Fated to Three Alpha Brothers

HOMECOMING GIRL

SUMMER

Maya appeared at my door Friday evening with a white dress and a look on her face that meant business.

"No," I said.

"You have to go," she said.

"Maya —"

"Summer." She pushed past me into the hallway with the particular determination of someone who has thought this through and prepared for all counterarguments. "Listen to me. I know you don't want to go. I know Finn said it in that way that made it feel like a threat —"

"Because it was a threat."

"Which is exactly why you have to go." She turned to face me, holding the dress out. "If you don't show up, you give him a reason to make things worse for you at school. You know how this works. You disappear, he decides you disrespected him, and on Monday it's not just Cara making comments in the cafeteria — it's something bigger." She pressed the dress into my arms. "You go, you show your face, you survive one night, and he has nothing to hold over you."

I stared at the white fabric in my hands.

She wasn't wrong. I hated that she wasn't wrong.

"Also," she added, with a deliberate shift in her tone, "I'm on the party planning committee. The decorations are actually really good this year and I would like someone to appreciate them with me."

Despite everything, the corner of my mouth moved.

"There she is," Maya said softly. "Come on. Try it on."

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

* *

The dress fit better than I expected. Simple white, fitted bodice, a skirt that fell just above my knees and moved when I walked. I stood in front of the bathroom mirror and looked at myself for a long, quiet moment.

My hair fell in loose blonde waves past my shoulders — I'd taken some time with it tonight, which felt like a small, strange act of defiance against nothing in particular. My eyes were green, catching the bathroom light, and looking back at me was a girl who was, if she was being honest with herself, almost —

Pretty.

Not almost. The word surfaced before I could stop it.

I was pretty. Not in Cara's way — not the sharp, deliberate kind of beautiful that announced itself. But in a quieter way, a way I'd spent four years talking myself out of noticing because it felt dangerous to think well of yourself when the world around you kept insisting you were worth nothing.

I looked at myself in the mirror and thought, with something fragile and defiant stirring in my chest: I am just as pretty as any other girl in Crescent Ridge High.

I let myself think it. Just for a second.

Then I tucked the emerald beneath the neckline and went to find Maya.

She was waiting in my living room, and when I came in she put both hands over her heart like I'd done something dramatic.

"See?" she said. "Was that so hard?"

"Don't make it weird," I said.

She made it a little weird, but I let her.

On the drive over, she talked about the decorations — she'd apparently spent two weekends on the centerpieces alone and had opinions about the streamers that I let wash over me, warm and uncomplicated. At a red light, she glanced at me sideways.

"I know you like being on your own," she said. "I know it's easier. But Summer —" She paused, picking her words carefully. "Every wolf needs a pack. You know? Even the quiet ones. Even the ones who've been hurt by theirs."

I looked out the window at the passing streetlights.

Every wolf needs a pack.

The familiar ache moved through me, dull and well-worn. The problem with that particular piece of wisdom was that it assumed you were a wolf to begin with.

"I know," I said anyway, because Maya meant it kindly and I had learned to accept kindness when it was offered, even when it didn't quite fit.

She reached over and squeezed my hand once. I let her.

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* *

The gymnasium had been transformed in the way that only school gymnasiums can be — badly, enthusiastically, with a lot of silver streamers and not enough forethought. Though to Maya's credit, the centerpieces were genuinely impressive. I told her so, and she beamed like I'd given her something.

For the first hour of the dance, I actually had fun.

That surprised me. I'd expected to spend the entire night counting down the minutes, pressed against a wall, enduring. But Maya pulled me onto the dance floor before I could find a corner to disappear into, and she was such an unselfconscious dancer, so entirely unbothered by whether anyone was watching, that something in me loosened.

She introduced me to people from the planning committee — a quiet girl named Petra who'd hand-painted all the signs and a boy called Declan who danced badly and with great enthusiasm and somehow made it look fun. Nobody gave me the look. Nobody checked my rank or my record or the absence of a wolf behind my eyes.

For an hour, I was just a girl at a school dance.

Then Maya's boyfriend appeared at the edge of the dance floor, and the look that crossed her face was the involuntary kind, the kind you can't train away, and I felt the evening shift.

"Go," I told her.

"I'm not just going to abandon —"

"Maya." I smiled, and meant it enough. "Go. I'm fine. I'll get a drink."

She hesitated, looked at me, looked at him, and went — with a backward glance that promised she'd find me again soon.

I got a drink. Then I drifted. Then I found the wall.

It was fine. I was good at the wall. Just minding my own business as I observe the people around me. Everyone seemed to be having a good time. Plenty of laughter, friends dancing, and couples kissing.

I was considering whether the bathroom trip was worth navigating the crowd when I heard Cara's voice cut through the music from somewhere nearby — not at me, for once, but past me, aimed at someone else with the particular sharp fury of a girl who is looking for something she can't find.

"— seriously, where is he? I swear to god, if he ditched me again —"

"Cara, he probably just went outside —"

"Don't tell me he probably —" Her voice swelled, hot and frustrated. "This is the third time this month he’s doing this! If he thinks he can just play with me like I’m some side chick—"

I had approximately four seconds before Cara Holt's bad night became my problem.

I moved quietly along the wall toward the side exit, away from the dance floor, slipping out through the door into the hallway before she could turn around and find someone convenient to direct her anger at.

The hallway was dark and empty, cool after the press of bodies in the gymnasium. The music dulled to a muffled thump behind the closed door. I exhaled slowly and started down the hall toward the bathroom around the corner, my footsteps quiet on the linoleum.

I heard him before I saw him.

Not footsteps. Just the particular change in the quality of the air that I'd learned to recognize — the way a space felt different when Finn Hale was in it, like something with weight had entered the room.

He stepped out of the shadows near the water fountain and my whole body went rigid.

He wasn't in his homecoming suit anymore. He'd lost the jacket somewhere, rolled his sleeves up, and there was a looseness to him that told me he'd been drinking before the dance had even properly started. But his eyes were sharp. Whatever he'd had hadn't blurred him the way I'd have preferred. It had just stripped away the thin layer of performance he usually maintained.

"There you are," he said, like he'd been looking. Like he'd known I'd come this way. “I knew you’d come for me.”

"I was just going to the bathroom," I said, keeping my voice steady. "I'll go back inside —"

"I told you to come tonight." He moved into the middle of the hallway with that easy, proprietary confidence, hands in his pockets. Unhurried. "And here you are."

"Yes, I came." I swallowed hard, but keeping my gaze cool.

"You sure do." He tilted his head, studying me in the dim hallway light, and his expression did the thing I hated most — went slow and deliberate, like he was taking inventory. "You look good, Summer. You picked out this dress just for me?"

"Finn, please —" I tried to take a step back, but he closed on me with ease.

"You know what my father told me once?" He took another step closer. My back was against the wall, but I held my ground, calculating distance to the exit, distance back to the gymnasium door. "He said the Alpha provides for the pack. Protects them. And everything in the pack — the territory, the people, all of it —" and another step, "belongs to the Alpha."

"Your father is the Alpha," I said carefully. "Not you."

Something flickered in his face. Not quite anger. Something more unsettling than anger. "Not yet," he said softly. "But soon. And I'm his son. Which means I'm going to be Alpha." He was so close now — close enough that I had to angle my chin up to look at him, close enough that I could see the particular brightness in his eyes that had nothing to do with the dim hallway lighting. "Which means everything that belongs to this pack already belongs to me. Including you."

- - - To be continued - - -