Chapter 2 Caius
The library at Westpoint is not for reading.
It’s a monument to money, to blood, to the kind of history that makes ordinary people kneel.
Ceiling like a cathedral, windows that filter daylight into black and bruise.
Each bookshelf is older than the United States, oiled wood, glass locked against the touch of students with less than three generations in their blood.
And yet… here she is. Tucked into a chair, reading some fucking book I can’t make out the title of.
I take the upper alcove, where I can see the entire floor through a mesh of wrought iron.
From here, I have full sight lines on every aisle, every corner, every security camera tucked into the stonework.
The air’s heavy with dust and the sharp chemical stink they use to keep the leather from rotting. I like it up here.
No distractions.
Contrary to what they say about me, I do enjoy reading. I mainly read the history of Westpoint, but I’m also a fan of horror.
Ophelia sits alone at a table below. The others avoid her, like she’s radioactive or contagious, which is both true and smart.
Her shirt hangs off her shoulders—some thrift-store thing, blue and already thinning at the elbows.
She reads the way people smoke: slow drag, slow exhale, page by page.
Her hair’s down, dark and too shiny, as if she doesn’t know the only way to survive here is to blend in with the wallpaper.
Hazel eyes flick over the text, never looking up, but I know she senses the watching.
She’s not even pretty, not by Westpoint standards.
Soft in places that should be sharp. Her hips spill over the sides of the chair, her posture a little too relaxed for this place.
Not a runner. Not a fighter. When she stretches, the hem rides up and her stomach creases, her stomach spilling over her jeans.
I should be bored. She’s nothing. A player, deposited to pay off her father’s debts. She isn’t competition, not even a target.
But I can’t look away.
Her lips move as she reads. I wonder if she does it at home, or just here, to annoy the girls who hate her.
There are ways to survive at Westpoint; being invisible, or being so grotesquely visible that nobody wants to touch you.
She’s picked wrong. The other girls whisper when she passes, and the faculty are worse.
I saw one of the janitors spit into her mop water after Ophelia walked by.
She turns a page. The sleeve falls to her elbow.
The skin there is marked—small, oval scars, maybe from a curling iron, or a mother who loved cigarettes more than children.
The effect is unguarded, unfinished. I curl my hand around the balcony rail and squeeze until the veins pop.
The iron is cold, but I can feel my own pulse through it.
An urge overcomes me to destroy whoever marked her like that.
She’s not supposed to matter. She’s a file on the Dean’s desk, a future compliance officer at some dead-end company, or more likely a dropout.
But watching her, I feel the bones of my jaw tighten, the pressure climb behind my eyes.
I imagine her in the woods during the Hunt—bare legs, panic sweat, a tangle of hair caught in the thorn brush.
I imagine her tripping, eating dirt, looking up with a mouth full of blood and crying for a father who’d already sold her off.
She’d make a fucking fantastic spectacle.
Especially when I shove my cock in that sweet cunt and claim her as the woman to carry on my bloodline.
Fuck me. I don’t know how The Board knew she’d be my poison, how her curvy little body would seep into my veins, but they did.
She’s not at all my type, and yet something about her makes my blood boil.
My cock throbs and begs me to split her open, pump her full of cum. Make her round, rounder, with my children.
Fuuuuuuuck. I should hate her.
I do. I do hate her. I hate everything she is. Poor. Unworthy.
She deserves every punishment I will dole out because women like her are the unruly kind that aren’t valued by men like me.
She tucks a lock of hair behind her ear, and the line of her throat pulses with the movement.
I trace the distance from her neck to her clavicle, then down, mentally mapping every inch I could bruise, every tendon I could snap.
That’s how I learned to control the world—by knowing exactly how and where it would break.
My vision narrows. For a moment, the room is just the two of us, her flipping pages, me imagining the sound her voice would make as her ass claps against me.
A heat gathers under my skin. My breath won’t slow, even though I order it to.
I drag my nails against the inside of my palm, hard enough to leave grooves.
She dog-ears a page. That’s when I know she’s doing it on purpose, as if mutilating a library book is some tiny rebellion. I nearly laugh, but the sound would echo.
She stretches again, rolling her shoulders, and this time I watch the bra strap slip into view.
