Jumping Fish Lure the Birds

(ty for reading, the little star is happy to see you :D )

(EDITED)(Note to readers: Some chapters ahead may not be fixed to be in line with the new edits)

They say genes are infinitely variable within what you actually receive, but you will always have a little more of your mother considering you only ever receive mitochondria from your mother, and that shit is everywhere whether you like it or not.

"You know why I named you Echo? It's because you and I look so alike." Her laugh was high and airy. "You're an 'echo' of me, get it?"

"Is that bad?" I asked. We sat on the cushions by the window whose face was full of Incheon, city and water against low hills. Summer was thick in the air, leaking in through the white walls, settling on our skin.

"Why would it be?"

I couldn't think of anything then—six year olds were often preoccupied—so I said, "Dunno." I sat up. "You're pretty, Umma. I'm okay with looking like you."

Her grin was starlight. "Thank you, Echo." She pinched my cheek. "How lucky am I?"

But, that was a while ago. And against all my mother's wishes, time comes for you eventually. I'd inherited my mother's looks, but I'd also inherited her luck. My mother was a fantastic wish-maker, a top-grade dreamer, and a runaway at heart. Why she passed that onto me, I'd never know.

"Don't listen to Appa." My mother had said it so many times before, with so many different settings behind her, so many different variations of faces she wore. The last time she pushed it, her eye was scratched, her nose was bleeding, and time had found her. "Don't listen to him, Echo." Her hands were cold on my skin. "You have to trust me. You have to trust that everything I'm doing is for you. This is your life."

Another hint for the winning part:

Stop trusting dreamers with your life. They don't even know how to trust their own.

I said, "I know, Umma."

If she knew how to want, then I'd be the one to learn how to do.

It was only fair, I suppose, that one of us could learn the difference.

______________

I fucking hate the fae.

Bastards, all of them. Immortal sons of bitches that are fit for the stunning world of billboard signs or skincare advertising just as much as the dirty undergrounds of multimillion-dollar mobster industries and overseas crime syndicates. Rats. Pretty, hungry, silver-tongued, downright vicious rats.

I should know.

Tuesday had gone over about as well as Monday had, leaving my limbs hanging on by threads and my bandages from the day before already peeling under new cuts or scrapes. Sweat made my clothes stick to my skin, my Technicolor hair clinging to my forehead. My ears were ringing the entire two-hour bus ride home.

Nia had a night class and it left me hauling my bike across the Splinter's unfriendly streets alone, although no one approached me for once, likely thinking someone had already gotten to me and I had no goods left to be mugged for. I blew a strand of pink and green from my face as I headed for my unit. My bike creaked, its wheels protesting the grainy terrain. I pushed in the key code for the garage.

"Calm down," I told my bike as we slowly descended into the underground, my thighs actively upset at the angle. The hazy white fluorescence guided me down below amongst a kingdom of concrete and cars. "I gotta get Nia to look at you."

A voice echoed across the damp, dark garage. "Why, me oh my, is that my little ghostie I see?"

I stopped dead. If I was exhausted then, the feeling ran for its very life in seconds. My heart melted down, flooded into my system, its rapid beats like a drum pounding in my body.

I swept my eyes around. The garage door had closed at some point not of my own doing. It was criminally vacant. Save for one other body lingering in the shadows.

"Mercy," I drawled. "All my joy."

Mercy was, well, everything aforementioned above. Minus the "sons of bitches" part. She wasn't really an offspring of anything, but more so, an unfortunate occurrence in nature that God likely rued letting pass by His hands. Whatever she was made of or born from, it probably had its own ring of Hell somewhere to hide away in.

She was draped against an inky black Porsche 718 Boxster, her high heels of the same color and like twin spikes driving into stone. A pink mini skirt left little to the imagination when she moved towards me, and her little black top didn't do much to help.

"Long time no see, Ghost," she said with a smile. When she spoke, her teeth brimmed over red lips, one a lux silver that glinted in the unflattering light. "You clean up nicely."

