10. Ethan
Ethan
Lucy pokes her head in, that perpetually cheerful smile on her face. “Sophie? I’m here to show you to your quarters whenever you’re ready.”
And just like that, between one heartbeat and the next, Sophie’s entire demeanor transforms.
Her spine, which had been steel-straight throughout our entire meeting, curves inward.
Her shoulders round, making her seem smaller.
The sharp focus in her dark eyes softens into something wide and vulnerable, almost doe-like.
Even her breathing changes, shallower, the way someone breathes when they’re nervous.
“Oh, wonderful.” Her voice has changed too. Gone is the clipped tone. In its place is something lighter, breathier, with a tremor of uncertainty. “Thank you so much.”
She turns back to us.
“Thank you so much, Mr. Cavill, Mr. Brooks, Mr. Preston, for this opportunity.” She clasps her hands in front of her, a submissive gesture I never would have imagined her making five seconds ago, and adds a tiny stammer. “I—I won’t let you down. I promise.”
Her eyes dart between us with just the right amount of nervous energy. She even tucks a strand of hair behind her ear in that self-conscious way people do when they feel exposed.
Lucy beams at her, completely taken in. “Don’t worry, you’ll do great! Come on, I’ll show you around.”
Sophie follows her out, casting one last shy glance over her shoulder before the door closes behind them.
Holy shit.
I stare at the closed door. I’ve seen good actors before. I’ve watched people lie convincingly and slip into roles that aren’t their own.
But this wasn’t acting. This was a complete rewiring of her entire being.
In the span of three seconds, maybe less, she transformed from apex predator to skittish prey.
Her body language, her voice, her eyes, the very way she occupied space in the room.
All of it shifted so seamlessly that if I hadn’t witnessed it myself, I never would have believed they were the same person.
Griffin wasn’t exaggerating. She’s more than good. She’s terrifying.
I turn back to my packmates.
Max is standing by the window, arms crossed, looking skeptical and assessing in the way he looks at everything he can’t immediately control. That’s just Max, nothing unusual there.
Finn, though. Finn has been off this entire meeting.
I noticed it the moment we walked in. His body was rigid, the color drained from his face.
He barely spoke during the entire briefing, when usually we can’t get him to shut up.
And his eyes kept drifting to her, then snapping away, like he couldn’t decide whether to look at her or pretend she didn’t exist.
Usually, Finn is the easy one. The one who finds humor in everything and makes everyone around him feel comfortable without even trying.
Today he sat through an hour-long meeting and said maybe ten words.
“Well,” I say, breaking the silence. “I have a feeling she’ll figure out who’s behind this in record time.”
Finn doesn’t respond or even seem to hear me.
Max notices too. His eyes narrow slightly as he looks between Finn and the door. “What’s got your panties in a twist?”
Finn’s head snaps toward him. For a moment, it looks like he’s going to say something. But he just shakes his head and looks away, running a hand through his hair in a gesture I recognize as barely contained frustration.
“Nothing.”
It’s clearly not nothing. In twenty years of friendship, I’ve rarely seen Finn like this. He doesn’t brood or go silent.
“I don’t trust her,” Max says, cutting through my thoughts.
I drag my attention away from Finn and back to Max. He’s still at the window, staring out at the grounds, arms crossed tight against his chest.
“You don’t trust anyone, Max.” I settle into one of the leather chairs, crossing my ankle over my knee. “She’s an agent. She’s here to do a job. That’s all that matters.”
“I suppose Griffin did vouch for her,” he says begrudgingly.
“Exactly. Unless you don’t trust him?”
“I trust Griffin. But her...” He turns from the window. “Something’s off.”
“She’s a spy, Max. Her entire job is built on secrets.” I lean back, studying him. “What specifically bothers you?”
“I... I don’t know.” Max usually thinks three steps ahead. Seeing him struggle for words is unsettling enough on its own. “Something about the way she looked at us. Like she was calculating how to take us apart. Piece by piece.”
“Isn’t that exactly what we hired her to do? Take apart our security problem?”
Max doesn’t answer. His jaw works, like he’s chewing on words he can’t quite spit out.
I glance between them. Max, wound tight as a spring, and Finn, uncharacteristically brooding, refusing to meet anyone’s eyes. Neither of them willing or able to say what’s actually going on.
“Well,” I say, pushing myself up from the chair, “I’ll leave you both to figure out why a perfectly competent professional has you tied up in knots. I have actual work to do.”
