And their minds, poor fragile things, short-circuited like overloaded circuits in a storm—sparks flying, fuses blown, leaving only the acrid scent of burnt synapses.

Ah, there it is: Charisma at ninety, that merciless predator, coupled with a voice divine enough to shame the heavenly host. A lethal combination, really—like handing a toddler a loaded gun and watching the inevitable tragedy unfold with detached fascination.

Phei's gaze met the taller one's—the brunette with hazel eyes now comically wide, straining as if attempting to flee their sockets and seek asylum elsewhere. She drowned in his stare, surrendering with the resigned grace of a drowning woman who decides, in her final moments, that the abyss is rather inviting after all.

Her pupils bloomed like black flowers in poisoned soil. Her lips parted in silent supplication. A flush crawled up her throat, slow and treacherous, betraying her body's mutiny against whatever remained of her composure.

She looked as though she'd glimpsed the Messiah Himself—abs chiseled, halo askew, perhaps with a warrant out for divine misdemeanors.

Her blonde companion fared little better, blue eyes glazing over in what could only be described as a petite mort of the soul—a minor ecstasy, or perhaps the onset of a delicious, self-inflicted ruin.

"Hi," the brunette squeaked, the word escaping like a guilty secret before she could clamp it down.

Her hand flew to her mouth, as if to cram it back inside and pretend the betrayal had never occurred.

Phei offered them the faintest curve of a smile—nothing extravagant, merely a hint of amusement at the human comedy unfolding—and returned his attention to the locker.

Behind him, the air filled with the frantic whispers of two adolescents unraveling at the seams.

"Oh my god. Oh, my fucking God. Who the hell was that?"

"That's... that's Phei Maxton. The scholarship runt. The charity freak."

"That's the charity case? Darling, are you blind? That's no charity case. That's a walking apocalypse in human form—a beautiful catastrophe I wouldn't mind surviving."

"I know."

"He looked at me. He actually looked at me. I think I'm with his child."

"That's not how biology—"

"I don't give a damn about biology. I'm pregnant with his gaze. Immaculate conception via ocular fornication. Call it a miracle or a curse; either way, I'm keeping the eye babies."

Phei pressed his teeth into the soft flesh of his inner cheek, stifling another laugh. One more, and the hallway would descend into pandemonium—a chain reaction of hormonal Armageddon.

Best not tempt fate further; the gods have a nasty sense of humor as it is.

With mechanical precision born of necessity, he extracted his books: the weighty calculus tome, the dog-eared English anthology, the pristine notebook purchased with legitimate coin rather than scavenged from the detritus of forgotten souls.

He slammed the locker shut, spun the dial, and turned—only to confront the seven sentinels still loitering like a badly rehearsed gauntlet of mediocrity.

Phei did not alter his stride. No acceleration, no hesitation—just that inexorable, predatory calm of a man who knows the world bends, eventually, to those who refuse to yield.

Let us observe the carnage.

Brett registered him first, face blanching as if drained by some invisible vampire. He stumbled aside with the graceless haste of a man recalling a prior engagement with his own mortality.

One.

Anderson and Kyle toppled next, shuffling like condemned men granted a last-minute reprieve.

Two. Three.

Zack Preston vanished sideways, flattening against the lockers as though praying for osmosis to spare him.

Four. Easy, lad. I'm not about to devour your soul—though the temptation lingers.

Derek's clenched jaw slackened just enough to gulp down the remnants of his pride before he slunk rightward. Aiden—the imperious Aiden, who had lorded over Phei for years with the smugness of inherited mediocrity—dropped his eyes to the scuffed floor, submissive as a whipped cur.

Five. Six.

And Danton...

Danton did not merely step aside.

He recoiled. A full, visceral flinch—the primal jerk of a body whose ancient instincts screamed apex predator approaching while the higher brain scrambled to catch up. His shoulder struck the wall with a satisfying thud, and in that frozen, exquisite instant, Phei savored the raw, pants-soiling terror blooming in his stepbrother's eyes.