I clamped the locks in place to keep the bike as steady as my hands weren't. I chewed my lip in an attempt to quell the trembles. "A bit downtown for you," I said. "I thought fae didn't mingle with dogs."

Her eyes peered at me; an inverted pair, sclera a terrific black, iris an unholy blue. She brushed her black waves off her shoulder, just make a show of the ends going white at her fingers' whims.

"You're so judgmental sometimes," she said and pouted. "Makes me frown. Frowny face."

"What do you want?" I snapped. "It's the twentieth. You're early."

"Had to drop by on celebration," she replied, and grinned so wide it almost split her face. Fangs glinted in the back of her mouth. "There's fresh blood on the Corvidae."

My stomach dropped. "What?"

"Oh, he plays dumb, me too!" She clapped her hands.

"How did you even—"

"You're many things, honey," she laughed. "But you're not quiet." She grimaced. "Oh, Ghost. Still so dishonest of you."

I pulled away. "Why," I repeated, steeling my face, "are you here?"

Mercy hummed at me with a bit of a frown. Nothing could ever be easy with Mercy. Everything was honest, nothing was clear. It was a game fundamentally designed for you to lose. Mercy had more than half a century in the world of cutting people off at the knees, tripping people at the wire, stealing, twisting, taking, and killing. If Mercy found you before you went looking, it was always, always, for a damn terrible reason.

"Jumping fish lure the birds," she drawled. "Flying fish find them first."

I flexed my fingers. "Stop."

"I thought we were playing," she said, and stepped in front me, blocking my view of the door to the units. Her grin hadn't dropped, and sliced through my eyes. "Three players. You, me, your mother. I'll start."

"Stop." Everything burned and stung in old wounds and new cuts. "Just tell me what the hell you're here for."

Mercy swung around me, heels crescendoing in the underground garage. Her face was blood-hungry.

"Jumping fish, Ghost," she said. "I was wondering when you'd grow a spine and take a hop out of the seawater! Here I thought all you were good for was the bottom feeders. Hey, Ghost. Hey! What's with the revolution?"

"My life isn't complicated enough," I deadpanned. "It's going from one domineering domain to another. What's it to you?"

She tapped a black talon against her chin and shrugged. "You're a know-nothing street Stirling fresh off the asphalt and straight to the crow's nest. Corvus is not a new domain, Ghostie." she said, splaying her black-tipped fingers wide, then pointed one right at me. "A no-face sub, an inexperienced rookie, a Class III Stirling, an Omega. It is another planet entirely." Her grin curdled. "Front port, at that. Little leagues must have made you a glory junkie."

I didn't know if I should let out a sigh of relief or unease at what Mercy had just told me. She didn't know I'd lied about being an Omega, but she did know about my lying of being a front port. The timer on both ticked in double-time.

I squeezed my fists tight at my sides. "Name me another way to pay that debt," I snarled. "I do your jobs, I deal with the bodies, I do what you want, I do what you ask. You take every grain and you leave me with the scraps and those numbers never budge, so what other choice do I have? I can't street race my life back."

She held up a single hand, snickering. "Now, Ghostie. I'm not discouraging you from your hobbies! Why, I'd never take that joy from you! Growing minds, growing pains, growing up!" She tapped the side of her head, then dragged her nail from her temple to her lip. "I'm only trying to help."

"You just showed to mock me."

"Who is God?" Mercy said, splaying her arms high in the sky. The light flashed in severe lines and razor-edged shapes over her pale skin, her black eyes. Her smile was full of fangs. "What I say and what I do. I make what I am, I make what I see. Nothing is real without my consent. What's that mean?"

"You're deluded," I hissed.

She waltzed towards me, her glittering toes digging into the concrete. A breath passed, less than, before something silver appeared like a shooting star. It sank into the microscopic space between her hand and my neck. The knife was ice and bone against my throat. My breath died instantaneously.

"I'm intentional," she whispered. "Everything you have is had because I made it so. If I wanted you for good studies, I would've sent your ungrateful bones to the public universities."

"Mocking," I reminded through gritted teeth.

