called on a Tuesday in April.Not our usual Tuesday call. That one’s always me checking in on Mom. This was him calling me, which he only does when something’s happened and he needs to say it before the next normal chance rolls around.I was in the library when his name lit up my phone. I slipped out into the corridor and answered.“T,” he said.“Max.” I could tell from that one syllable that this wasn’t small talk. “What happened?”“Something happened with the light,” he said. “I need to tell you before I tell anyone else. Before Seraphine puts it in the notebook.”I leaned back against the cool wall. “Tell me.”He was quiet for a second, not because he was nervous, just getting it straight in his head. “There was this thing at college yesterday. In the common room. Some students were having an episode. Maybe a seizure, maybe something neurological. Campus health wasn’t there yet, and everyone else was just standing around frozen.”“Max,” I breathed.“I went over,” h