"That’s just how Alpha Christopher is. That’s nothing," Khloe dismissed easily.
Lena thought she had heard wrong. "He pinned me without touching me."
"He choked Gemma on her first day here," Julian added casually.
"And that is somehow okay with you guys?"
"It’s hot, and you two are clearly meant to be," Khloe said with a shrug.
"What makes you think I want any part of that?"
"Well... that’s what Gemma would have wanted."
Lena groaned internally, rubbing her temples. She wasn’t Gemma. She wasn’t Gemma. She! Wasn’t! Gemma!
"Okay, let me be the reasonable one here and burst your delusional bubble," Julian said, flopping back onto his pillows. "First off, no one in the Quad would actually want Lena. Not Alpha Christopher, not Alpha Draven, not Alpha Zayn, and definitely not Prince Maximus. Lena is a rough draft. She is like a dollar-store imitation. She will never ever be Gemma."
The words were blunt, dropping into the room like heavy stones. Lena hated how effortlessly he downgraded her existence, but she didn’t argue.
His harsh assessment sounded exactly like Victoria and the North Ridge Pack. But unlike Khloe’s delusional shipping, Julian’s words held the cold, grounding weight of reality.
She would always appreciate a brutal truth over a sugar-coated lie.
"Don’t listen to him, he’s an idiot." Khloe glared at Julian, looking like she wanted to punch him. "He’s just jealous."
"At least I’m not stuck in some eight-days-ago bubble trying to turn Miss Walmart-Gemma over here into a ghost—"
"Okay, that’s enough."
Lena didn’t shout, but her voice dropped into that distinct, deadly frequency making the bickering on the bunks abruptly dead.
Julian paused mid-sentence, his jaw going slightly slack, while Khloe blinked in surprise.
Lena stood up, looking at Julian, then at Khloe, her gaze completely deadpan, stripped of any warmth.
"I didn’t ask for any of this," Lena started. "I don’t want your Alphas, I don’t want a knight in shining armor, and I definitely don’t want to play dress-up as a missing girl just to satisfy your weird campus fantasies. If Gemma was stupid enough to let four Alphas tear this school apart over her, that’s her business."
"But let’s make one thing clear. I am not a rough draft. And if any of your precious Alphas try to treat me like an imitation, they’re going to find out exactly how sharp my claws are."
She braced for a stunned silence, expecting her words to finally slam some reality into the room.
Instead, Khloe burst into a sudden, loud laugh, pulling Julian who was hiding behind a snicker.
Lena’s brow raised in pure irritation.
"Oh my god, I am so sorry," Khloe gasped, wiping a tear of amusement from her eye as she looked at Lena’s furious expression. "I shouldn’t laugh. It’s just... it’s funny because that is exactly what Gemma said to Christopher on her first week here."
Lena let out a long, exhausted sigh, dropping her chin. Of course she did. Of course Gemma said that. What else did they have in common? Was the universe just copy-pasting an entire personality?
"I am not Gemma," Lena repeated, each syllable clipped and hard.
"You tell her, girl," Julian chimed in, burying his face straight into his pillow, his muffled laughter echoed loudly in the room.
Before Lena could march over and throw Kaelen’s heavy uniform jacket right at his head, a loud alarm rang from Khloe’s nightstand.
Khloe quickly rushed to the nightstand as if a literal fire had been lit under her bunk. "Oh my god, the alarm! We’re late! They’re going to finish all the good stuff in the cafeteria. If they run out of those glazed berry croissants, I will literally shift and bite someone!"
...
Ten minutes later, Lena stood in front of the mirror, adjusting her uniform.
She still hadn’t entirely processed the fact that she was sharing a bathroom with a guy. Yes, Julian was explicitly, dramatically gay, but her instincts still flared up with a weird, defensive awkwardness every time he stepped past her in his robe.
Sighing, she looked at her reflection. The Sanatio Academy uniform was high-quality, but it perfectly hugged every single curve of her figure. Worse, it was suffocatingly tight around her chest.
’Jessica and Elle are suffocating,’ she thought, immediately scolding herself for letting the forum comments get into her head.
Grimacing, Lena popped open the top button of her shirt to breathe. She skillfully adjusted her school tie, flattening it over the gap to cleverly conceal her chest while keeping the tight fit manageable.
Out in the dorm, Khloe was sprawled across her unmade bed, her thumbs flying across her phone screen as she typed furiously.
"You know," Lena said from the mirror in the corner, "that thing is going to permanently glue itself to your hands."
"I know, I know," Khloe muttered, not even looking up. "I just need to reply to this one idiot. They are literally begging for a claw to the throat."
Lena paused, her eyebrows knitting together. "Wait. Are you defending me?"
"Someone just commented that Alpha Christopher probably thinks you’re nothing but a temporary sex doll," Khloe hissed, her eyes locked on the screen as she aggressively tapped a reply. "I’m setting them straight. I told them he practically branded you in the hallway yesterday and that you two are endgame. They know nothing about romance!"
Lena rolled her eyes so hard it practically hurt. Of course, Khloe wasn’t defending her dignity–she was just defending her favorite fictional fanfiction plot.
"Right," Lena muttered, grabbing her bag. "And weren’t we supposed to be running late? Or did the glazed croissants suddenly lose their appeal?"
"The croissants!" Khloe gasped, finally dropping her phone into her pocket. "Move, move, move!"
As the three of them left their room, they intercepted Nyx in the hallway, and the four of them headed toward the cafeteria.
Nyx walked a few paces ahead, keeping her posture rigid and acting as if she didn’t even know them. Lena watched the back of Nyx’s head, her mind flashing back to the scene she had walked into yesterday.