"Mocking would be telling you no," she said. The knife disappeared somewhere out of my sight. She dragged her nails down my jaw, up my chin, and my body recoiled at the feeling. "Good thing I'm not."

I paused at that. I slipped from her reach, but remained facing her as I paced back. "Then why the fuck are you here?"

"Delicately, Ghost, go delicately. Blame game says you're flying a little too high for your lungs right now. I'm just trying to keep you from choking," she sang. "I can't stop by to say congratulations? I'm just being polite. I'm a nice one like that, me and my good manner."

"Spare me your manner," I snapped. "You'd really just let me waltz in with Corvus, no questions asked, all on my own? You showed for a reason, just say it."

Mercy cocked her head at me, still smiling. She threw her head back with a raucous, rearing laugh.

"Maybe I gave you too much credit too quickly," she sighed, flicking her hair away. "Do you know where you are, dear? Do you know what you do?" She sneered at me. "Your hands are red to their very bones, boy. You are the bottom of the barrel and the last of the pickings, you are not even worth the air that you breathe. The world you have survived, is nothing compared to the world you're risking your very head just to enter."

She turned and leaned down until we were eye-level. Blue iris to black. Smile to sneer. "It's not the shadows you ought to be careful of, Ghost," she whispered. "It's the limelight." Mercy brushed past me with a flick of her pallid wrist. "After all, where are you supposed to hide now?"

She opened the Porsche door and slid into the driver's seat. She rolled down the window a moment later, and gave me a wiggle of her fingers in a disgustingly sweet goodbye. The night coiled around her, festered in the crevices of the foreboding grin she sent my way.

"I hear you're moving out on Friday," she called. "Such a sudden cost, I'll ring you up for a few little gigs in the coming weeks, yes?"

"Fuck you," I breathed.

She cackled. "Oh," she drawled. "The price of being a champion."

I watched her roll out of the garage with a sputter and a rumble as she left me in the dust, nothing but the looming shadows of her words left to haunt me in her wake.

Where are you supposed to hide now?

____________________

I wasn't on the run, per se. But I didn't want to be found.

Mercy's Bengals being the top performing organized gang under my father's administration gave her many high connections in many high places, the only advantage that had kept me in the places I was. I had over a dozen fake IDs, social security cards, birth certificates, passports, even business cards from moving around through high schools and hopping about towns for Bengal jobs, none of which contained any remotely-real information. It hadn't ever mattered enough.

College, however, was a thicker system to crack and a more well-lit one at that to catch more errors or discrepancies within spotty information. It was a tricky web of lies to form, sticky as it was intricate, and as dependent on my verbal consistencies as the printed ones. Mercy's connections were slim, but there, in Avaldi, leaving my file rather difficult to interpret if you looked at it long enough. I walked a delicate line between a ghost and a fib, wherein I could be known to exist just fine, except when you got to where and by what means.

To glancing eyes, I was an emancipated minor with US citizenship with no emergency contacts, parental figures, living relatives, or siblings. The address was two digits and one street off from my real one, and the available phone number was a ghost ID of Mercy's playing perpetual voicemail. I had no email, no alternative mobile number, no insurance, no previous addresses, no medical history, no bank account, no leases, no vehicles, and no schooling record. Which, if you can imagine, does bring up some questions.

So, needless to say, any sort of signing anything wasn't exactly making me bounce out of my chair.

Edwards stood in front of me and set a stack of papers down between us. She stabbed her finger into the center. "Sign everywhere it says to."

My name was printed at the top, clean and black, CONFIDENTIAL slammed on top, Corvus's logo silk screened on the back. I gaped.

I flipped through the pages until I found informational ones. I said, "Do I have to fill these out?"

Edwards leaned against the edge of her desk with a sigh. Her office was in a leftmost section carved out of the stone of the Corvidae, the walls gutted of the lifeless concrete and replaced with blazing purple paint. Her black wood desk was adorned with everything from school newsletter printouts to TIME magazines to CVS Christmas cards. In another situation, it would dull my nerves. But seeing it now really only made me sick.

"Well," she said. "About that."

