(Max’s POV)
The house was quiet when we got home, quieter than usual, and it was Elise who told us why before either of us had to ask.
"Your parents are at a dinner event downtown," she said, setting a stack of mail on the hall table. "Mr. Cross said not to wait up."
Lucian didn’t answer her. He just headed straight for the stairs, bag still over one shoulder, and disappeared without a word.
I ate a slower dinner than I meant to, mostly because I didn’t know what else to do with the evening. I was halfway through when I heard him come back down, footsteps unhurried, and a moment later he dropped into his usual seat across the table like the empty house didn’t bother him at all.
Elise set a plate in front of him and retreated to the kitchen. He ate the way he did everything else — efficient, unbothered, like the food was a task to complete rather than something to enjoy.
He reached for the salt without looking up.
I slid it across the table before he’d finished reaching.
He paused, glanced at it, then at me, and picked it up without comment.
A minute later he reached for the water pitcher, and I got there first, filling his glass before he could lift it himself. He watched me do it this time, something unreadable moving behind his eyes, like he was trying to work out whether this was an accident or a pattern.
He set his fork down.
"What’s with you?"
"Nothing." I shrugged, kept my eyes on my own plate. "I just want to get to know you better. What you like. What you don’t. That kind of thing."
He didn’t answer that. Just picked his fork back up and kept eating, jaw tight, like the question had cost him something to hear.
"I just don’t want to make our parents worried," I added, when the silence stretched too long to leave alone. "They want us to get along. Might as well actually try."
Still nothing. He finished the rest of his plate in silence, pushed his chair back, and left the table without a word, taking the stairs two at a time like he wanted to be somewhere I wasn’t.
I gave it ten minutes before I followed.
His door was shut when I got there. I knocked twice, light, and waited.
He opened it a crack, expression already flat with irritation before I’d said anything. "What."
"Can I borrow your notes? From the Trade Law lecture last week — I want to catch up on the parts I missed before I transferred."
He didn’t say anything. Just stood there for a second, hand still on the door, like he was deciding whether answering me at all was worth the effort.
"Please," I said.
He shut the door.
I stood there in the hallway feeling stupid, already turning to head back to my own room, when it opened again and he held a spiral notebook out toward me without a word, without meeting my eyes, like handing it over was something he wanted finished as quickly as possible.
"Thanks, bro." I took it, and something — maybe just relief, maybe something else — made me smile before I’d decided to.
He shut the door before I finished saying it.
I went back to my room and read through his notes for an hour before I fell asleep. His handwriting was sharper than I expected, precise, no wasted space on the page. It felt strange, holding something that private of his in my hands. Like I’d been let past a door I hadn’t actually earned the key to yet.
The next day I was cutting through the breezeway behind the science building, notebook still in my bag, when I heard it — a scuffle, low voices, the particular kind of sound that meant something was happening that wasn’t supposed to be seen.
I turned the corner and saw a guy backed against the wall, two others crowding him close, one gripping his collar hard enough to lift him half onto his toes.
I didn’t think. I just moved.
"Hey!" I grabbed the wrist of the one holding him, and for half a second the shock of it — a human, grabbing an Alpha bare-handed — bought us just enough room. The guy loosened his grip on reflex, startled, and I used the half-second to pull the other boy free and run.
We didn’t stop until we’d ducked into a narrow alley behind the dormitory building, both of us breathing hard, backs against brick.
"You didn’t have to do that," he said, once he’d caught his breath, straightening his collar with hands that were still shaking slightly.
"Looked like you needed it."
He studied me for a second — dark hair, slight build, an anxious kind of watchfulness in his eyes that I recognized because I wore the same look most days. "I’m Kai," he said finally.
"Max."
"You’re new. The transfer." He said it like a question, though it wasn’t one. "You’re human, aren’t you. I could smell it."
I nodded, waiting for the usual shift in his expression, the usual pulling away. It didn’t come.
"I’m omega," he said instead, quiet, like it explained something we both already understood. "That’s why they had me. Omegas get pack rules. You get nothing." He glanced toward the mouth of the alley, still tense. "You should be more careful. They don’t stop just because you were brave once."
"Noted," I said, though I didn’t really believe him yet.
He left a few minutes later, ducking out toward the dorms with a quick, grateful nod that felt more honest than anything anyone at that school had given me all week.
I should have listened to him.
I was walking back toward the main building, notebook still in my bag, cutting through the same breezeway out of habit, when they found me — the same two from the alley, plus a third now, and this time there was no beat of shock to buy me a head start.
One grabbed my arm before I even registered they were there. The second caught the other, and between them I was hauled back against the wall hard enough to knock the air out of me.
"Thought that was cute," the first one said, close enough that I could smell the anger on him. "Helping the omega run. You think that makes you brave?"
"Let go of me."
"Or what?" The third one laughed, short and mean, stepping in close. "You gonna grab my wrist too? Didn’t work so well for your little friend, did it?"
I twisted against the hands holding me and got nowhere. One of them wrenched my arm harder behind my back, and I felt my own breath go sharp and short with the pain of it.
"Somebody needs to teach this one his place," the first one said, and I saw his hand come back, saw it curl into a fist, saw it start forward toward my face in the half-second before—
"Touch him and I break every bone in that hand."
The voice cut through the breezeway like a blade, low and absolutely certain, and every single hand on me went still at once.