Blood and Boundries
1679 Words
The second day at New Moon High smelled worse than the first.
Savannah gagged when she stepped through the front doors. Not visibly, but her nose wrinkled, and her stomach flipped. It wasn’t just the building. It was them. Wet pine, cheap deodorant, teenage sweat, and something deeper underneath wolf musk. Old instinct. Pack politics and hormones laced into the air like fog.
She needed better perfume.
Something toxic. Something that said, "Stay away or die curious."
Students stared again. Whispered again. Like the freak show was back for round two. She ignored them, gliding through the halls with practised disinterest. High heels, headphones, heavy eyeliner. The armour she wore when the world tried to scrape her raw.
They don’t get to see me c***k.
She repeated that like a prayer.
Because she was already close.
Her father hadn’t come home since they arrived.
She woke up alone. Ate alone. Slept in a room that felt like a trap walls too quiet, windows that didn’t face anything worth looking at. There was no internet. There is no signal. The phone line was dead. Like she’d been dropped into a pocket dimension and left to rot.
She didn’t even know where he went.
He said he had “meetings.” He said she’d “adjust.”
He didn’t say goodbye.
Savannah clenched her fists in her jacket pockets as she passed the main stairwell. The urge started crawling back under her skin hot, alive, sharp. It always did when she felt powerless. Cornered. Forgotten.
She hated that she had a way to cope.
Hated that it worked.
She wasn’t proud of the red lines on her thighs. The ones hidden beneath denim and silence. She didn’t want to need them. But when everything else spiralled, they reminded her she still had control over something.
She hadn’t done it last night.
Not yet.
She almost did.
Instead, she sat on the cold bathroom floor, fists tight, throat aching, whispering, Don’t. Don’t. Don’t. like it would break the spell.
It didn’t.
She just ran out of breath first.
Now, the halls of New Moon High felt like they were closing in. Wolves watched her from the corners. Curious. Hungry. Suspicious. Like they could smell the fracture lines under her skin.
She wasn’t sure if they could.
At her locker, a girl with perfect waves and too much lip gloss leaned in with a fake smile. “Where are you from, anyway?”
“Earth,” Savannah replied flatly.
Another girl laughed a little too hard. “You’re funny. But seriously who’s your family? Are you with a pack?”
Savannah shut her locker hard enough to make the girl flinch. “I don’t have a pack.”
The silence after that was delicious.
She turned away before they could respond. She didn’t owe them softness.
She didn’t owe anyone anything.
Except maybe… herself.
And even that was a battle she wasn’t sure she was winning.
The bathroom near the gym was always empty during , period.
Savannah knew that. She timed it. Waited for the hall to clear, for the tension in her chest to crest so high it blocked her throat. She locked the farthest stall and slid down until her back hit the cold tile wall.
She didn't cry.
Crying was for people who had someone to hold them after.
She unzipped her backpack quietly. Inside, a hidden pocket. Inside that, a sharp edge stolen from the craft room on her first day. It wasn’t dramatic. Just… quietly. Clean. Enough.
Her hands trembled. Just a little. Just enough to remind her that she was slipping again.
She rolled up the leg of her jeans slowly. Her breath caught.
The silence in the bathroom was thick.
Until it wasn’t.
A door creaked open. Footsteps. Slow. Measured. The kind that didn’t belong in here.
Savannah froze.
Then, a voice smooth, low, unbothered.
“You know this is the guys’ bathroom, right?”
Rowan.
Of course it was him.
She clenched her jaw and stayed still. Maybe he’d think it was empty. Maybe
“Someone’s bleeding.” He sniffed, confused. “Is that… blood?”
Panic spiked. Savannah pulled the fabric down, fast and clumsy, shoving the blade back into her bag. She pressed her back harder to the wall, heart slamming against her ribs like it wanted out.
The door to her stall clicked. He was outside it now.
“Hey,” Rowan said, tone light, teasing. “You didn’t go and get in a fight without inviting me, did you?”
She didn’t answer.
He didn’t leave.
“Saw you in homeroom. You looked like you were gonna bite someone.”
Still no answer.
Then: sniff.
Another one.
And this time, his voice dropped all the way down.
“That’s your blood.”
A pause.
“Savannah.”
She said nothing. She couldn’t.
There was a second of static silence. Then the lock rattled.
Savannah surged forward, slamming her palm against it. “Don’t”
Too late. The door flew open.
