Living With My Bully Alpha

- The Schol

RA

alarm did, which meant my mother was alre

the math I did every morning before my feet even touched the floor. Rent was due in four days. Her medication refill was due in six. My pay

t a version of this morning

ice of bread into the sink like she could salvage it through sheer stubbornness. She'd lost weight again. I noticed it

said, taking the butter knife out

red version of her real smile, the one that still tried even w

twice a week instead of once. But there was no version of telling her the truth that didn't end wi

up at the counter because sitting down felt like a luxury we didn't have time for. Outside, the sky was doing that gray, undecid

her forehead, told her I loved her, and didn't let myself thi

****

iron gates that had probably been designed to keep people like me out long before I ever showed up wanting in. I'd been attending on scholars

t the differences showed... the slightly wrong shade of navy because mine had been washed a hundred more times than anyone else's, the sho

more. They just looked, and looked away, and the judg

ups. Don't make eye contact long enough to invite a comment. Move like you have somewhere important to

lass without incident, which f

ay Victoria Ashford said everything that wasn't

d the kind of beauty that came from money as much as genetics, glossy hair, skin that had never known a stress break

bother pretending it was funny, just

slow down

heels, which felt like an insult on its own. "It's very brave, wear

ou have ne

wed myself. Victoria's smile flickered just for a second, just long enough for me to

yourself in front of the new transfer today. Fir

away with the dozen other things Victoria said that were designed to make me spend the rest of the

wealth everywhere it went eeekend trips, family drivers, whatever partywsomeone's parents had thrown that I hadn't been invited to and wouldn't have w

get ten

sted. That specific, electric shift in the air that meant someone important had walked in

oked

ken to any of them in my life. You didn't grow up in Blackthorne Territory without learning which f

nter was the heav

did. Dark hair. A jaw carved sharp enough to look permanently unimpressed. Eyes that swept the classro

ed on m

ine, and something flickered behind it. Not curiosity. Something c

cognition, and the whole classroom

os

h, sounded like some

ulse pick up in a way that had nothing to do with excitement and everything to do with the s

ed nearby, and the murmur spread

t me from the doorway, jaw tight, something

tinct told me to look away first. "I don't even kn

t need to

t there with twenty-six pairs of eyes still lingering on my face, my name suddenly a word people were repeating like it mean

ngle word... *Voss* was about to