Chapter 28 What’s Ours
What's Ours
~MABELINE~
Class ends with the kind of collective exhale that only happens when an entire lecture hall has been held hostage by a professor who does not believe in ending on time.
I shove my notebook into my bag, zipping it with the efficiency of a woman who has mastered the art of the five-second exit, and join the stream of students flowing toward the double doors.
The hallway is already a disaster. February has transformed the campus into a Valentine's Day fever dream, every available surface draped in red and pink decorations that the student council has been installing with the manic energy of elves assembling a holiday workshop.
Paper hearts dangle from the ceiling on fishing line.
Glittered banners span the corridor between doorframes.
A life-sized cardboard cutout of a bear holding a rose has been stationed near the water fountain, and someone has already drawn a mustache on it in Sharpie.
The dance is approaching and the campus is losing its collective mind.
I spot Sage near the exit, her dark hair pulled into a high ponytail that swings with each step, flanked by Jace on her left and Archie on her right.
The three of them are geared up, gym bags slung over their shoulders, clearly headed to their off-campus rink session.
Sage catches my eye and waves, her grin bright and warm even from twenty feet away.
I wave back.
"Have a good practice!" I call, weaving between two students who are attempting to hang a banner that reads BE MINE OR BE GONE, which feels aggressively honest for a university-sanctioned decoration.
"Come join us next time!" Sage shouts over her shoulder as Jace holds the door for her and Archie. "Archie is learning crossovers and it is the funniest thing you will ever witness!"
"I am standing right here!" Archie protests, his voice carrying the indignation of a man being publicly slandered by his rinkmates. "My crossovers are improving! I only fell twice last session!"
"Twice that you remember!" Jace adds helpfully.
Their bickering fades as they disappear through the exit, and I am left smiling in the hallway like an idiot, the warmth of their friendship lingering in my chest like the afterglow of a good meal.
I pull out my phone.
The rose gold surface catches the fluorescent hallway light, still pristine in its pink bow case, and I navigate to the group chat with a fluency that I am quietly proud of given that I was fighting this device for my life three days ago.
My thumbs move across the keyboard, composing a message to the guys.
Mae: Class just ended. I know you guys had early drills. I might go to the library or find somewhere to camp out. When are you done?
The response comes from Cal first, his typing speed a direct reflection of his personality: fast, blunt, and allergic to punctuation.
Cal: done with my drills. raph and etienne staying behind coach wants to talk game strategy. first game tonight tho
I blink at the screen.
Mae: Wait. The first game is TONIGHT?? Holy crap. Already??
Cal: yeah lol time flies when ur having fun or whatever. u coming?
Mae: I could! I didn't realize it was so soon. That's exciting!
Cal: only if ur wearing my jersey
The message sits on my screen, bold and unambiguous, and the flush that crawls up my neck has no business being this intense over a text message from a man I cuddled to sleep forty-eight hours ago.
I press my lips together, suppressing the grin that is threatening to split my face in half, and respond with a string of emojis that includes the shushing face, the blushing face, and a hockey stick because the phone's emoji selection is extensive and I intend to abuse it.
I giggle to myself.
Standing in the middle of a Valentine's-decimated hallway, giggling at my phone like a character in the exact kind of romantic comedy I used to mock from the safety of communal housing common rooms. The irony is vivid.
The happiness is vivid. Both coexist in my chest with a warmth that I am learning to accept rather than interrogate.
"Oh, you think you are the shit because you got the latest new phone?"
The voice cuts through my moment like a blade through silk.
I look up.
Vanessa Voss is standing four feet in front of me.
She is flanked by her usual entourage, three girls whose names I have never bothered to learn because they function less as individuals and more as an extension of Vanessa's presence, a chorus line of matching sneers and coordinated hostility.
Vanessa herself is in full form today, her platinum blonde hair straightened to a razor edge, her uniform blazer cinched at the waist with a belt that probably costs more than my entire semester's textbook budget, her blue eyes fixed on me with the particular disdain she reserves for people she considers beneath her social altitude.