It’s the wrong color for the shirt—plain black, not even a brand.
I wonder what it would feel like to wrap my fingers around her neck and squeeze until she made a noise.
Would she scream, or go limp, or try to fight?
I count her blinks: six per minute, every one lazy, slow.
Her face isn’t nervous, exactly, but there’s a tension in her mouth that says she’s waiting for the next bad thing.
She’s been trained for disappointment. Maybe that’s why I hate her, or maybe I just want to see how far she can bend before she snaps.
My eyes are dry as I forget how to blink. I don’t allow myself the luxury. I watch until my pupils ache with the strain of holding her in place.
When she finally gathers her books and stands, I grip the railing so hard it leaves a pattern in my skin.
For a half-second, I picture her legs buckling, picture me catching her by the hair and jerking her back to her seat.
I picture the room emptying, the lights dying, the only thing left her breath and my hand around her neck.
Instead, I keep my hands at my side and watch her leave, hips swaying, steps uneven on the stone floor as she heads to the computer. She glances up at the balcony once, eyes lingering just left of where I stand.
She can’t see me, but she knows I’m there.
She sits, typing away until she nods and heads to the back, coming back with a folder and sitting back in her spot, opening her notebook and grabbing a pen.
I file the moment away. Later, I’ll use it. For now, I exhale, slow and steady, until the pounding behind my eyes fades. I check my nails—half-moons of skin and blood packed under the tips.
She’s not a runner. But she will be.
And when she runs, I’ll be waiting.
I barely hear him come up the stairs. Typical—Colton could break into a bomb shelter and never trip a wire. He’s the kind of silent that feels evolutionary, the kind bred in because it keeps your throat uncut at three in the morning.
He leans into my field of view, ghost-white and half-shadow, eyes blacked out by the slant of light from above. For a second we don’t speak, and the only noise is the air conditioner and the soft cough of pages turning below.
“You taking the job a bit seriously, aren’t you?” His voice is dry, the kind that always sounds like it’s making a joke even when it isn’t.
I don’t answer. I can feel him behind me, just outside the reach of my elbow, his attention focused on the spot where my gaze burns holes through glass.
“I mean, I’m the stalker of our little group. I thought we had that established.” He flicks a speck of dust off the iron banister and tucks his hands into his pockets, shoulders slouched, relaxed. All a lie.
Still, I keep my eyes on Ophelia. She’s making notes now, tongue caught at the corner of her mouth, every line on her face etched with intent.
I catalog every movement, even the ones that shouldn’t matter.
The flex of her thigh as she shifts in her seat.
The barest tremor in her left hand as she writes.
Colton watches me watching her. “You wanna talk about it?”
“Fuck off,” I say, steady and low. If I turn, he’ll see something I don’t want to admit. I grind my molars until I taste copper.
He leans closer, breath barely disturbing the air near my ear. “Never seen you so fixated on a mark before. Especially one like her.”
He says it soft, but the dig is sharp enough to draw blood. He knows what she is—a nothing, a piece of driftwood on the edge of our sea. Even less. A memo. A bill, paid in advance by a loser father.
“Did she bewitch you, or did they up the stakes for this year’s Hunt?” He laughs, no warmth. “Because you look like you wanna fuck her or kill her, and I honestly can’t decide which would disappoint your old man more.”
I turn slow, just enough that he can see the muscle in my jaw working. “You don’t want to know what would disappoint my old man. And you don’t want to make me repeat myself.”
He doesn’t flinch. “That’s where you’re wrong.”
He nudges my arm with his, friendly on the surface, but I feel the challenge in his bones. Colton hates chaos, but he loves the edge before chaos happens. He likes to see what will break first. He wants to see it in me.
Ophelia licks her finger to turn a page. The movement is stupid, childish. I hate her for it. I hate the heat that crawls up my neck and the way my vision narrows to her hands, her mouth, the perfect spot on her throat where a pulse thuds desperate beneath the skin.
Colton watches my pupils contract, then flicks his gaze back to her. “She’s not even that pretty.”
“That’s not the point.” The words are out before I can stop them.
“So what is?” He folds his arms on the rail, mirroring me, matching my stance. “You gonna claim her at the Hunt, or you gonna eat her alive first?”
