Adam lay on top of the covers, one leg half off the bed, the other bent just enough to keep him from sliding all the way down. He hadn't meant to stay there this long. At some point he'd told himself he was just going to sit for a minute, maybe check his phone, then get up and figure out the day. That had been a while ago.
The room held a quiet that didn't feel empty so much as paused.
Bryce's side was clean in a way that made it obvious he'd been gone for hours. The bed was made tight, corners tucked, the desk cleared except for his laptop charger coiled neatly like it had been placed there on purpose. His chair was pushed in. Nothing out of place, nothing left mid-action. It looked like a room waiting for someone to come back and resume something already in order.
Adam's side was the opposite, not messy exactly, just unresolved. A hoodie slung over the back of his chair. One shoe near the door, the other closer to the bed. His phone face-down on the mattress where he'd dropped it last time he'd checked it. The covers wrinkled under him from where he'd shifted positions without ever actually getting up.
Light came through the window in a flat, grey-white sheet, bright enough to fill the room but not enough to warm it. The kind of late November morning that looked like it had considered snow and decided against it at the last minute. The sky outside wasn't dark, but it wasn't clear either. Just a dull, even brightness that didn't cast shadows so much as erase them.
He stared at the ceiling for a while, not focusing on anything specific, just letting his eyes rest somewhere that didn't ask anything from him.
Are you gonna waste the Saturday? You should get up.
The thought came and went without weight.
He didn't move.
His name sat in his head the way it had since yesterday.
Not the sound of it. The look of it.
Adam Greene.
2C.
Werewolf.
It wasn't the word that stuck. He'd gotten used to that, as much as anyone got used to something like that. He'd said it out loud. Heard other people say it. Felt it in his bones on nights that didn't give him a choice.
It was the way it had been placed.
Same font. Same size. Same line spacing as everything else on that screen.
Like it belonged there in the same way height or age did.
Like it was just another thing you could sort by.
He shifted slightly on the bed, the fabric under his back pulling and settling again.
They didn't even ask, how i felt about this.
That part kept circling.
Not even a token version of it. Not a form. Not a checkbox. Not a "do you consent to...".
It had just been done.
Documented. Filed. Displayed.
Like it had always been theirs to do.
His jaw tightened for a second, then eased.
He wasn't mad in the way that would have been easier to deal with. There was no clear edge to push against. No person to point at and say this is where it started.
Just a system that had moved forward and included him in it.
He turned his head slightly, eyes landing on his phone where it lay a few inches from his hand.
He reached for it, thumb brushing the screen awake.
The time read 11:36, Saturday morning, 23rd November. Besides that, a couple of notifications. Nothing urgent.
A message from a group chat he hadn't opened. Something from a class thread. A missed call from a number he didn't recognize.
He didn't open any of them.
His thumb hovered, then scrolled once, more out of habit than intent.
A headline passed under his eyes.
European league finals postponed amid escalating protests in host city.
He didn't tap it.
He kept scrolling.
The screen dimmed after a second and went dark again.
He set the phone back down on his chest, then let it slide off onto the bed beside him.
The silence settled back in.
His father's face came to him without warning, not as a full memory, just the impression of it. The way he looked lately when he thought Adam wasn't paying attention. More tired than he said he was. More distracted than he admitted.
Austin Greene had always been the kind of man who filled a room without trying.
Lately, he felt… elsewhere.
Not gone. Not absent.
Just not entirely there.
He's trying.
Adam knew that.
He knew the pieces his father had given him weren't lies. Just incomplete.
Which somehow made it harder.
There was something about knowing you were being protected that didn't feel like protection at all.
It felt like standing just outside a door you knew you were supposed to walk through, listening to a conversation on the other side you weren't being invited into.
He exhaled slowly, staring at the same spot on the ceiling.
He thinks I can't handle it.
The thought wasn't bitter. Just… there.
Or he thinks I shouldn't have to.
That one sat differently.
He rolled onto his side, facing the wall, one arm tucked under his head.
Moonstone sat under everything now.
He didn't think about it directly most of the time. He'd gotten good at that. You didn't live in a place like this, with a history like his, and walk around thinking about it constantly. You learned where not to look.
But it was there anyway.
