CLAIMED BY MY STEPBROTHER

Left Behind

(Max's POV)

The lecturer paused when she reached my name on the roster.

"And I see we have a transfer joining us, Max, is it?" She looked up kindly and scanned the room until she spotted me in my corner. "Welcome. I hope you'll settle in quickly."

"Thank you," I said, and I meant it. It was the first genuinely warm thing anyone at this school had said to me all morning.

That warmth didn’t last long.

I heard it before I understood it a ripple moving backward through the rows, low voices getting quieter, and somewhere behind me, unmistakably, a hiss. Not metaphorical. An actual hiss, sharp and short, like a reflex the person making it hadn’t fully controlled.

"Human," someone murmured, not really trying to keep it quiet.

I kept my eyes on my notebook. I had heard worse than a hiss. I just hadn’t expected it here in a room full of people my age who were supposed to be adults.

I didn’t have to wonder long why it mattered so much. I already knew the answer. In a school built entirely around rank—Alpha, Beta, Omega, everyone slotted somewhere on a ladder they were born onto I was the one thing that didn’t fit the ladder at all. Not even at the bottom. Completely off the chart.

I kept my head down and took notes for the rest of the lecture, convincing myself it didn’t matter what anyone whispered.

It was Theo who caught me on the way out.

He fell into step beside me in the courtyard, smiling and easy, sunglasses pushed up into his dark hair, walking as if the whole campus belonged to him. "Hey, you’re the transfer, right? Max?"

"That's me." I kept my guard up, ready for another hiss, but his smile remained friendly, open in a way nobody else here had bothered to be.

"Theo." He offered a hand, and I took it without hesitating, grateful for something that felt normal. "I figured you’d need someone to show you where everything actually is, unless you enjoy getting lost."

"That obvious?"

"You have the face for it." He laughed, and it was the kind of laugh that made you laugh a little too. "Come on. I’ll walk you through the important stuff where the good coffee is, which professors grade fairly, which stairwells to avoid during passing period."

We walked. He pointed things out as we went the library, the good vending machine, a shortcut through the science building that saved five minutes and for the first time since I'd arrived, I let myself relax a bit. Maybe this place wasn't going to be all cold shoulders and hissing.

"So," Theo said after a while, glancing sideways at me, "you’re living with Lucian Cross now. Is that true?"

My stomach tightened slightly, but I nodded. "Yeah. Our parents got married a few weeks ago."

"Huh." He whistled low. "Rough draw."

"You know him well?"

"Well enough." Something flickered behind his eyes, disappearing quickly. "We’re not exactly friends. Our families do business together."

I hesitated, then decided to just ask it since I hadn't had anyone else to turn to. "What's he like? I mean really like. He barely talks to me. He won't even look at me half the time."

Theo shrugged. "That’s just Lucian."

"But why?" I pressed, hearing the need in my voice, wanting an actual answer instead of a shrug. "Is he like this with everyone? Or is it just—" I gestured vaguely at myself. "This. Me."

"Does it matter?"

"I just want to understand him," I said. "We're supposed to live together. I'd rather not spend the next two years walking on eggshells if I can avoid it."

Something shifted in Theo's face. The easy grin didn’t go away, but it thinned out, becoming something sharper beneath it.

"You want to understand Lucian Cross." He said it slowly, almost amused, but the amusement now had an edge. "That’s cute. You’ve been in this house what, a week? And you think you’re gonna figure out an Alpha like him."

"I didn't say—"

"Let me save you the trouble." He stopped walking and turned to face me fully. The friendliness had drained from his voice, replaced by something flatter, colder, more in line with what I'd expected from everyone else. "Lucian doesn’t owe you an explanation. He doesn’t owe you anything. You’re not pack. You’re not even omega. You’re just some human his dad brought home, and the sooner you understand your place here, the easier this will be for you."

I stared at him, feeling the ground shift slightly beneath the version of him I’d built in the last ten minutes. "I thought you said you weren’t friends with him."

"I’m not." Theo's smile returned, but it wasn’t the same. It had a sharpness now, enough to hurt. "Doesn’t mean I don’t know how things work around here. You’d do well to learn quickly. People like you don’t usually last long in places like this."

He didn’t wait for a response. He turned and walked off toward a group of students by the fountain, already laughing about something else, as if the last two minutes hadn’t happened at all.

I stood there a second longer than I needed to, the warmth from earlier completely gone, replaced by that same cold reality I’d carried my whole life. Right. Of course.

I checked the time on my phone. Classes had ended twenty minutes ago.

I made my way to the front gates and waited, arms crossed, scanning the lot for Lucian's car among the rows of expensive vehicles that all looked alike to me.

It wasn’t there.

I waited another ten minutes. Then twenty. Students filtered out around me in twos and threes, cars pulling away, the lot slowly emptying until it was just me standing at the curb with my phone in hand and no messages on it at all.

I texted him. Where are you?

The message sat there, unread, for a long, long time.