The Four Lycan Kings Wants Me

Chapter 3: Not Your Field

[Siena's POV]

I’d been warned that Hawthorne would try to break me on the field—that the drills would be brutal, the hierarchy merciless, the boys territorial and relentless in guarding what they believed was theirs.

What no one warned me about was what would happen off the field, when the rules stopped applying and reputations became weapons sharper than any cleats. It occurred following the first practice, when my body ached as though a steel mallet had been used to pound every joint, when my lungs still seared from sprint rotations, and my locker still retained the specter of that note:

"Quit before you bleed."

I returned to my dorm anticipating quiet. Solitude. Perhaps even a couple of minutes of numb quiet where I could let my bruises rest and decide how to make it through another day.

What I received instead was a message—a cleaner one than if it had been written in ink.

The door wasn't destroyed. The lights weren't lit. From the hallway, everything seemed exactly as it should. But the moment I walked inside, the atmosphere changed. The smell was wrong—musty, chemical, off. And when I turned the light on, what looked back at me wasn't vandalism. It was invasion.

My mattress had been slashed open along the seam with what appeared to be a box cutter, the filling rent and shredded across the floor in mangled clumps. My bedsheets were torn and draped from the ceiling fan like streamers, revolving lethargically in the current of the open window.

My desk chair was overturned, one leg snapped, and the books I’d brought from home—paperbacks with bent corners, my only real comfort—had been soaked in water and left in the sink like garbage. The full-length mirror on the back of the door had been scrawled with black paint or shoe polish, the letters so thick and aggressive they left streaks: “NOT YOUR FIELD.”

I just stood there in the doorway, the silence so perfect I could actually hear my own blood pumping in my head. It wasn't a prank. It was a message of control, territorial and precise. This wasn't rugby anymore. This was a warning shot aimed to humiliate and destabilize me inside out. The person who did this hadn't been in a hurry. They'd played games. They'd rummaged through my stuff, handled my clothing, destroyed what little security I had remaining with careful intent.

And the thing that was most terrifying of all: nothing was taken. There was no stealing. Nothing but destruction. And I could identify the culprit.

It was the captains—not directly, perhaps, not with their own intent. But this bore their fingerprints all over it in attitude. This type of orchestrated, performative cruelty that wasn't undertaken by amateurs.

They were the only ones who had the influence to get away with something like this without repercussions. They didn't have to say anything. Ronan's nod. Jace's smirk. Luca's turn away long enough. Killian not intervening. That was how power at Hawthorne functioned—it wasn't brash. It hung in silence, in the fact that the halls moved around them differently, in the terror of what became of those who dared to cross them.

I didn't scream. I didn't weep or dial the front desk or go running to admin. Because if I did, nothing would change. Only that I'd be weaker in their eyes, and I couldn't be weak. So I cleaned. I scooped the mattress filling and dumped it in trash bags, swept up the broken frame of my desk chair, pulled the slurs off the mirror with bleach and determination.

I scrubbed until my fingers were bleeding from it and my eyes burned with exhaustion. By the time I went to bed—on raw foam with no sheets, clad in an ancient hoodie for heat—nothing remained of the devastation but a whiff of paint and an unease that lingered in my chest.

The second day of training came like it hadn't occurred at all. The coaches never caught on, or feigned ignorance. The other players continued to ignore me. A few of them eyed me with a mixture of curiosity and tacit resentment. None of them recognized what I'd endured. And perhaps that was the whole idea.

At Hawthorne, suffering was currency. If you made it through, you gained silence. If you whined, you lost your place. I took the pitch that morning as a teammate, but as a warning. Each passing glance that swished by me held the same consideration: How much longer can she hold on?

It was during side passes that everything changed.

I was teamed with Killian, Hawthorne's pet son. He'd hardly noticed me all this time in drills until today, happy to have someone else do the dirty work of ignoring me. But now, facing each other, tossing the ball back and forth, he looked at me with a grin that made my teeth ache.

"You've got only fair hands," he said, voice loud enough that the people around us could hear, but low enough to sound like an afterthought. "Not bad for a mascot."

The ball struck my palms harder than it should have. My fingers tightened around the leather.

"What did you say to me?" I asked, though my tone was too cool for the anger burning in my blood.

Killian tilted his head to one side, innocent as a lamb. "You know, every team has a little spirit animal. You—cheering from the sidelines, posing for pictures, smiling like you're on the team."

The instant drew out like taffy. And then I moved forward—and slapped him hard.

The noise echoed out over the field like a machine gun. Killian jerked his head to the side, a flush radiating out from the mark on his cheek. His smirk gone. Quiet descended over the pitch as if a spell had been broken. The players hesitated in their drill. Even the captains.

I didn't blink.

"Shutup," I shouted, my voice low and cold. "And don't ever confuse my silence with consent again."

For a second, Killian simply looked at me in disbelief. As if he couldn't comprehend how someone like me—a girl, a stranger, a scholarship recruit with no one on my side—had the audacity to slap him. But the shock didn't last. It warped into something harder and more calculating. He walked towards me, his jaw clenched.

It was Ronan who ended the moment. His voice sliced through the tension: “Back in formation.”

Just like that, the spell broke. The drills resumed. But no one looked at me the same way again.

I’d stepped off the line.

And now, the captains would respond.

The dorm was too still that night. The window was open to admit the wind, the moonlight spilling onto the buckled linoleum floor. I rested on the stripped mattress, leaning on my back, looking at the ceiling, too hyper to rest, too tired to remain awake. Each creak at my door braced me for something—each moving footstep in the corridor, every groan of the walls seemed like a signal. I had known they would strike back. The question was when.

Some time after 2 a.m., I drifted into sleep.

Later, I awoke to a quiet that didn’t feel quite right.

My eyes creaked open. The shadows were deep, the moonlight thin and silver. And someone was sitting in the chair on the other side of the room. I didn't cry out. Didn't even shift. My breath trapped somewhere in my chest.

The figure didn't move. Just sat there, feet spread wide apart, arms folded on his knees, watching. I could see the outline—wide shoulders, a similar stillness that gave my blood a chill.

Ronan? Luca?

Killian?

Or Jace?

Whoever it was had stayed long enough to observe me sleep. To remind me that the door never counted, that locks didn't serve you when the lycans carried keys.

Then, quietly, he rose. One fluid motion he went to the door and vanished. And I remained there, racing heart, the silence more oppressive than ever before. Because this was not about frightening me.

This was about proving what they could do.