In the way the air felt at certain hours.
In the way streets curved in directions that felt familiar before he could place why.
In the fact that his father had brought him back here.
Of all places.
Why here.
He'd asked. Not directly. Not fully.
He'd gotten answers that sounded like answers until you tried to hold onto them.
Something about timing. About opportunity. About things lining up.
Not about her.
Never about her.
Except she was in it.
Even when he didn't let himself think about her, she was in the edges of everything. A shape just outside focus. A presence that didn't need him to look at it to be there.
And then there were the things she'd said.
Not in a memory he revisited. More like something that had been said once and then stayed in the room with him after the person who said it was gone.
Force of nature.
Enemies that will come.
Closest allies might be those enemies.
He shifted again, the words brushing up against the rest of his thoughts without settling into any one place.
So much for a normal life.
The thought almost made him laugh.
This is shit.
It didn't come out.
He pressed his face slightly into the pillow, the fabric cool against his skin.
The bloodright sat somewhere deeper than the rest of it.
Not a thought he turned over so much as something he knew was the reason for all this.
Like a piece of information written in a language he understood just enough to know it mattered.
It wasn't something he'd chosen.
That part kept coming back.
Not as a complaint.
Just as a fact.
He hadn't said yes to any of this.
Not the mark. Not the training. Not the part where something out there had already decided he was part of whatever this was going to be.
Doesn't really matter now does it.
Another thought that didn't land cleanly.
It mattered.
Just not in a way that changed anything.
He stared at the wall, eyes unfocused.
Luna's face came next.
Not in a sequence. Not tied to a specific moment.
Just there.
He let out a quiet breath through his nose.
Yeah. That's a whole thing.
The island.
The church.
The punch.
The cafeteria.
The bench in the forest, the cold sitting between them like it was part of the conversation.
Each one separate.
Each one connected.
He didn't know what to do with any of it.
Didn't know what she wanted. Didn't know what he wanted, exactly.
Just knew that she stayed in his head longer than made sense.
That he kept replaying things he wouldn't normally replay.
The way she'd looked at him when she wasn't trying to hide anything.
The way she'd shut down when he got too close to something she didn't want to talk about.
I doubt i'm figuring that out today.
He closed his eyes for a second, then opened them again.
That didn't stop him from thinking about it.
It just stopped him from pretending he was going to solve it.
Everything sat together.
Not lined up. Not organized.
Just there.
His father.
His mother.
The mark.
The list.
Luna.
The training.
The fights.
All of it existing at the same time without asking him if that was too much.
He exhaled again, longer this time.
No one knows all of it.
The thought settled in a way the others hadn't.
Aiva knew parts.
Bryce knew different parts.
His father knew things none of them did.
And Adam sat in the middle of all of it, the only one with the full picture, and even that picture wasn't complete.
It wasn't dramatic.
It just was.
He was surrounded by people who cared about him.
He knew that.
Felt it.
And still...
There were things he couldn't say without turning them into something else.
Things he didn't even know how to say.
He pushed himself up onto his elbows, then into a sitting position, the motion slow, like his body was catching up to a decision his head hadn't fully made yet.
His phone was still on the bed.
He picked it up again, thumb hovering for a second before he opened a new message.
Bryce.
He typed, paused, then adjusted it down to something simpler.
'you in class or?'
The reply came a minute later.
'yeah why'
Adam stared at the screen for a second.
'anyone at the courts or is it dead'
Another pause.
then:
'most ppl in class or studying
but there's a group
you'll be fine'
Adam read it once.
Then again.
He didn't respond.
He set the phone down on the bed, this time with a little more intention.
For a second, he just sat there, hands resting on his thighs, looking at nothing in particular.
Then he stood up.
The movement felt strange for half a second, like stepping into something he hadn't used in a while, then it settled.
He grabbed the hoodie off the chair, pulled it on, the fabric falling into place automatically.
He found the other shoe, nudged it into position with his foot, then stepped into both, tying them without looking down.
He checked his phone once more, then slipped it into his pocket.
The room looked the same as it had a minute ago.
Nothing resolved.
Nothing changed.
He walked to the door, hand resting on the handle for just a second.
Then he opened it, stepped through, and pulled it shut behind him.