I clench my fists. The knuckles go white, then numb. “Don’t fucking start, Colton.”
He shrugs, but it’s a weapon, not an apology. “Just saying. You’re acting like she’s yours already.”
He’s not wrong, and that’s the problem. I want to carve my name into every inch of her. I want to see her break, and then I want to see what’s left.
“She’s not even worth it,” Colton says, but his eyes never leave her. “You know that, right?”
I let the silence hang. If I break it, I’ll break more than that. Below, Ophelia gathers her books. She stands, and for a second, our eyes meet—through the haze of distance, through the latticework of iron and stone. I see the glimmer of recognition, the first spark of fear.
Colton says nothing, just watches the moment stretch, then snap.
When she’s gone, he finally says, “You’re fucked.”
He’s right.
But so is she.
When the library empties, the real work begins. The night guard sweeps once, twice, never bothering with the upper galleries. Colton sprawls on the bench opposite me, chin tipped back, arms folded loose across his chest. He watches me more than the room.
I track Ophelia through the glass windows, following her down the path outside. She moves like she knows she’s watched, even when she’s alone. I memorize the pace of her steps, the angle of her elbows, the way her left heel drags on the landing. Each flaw is a story. Each flaw is leverage.
I close my eyes. The air tastes like candle wax and old leather. I try to bury the fantasy ripping through me as she disappears from view, but it burrows deeper. Instead, I let it out.
She’s on her knees, forehead pressed to the marble, breathing hard through her teeth. My hand in her hair, twisted until her scalp pulls tight. I force her chin up, make her look me in the eye. There’s a question there: Will you break me, or will I break you?
She spits blood on the floor, defiance etched in the curve of her lip. I smile, because I know the sound she’ll make when she finally gives in. I crave it, the moment of collapse, the taste of surrender that’s part hate, part need.
The fantasy isn’t about sex, not really. It’s about ownership. About knowing that the Board will give me a green light to do whatever I want, as long as I keep the blood off the Persian rugs. The Hunt is a game, but I don’t want the game. I want the aftermath.
She fights. I let her. The harder she pulls away, the tighter my grip. I press her down until her nails scrape lines into the stone, until her body shudders and the fight drains out. Then I let her breathe. Then I let her remember who holds the leash.
It’s almost beautiful, the geometry of it: one body bent to the will of another, violence shaped into something you can pass down like a family ring.
I blink and I’m back on the balcony, hands clamped to the railing, sweat cold between my fingers.
Colton speaks without looking at me. “The Board won’t like this.”
“Don’t care.”
He huffs a laugh, all breath. “She’s meant to solidify the future, nothing more, certainly not an obsession. You’re meant to claim her at the Hunt, not before. Don’t go fucking this up for the rest of us.”
My lips thin into a line because he’s reading my thoughts. Invading my fantasy. “It’s handled.”
He sits up, cracking his spine, eyes slitted. “You keep saying that, but I see you lose your shit every time she’s in the room.”
I don’t answer. The urge to knock his teeth down his throat is almost overwhelming. But I need Colton. He’s the only one in this school who understands that the line between predator and prey is thinner than a fucking razor blade.
He stands and stretches, rolling his head until the vertebrae click. “Whatever you say, boss.” He lingers a second, then steps into the stairwell, vanishing the way he always does—leaving a void in his wake.
I stay until my legs are numb. Until the world outside is nothing but black and the library is just a shell. I run my hand along the balcony, slow, feeling the iron bite into my palm. I leave a line of sweat behind, a small marker that I was here, watching.
I step into the corridor, heel-toe, just like a soldier. I know every security camera blind spot; I helped design the system when my father bought the first surveillance upgrade. I cut through the hall, passing empty classrooms, the smell of bleach and failure ghosting in the air.
On the way out, I catch her reflection in a side window, standing at the edge of the quad, clutching her books to her chest, eyes scanning the darkness. She looks up, straight at the glass, and I swear she sees me. She doesn’t flinch.
For a breathless second, it’s just the two of us, separated by thirty meters and six inches of bulletproof glass. She raises her chin. I smirk, raising my fingers in a small wave.
She turns, hair flying, and is gone.
I drag my thumb across my teeth, taste salt. My pulse is steady, finally.
Next time, I won’t just watch.
I’ll make her run.