Finn lets out a sound that might be a snort, might be a scoff, hard to tell. Max says nothing, already turning back to the window.
“I’ll be in the lab if you need me,” I say from the doorway. “See you both at home tonight. Try not to spiral before dinner.”
The walk to the research wing takes me through the heart of Synthera, past the administrative offices, down the corridor lined with photos documenting the company’s history.
I pause, as I sometimes do, at a particular photograph near the end of the hall.
Three young men in graduation robes, arms thrown around each other’s shoulders, grinning at the camera like they own the world.
Max on the left, already stern even at eighteen, but with something lighter in his eyes that the years have dimmed.
Finn on the right, that same infectious smile he still wears, though the dimples are deeper now.
And me in the middle, looking slightly bewildered that I’m standing next to these two at all.
Ashford Academy. Sixteen years ago.
God, we were so young.
I was fourteen when the scholarship letter arrived.
My mother cried when she read it. Happy tears, she insisted, wiping her face with the hem of her apron. “My boy. My brilliant boy.”
We lived in a one-bedroom apartment in South Boston then, the two of us crammed into eight hundred square feet that always smelled like her cooking and the lavender sachets she tucked into every drawer.
My father had been dead for six years, a construction accident that left us with nothing but medical bills and a Social Security check that barely covered rent.
But I was good at school. Better than good. Eventually, the teachers noticed, and somehow, miraculously, Ashford Academy noticed as well.
Full scholarship. Four years at one of the most prestigious boarding schools in the country, a place that fed directly into the Ivy League. A place where a kid like me could actually become someone.
“You’ll be different there,” my mother warned me as she packed my single suitcase. “The other boys, they won’t understand where you come from.”
She was right.
Ashford was old money and older traditions, full of boys who’d never worked a day in their lives. I stuck out like a sore thumb with my secondhand blazer and my rough accent.
The first few weeks were hell, and it only got worse.
And then I met Max Cavill.
He found me in the library, which was where I spent most of my time, partly because I loved the books, but mostly because it was the one place I could hide from the casual cruelty of boys who’d identified me as prey.
“You’re in my seat.”
I looked up from my chemistry textbook to find a dark-haired boy glaring down at me. He had a sharp jaw and cold green eyes, and everything about him radiated entitlement, from his perfectly pressed uniform to the way he held himself like the world owed him space.
“I don’t see your name on it,” I said.
His eyes narrowed. “Do you know who I am?”
“Should I?”
For a moment, he just stared at me. No one talked to Max Cavill like that, I’d later learn. His family owned half the buildings on campus and his father sat on the board of trustees.
But I didn’t know any of that. I just saw another rich kid trying to push me around.
“Move,” he said flatly.
“No.”
The standoff might have lasted all night if Finn Preston hadn’t wandered by with his usual impeccable timing.
“Max!” He dropped into the chair across from us, completely oblivious to the tension. “There you are. I’ve been looking everywhere.” He glanced at me, his face breaking into a sunny grin. “Oh, hey. You’re the scholarship kid, right? Ethan? I’m Finn.”
“I know who you are.”
“Do you? Excellent.” He leaned forward conspiratorially. “Listen, can you help me with the chem homework? I’m absolutely dying and Max refuses because he says struggling builds character.”
“It does,” Max muttered.
“It builds anxiety, is what it builds.” Finn turned those guileless blue eyes on me. “Please? I’ll owe you one.”
I should have said no. Should have kept my head down, focused on my grades, kept myself away from people who would only complicate things.
Instead, I found myself explaining chemical bonds to a boy who was genuinely, spectacularly terrible at science.
By the end of the hour, Max had stopped glaring and started listening. By the end of the week, he’d grudgingly admitted I was “not completely useless.” By the end of the month, the three of us were eating lunch together every day.
“Why do you hate me?” I asked Max one night, late in October, when we were supposed to be studying but were actually arguing about evolutionary biology.
He looked at me for a long moment. “I don’t hate you.”
“You act like you do.”
“I act like that with everyone.” His green eyes flickered, a crack in the surface that closed almost as fast as it opened. “It’s easier.”
I didn’t really understand what he meant then, not until one night during Parents’ Weekend, sophomore year. I was walking back from the library when I heard voices coming from one of the private meeting rooms.
The door was slightly ajar. I should have kept walking. Instead, I froze.