A terror pure and undiluted, the sort that whispered of buried secrets and inevitable reckonings.

Seven.

And that's how you part the fucking Red Sea.

And thus, with nary a word nor gesture, Phei parted the Red Sea—though this Moses bore not tablets, but the quiet promise of plague.

Phei glided through the gaping corridor they'd vacated as though the seven boys were mere phantoms—insubstantial wisps of cowardice and cologne that parted before him like fog before a funeral procession.

The hallway fell into that peculiar hush reserved for executions and eclipses: not true silence, for the school still teemed with the living, but the breathless, collective inhale of fifty adolescents terrified that a single exhale might shatter whatever dark enchantment had just unfolded.

Then the whispers rose, tentative at first, like the opening notes of a requiem, before swelling into a crescendo of delicious panic.

"Did you see that?"

"They moved for him. They actually fucking moved."

"Danton Maxton flinched. Danton. The same Danton who once stared down a linebacker on steroids without so much as a blink. He flinched like a kicked priest."

"What fresh hell is this?"

"It's the fight, obviously. Phei turned Brett into modern art yesterday—abstract expressionism in bruises."

"No, darling, it's more than that. Look at their faces. They look like men who've just been handed Polaroids of their own open graves."

"Since when does the scholarship urchin inspire existential dread?"

"Since approximately never. That's the beauty of it. Never—until this morning, when the universe apparently decided to invert the food chain for shits and giggles."

"I heard he's got leverage. Dirt. Blackmail material juicy enough to make a tabloid blush."

"On the Unholy Trinity? Please. What could the charity case possibly have? Receipts from their daddy's offshore accounts? Photos of ritual goat sacrifice in the boathouse?"

"I don't know, but Danton's expression wasn't 'I lost a fistfight.' That was 'my immortal soul just got repossessed' terror."

"Holy shit."

"Yes. Holy shit sums it up rather neatly."

Phei continued his measured stride, that private, serpentine smile curling at the corner of his mouth like smoke from a freshly lit pyre.

By lunchtime the entire school would be feasting on the rumor: the golden boys, those untouchable demigods of inherited privilege, were now afraid of Phei Maxton.

And no one would know why.

Perfect.

Let them speculate. Let them embroider the mystery with ever more lurid threads until the truth became irrelevant. Fear is a gardener; it thrives on darkness, multiplies in silence, and turns harmless shadows into slavering beasts with too many teeth.

Let them talk.

Let them wonder.

Let them lie awake inventing reasons why the natural order had quietly, irrevocably, snapped its leash.

He rounded another corner, abandoning the seven emotional wrecks to their collective nervous breakdown, and glanced at his phone.

7:42 AM. Eighteen minutes until the bell.

English Literature. Room 304.

And—because the cosmos clearly has a sadistic sense of humor—he would be sharing those fifty-five minutes with the one person he'd spent the entire morning trying to excise from his thoughts like a tumor.

Maya Scarlett.

Phei's jaw clenched hard enough to audition for a diamond cutter.

Maya was… complicated. A walking paradox wrapped in enigma and served with a side of emotional shrapnel.

This is fine, he told himself. Utterly, completely fine. I've just casually intimidated seven apex predators into scattering like startled virgins and accidentally impregnated two juniors with a single glance.

One classroom hour with Maya Scarlett should be a breeze.

Right?

…Right?

He ascended the stairs to the third floor, bag slung over one shoulder, blazer still draped across his arm like a matador's cape he hadn't yet decided to use. The whispers trailed him, a gossipy specter that refused to be shaken.

Room 304 loomed at the end of the corridor, its door ajar like the mouth of some patient, waiting beast.

Phei drew a slow breath, tasting the metallic edge of inevitability.

Here we go.

Time to spend fifty-five minutes pretending Maya Scarlett is merely another oxygen-thieving mammal in a room full of them.

Spoiler: I am catastrophically, irredeemably fucked.

But even dragons, in the privacy of their own skulls, are allowed the occasional pathetic dream.

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