Rowan stood there, taller than she remembered, the shadows of his jaw sharper in the harsh fluorescent light. His expression wasn’t smirking now. It was blank. Too blank.
His eyes flicked down.
Saw the stain.
The half-pulled pant leg.
Her red, trembling fingers.
“s**t,” he said, soft but fierce.
Savannah turned her face away. “Get out.”
“No.”
“Rowan”
“I said no.”
His voice wasn’t cruel. It wasn’t loud. But it wasn’t human.
He stepped in and slammed the stall door shut behind him. The smell of pine and cold air hit her like a wall. He crouched but didn’t touch her.
“You cut yourself.”
“It’s none of your”
“It is now.”
His hands curled into fists. “You could’ve nicked an artery.”
She rolled her eyes. “I didn’t.”
“That’s not the point.”
“You gonna tell the class? Tell your little Alpha club?”
He looked at her, long and hard. “I should.”
“Do it, then. Go be a good dog.”
That struck something. His jaw twitched. For a second, she thought he might snap. But he just exhaled, slow and controlled.
“You’re coming with me.”
She laughed bitterly. “Not happening.”
Rowan leaned in. “You think I’m gonna walk out of here and pretend I didn’t see this? Pretend you’re fine?”
“I am fine,” she snarled.
He looked at her like she’d just said the sky was green.
Then, slowly, with too much patience: “No. You’re bleeding in a school bathroom and hiding behind a wall of teeth. You’re not fine.”
Savannah’s eyes burned. She hated him for seeing her. For caring. It would’ve been easier if he had just walked away.
But he didn’t.
“Come with me to the pack, doctor,” Rowan said quietly now. “Let them clean it. That’s it. You don’t have to explain anything.”
“I don’t want”
“I don’t care.”
His eyes met hers, steady and fierce.
“I’d rather you hate me than leave you bleeding.”
She didn’t answer. She couldn’t.
But she let him help her stand.
And for the first time in a long time, Savannah Cross didn’t walk away alone.
The bathroom door swung open.
Savannah stepped into the hallway, face pale, eyes dead calm, flanked by Rowan on one side. He didn’t touch her, but he hovered close enough to make it clear: she wasn’t alone anymore.
She hated how steady his presence felt.
She hated needing it.
Before she could take another step, they were there.
Luca. Jace.
Two shadows emerging from different ends of the hall like they’d been called by scent or instinct. Twin expressions of alarm flared on their faces only for a split second before the confusion was gone, and something ancient clicked into place.
They saw her.
Then they smelled it.
Blood.
Without a word, all three moved in sync.
Jace took the lead, barking orders to a teacher like it was his birthright. Luca fell in step beside Rowan, who offered only the smallest nod to his brothers. Savannah barely had time to breathe before she was moving, shielded, flanked, her small frame hidden between tall bodies and sharper intentions.
Whispers erupted.
Gasps.
The scent of dominance rolled off the triplets like thunderclouds, making lesser wolves press against lockers and drop their gazes. Girls turned. Boys froze.
But Savannah felt the heat of one glare cut sharper than the rest.
A girl leaned against the wall by the vending machines platinum blonde, too much eyeliner, and a bitchy sneer ready to strike. Her voice carried just enough to be heard.
“Wow. All three of them? That’s greedy.”
Savannah stopped walking. She didn't flinch. She didn’t even blink. But the triplets… felt it.
Luca was the first to turn.
His stare was molten steel.
It hit the girl like a physical force.
Her smirk cracked.
“Luca, I was joking—”
He took one slow step forward, eyes glowing amber now, the hallway growing too quiet. The tension in the air shifted from teenage drama to something primal.
Alpha heat.
The girl swallowed hard, her body tensing, instincts rising to the surface faster than her pride could fight it. Her knees buckled, and she dropped slowly, deliberately onto the cold tile floor. Her eyes flicked away, chin tilted down, and her neck bared itself with shaking submission.
Silence echoed like a gunshot.
Jace turned back. “We done here?”
Luca didn’t speak. Just looked down at the girl with cold contempt, then turned on his heel and kept walking.
Rowan's hand briefly brushed Savannah’s lower back light, grounding. Not possession. Not control. Just… there.
She didn’t know if she hated that or not.
By the time they got her out of the school, the silence behind them roared louder than any scream.
And Savannah didn’t look back.
- Writer