The hallway around us has not emptied enough for this confrontation to go unwitnessed. A handful of students linger near their lockers, pretending not to watch while very clearly watching.
I frown.
Not at the insult. At the interruption. My phone was making me happy and this woman appeared like a summoned demon to disrupt that, and the annoyance I feel is less about her words and more about the stolen moment.
I turn my phone off and slide it into my blazer pocket, zipping the compartment shut with a deliberateness that is equal parts protective instinct and pointed statement.
Vanessa huffs.
"You do not have to hide it or anything." Her voice drips with a manufactured sweetness that could rot teeth. "What, scared we are going to take it?"
"Yeah, actually." I meet her gaze with a directness that I can feel my younger self watching from a distance, marveling at and terrified of in equal measure. "I am worried you will ruin it, and it is precious to me. Better safe than sorry."
The girls behind her exchange glances. The kind of rapid, silent communication that packs of mean girls have perfected into an art form, entire conversations conducted through eyebrow movements and pursed lips.
Vanessa's nostrils flare.
She steps closer, closing the gap between us until I can smell her perfume.
Floral and aggressive, layered over her natural scent with the heavy hand of someone who uses fragrance as armor rather than accent.
Underneath the perfume, her actual scent is sharp and citric, grapefruit and synthetic musk, the kind of combination that prickles against my Omega senses without offering any comfort.
"Well," she says, her voice dropping to a register that she probably thinks sounds intimidating but actually sounds like a reality television villain practicing in a mirror. "You better not be trying to audition for the figure skating competition."
My spine straightens.
Figure skating. My figure skating. The one arena of my life that exists independent of packs and Alphas and the complicated web of relationships I am navigating.
The one pursuit that belongs entirely to me, that I have carried since childhood, that survived every upheaval and every loss and every cold night in shelters where the only warmth I could generate was the memory of gliding across ice with my arms extended toward a ceiling that did not care about my designation.
"A little birdy told me you are leaving soon anyway," she continues, tossing her hair over one shoulder with a practiced flick. "Good riddance. Rafe has been so stressed because of you. I had to ride his cock last night just to appease him from being annoyed with you stealing his pack."
The vulgarity lands with the grace of a brick through a window.
I stare at her.
Not shocked. Not offended. Just tired. Tired of women who wield their sexual proximity to Alphas like credentials, like the act of sharing someone's bed grants them authority over the people that Alpha has wronged.
Tired of the implication that Rafe's emotional state is my responsibility to manage, that his stress is a debt I owe, that his discomfort matters more than the displacement he caused.
"I did not steal his pack," I say, keeping my voice level. "He was moved rooms because the housing office assigned him incorrectly. That is an administrative decision, not a conspiracy. If you want to be angry at someone, send a strongly worded email to the registrar."
She rolls her eyes with the full-body commitment of someone who treats eye-rolling as a competitive sport.
"Sure, sure. Whatever makes you sleep at night."
Her gaze travels down my body with the slow, deliberate assessment of someone cataloguing flaws for ammunition.
Starting at my face, dropping to my chest, my waist, my legs, my shoes, and then climbing back up with an expression that is calibrated to make the recipient feel like a specimen pinned beneath glass.
"Must be nice to be a whore." She tilts her head, the smile on her face cold enough to frost the air between us. "That is probably all you are good for."
Silence.
The word lands and does not bounce. It sinks into the hallway air with a weight that the lingering students feel, their casual eavesdropping sharpening into rigid attention.
The girls behind Vanessa titter, their laughter high-pitched and performative, the sound of people who laugh because the alternative is examining why they are standing behind a bully and calling it friendship.
I do not respond.
Not because the words do not sting. They do.
They burrow beneath the armor I have spent years reinforcing and find the soft tissue underneath, the places where every cruel thing ever said about my body and my worth and my designation has left scar tissue that never fully hardened.
Whore. The word is a grenade disguised as a label, designed to reduce a woman to her perceived sexual utility and discard everything else she is.
But I have been called worse by people with more power and less manicured nails, and I am still standing.