My stomach took a nose dive.

"Your file is particularly blank, if I'm being honest," she told me, blue eyes narrowing. My skin was too tight. My blood was too thick. "Your email doesn't receive, your phone number doesn't work, you have no names of any family or friends, your bank account is entirely locked from all viewing, and you have no record of schools, addresses, or even basic paperwork."

I sucked in a sharp breath. "You...don't say," I squeaked.

She raised a brow. "I do."

I closed my eyes. "I'm sorry," I said.

"Do you even have a phone?"

I hesitated. "No."

"Computer?"

"Sometimes."

She blinked. She said, "How are you a college kid without a laptop or a phone?"

"Nothing wrong with unplugging sometimes," I tried. "They say you retain things better when you handwrite."

The reply must not have been what she wanted, but it seemed to be enough to tell her something that I missed. Edwards stared at me for a long while, gears spinning in her blue eyes, before she ultimately let out an ambiguous huff and turned to sit in her chair.

She said, "Did you keep your file like this on purpose?"

I did a double take. I said, "What?"

"Did you make your file this way on purpose?" she repeated, slower.

I just stared, my heartbeat too loud in my lungs for me to speak. I could hear her telling me to get the hell off of Corvus from a mile away. We remained in something of a stalemate for several seconds before Edwards caved. She held up her hands. I waited for the blow.

"Listen, kid, I'm not here to interrogate you about your life, that's your life, it's not my business. So don't tell me what you don't wanna tell me, just keep it off the track," she said. "But don't leave me in the dark about it. Help me work around you, all right? I just care how well you hold onto a bike."

I gaped at her. I waited for her to follow that up with more questions, simply phrased differently, but she didn't ask. Her finger flipped through the papers between us before she withdrew a handful and set it beside the stack. She raised a brow at me.

"Fill out what you wanna," she told me. "At least tell me your school email works?"

It took me three tries. "Y—yes."

"We'll work with that, I guess. For now, just keep in close contact with the team, find out any announcements I got going from them and their group chat. You miss anything, that's on you, got it?" I hurried to nod. She wrote it down. "We can pay your victory portions in cash, but they'll just take longer to get to you, and you'll receive it in divisions. That fine?"

I blinked. "Yes. Yes, yeah," I breathed. "That's...great."

"Good. Contact and money, the collegian duo," she drawled. "Take a look at the papers, sign where it says. Fill out what you can on these. Then it's all you."

I nodded. Relief was a sweet, sticky medicine dripping over open wounds. I soaked it up for all I could relish it for.

I sifted through the papers, scribbling a signature on the dotted lines, putting the appropriate numbers for age and birthdate. Which might've also been fudged from its truth, but of all the crimes I'd committed in my life, legal or moral, number-shifting was the least of my worries.

I pushed the papers to her and she tucked them into the folder with a hum. I said, "Thank you."

Edwards cocked her head at me, looking confused. "Don't thank me," she assured. She jutted a thumb out her window towards the Corvidae. "Corvus is by the lockers. Meredith wanted lunch. You can catch up with them if need be and talk about move-in."

I rose from my seat and grabbed my backpack. "Okay," I replied, and headed for the exit.

"Where are you going?" she called. "Lockers are the other way."

I scratched the back of my head. "I think it's in everyone's best interest that I grab a sandwich on my own."

"Not in mine," she shot. "The more time you spend with them, the better. You can all adjust."

"'Adjust' is kind," I murmured. "What if they adjust violently, with broken-bone kind of repercussion? I have that face, you know."

"It's a first year thing."

"It's a Stirling thing."

Edwards cocked a brow. "Listen," she said, setting the papers down. "I put an open recruitment out for a reason. You three passed it. You've survived the first day of practice. As far as I'm concerned, that's good enough to start, and I'm the last one to call things. So Stirling thing or first year thing, whatever. Corvus is your team from now on. You all won't work on the track if you can't even talk off the track."

"Does your captain know that?"

"Trust me, kid. If King really wanted you off this team for good reason, you wouldn't be here," she said, and although it might've been intended to be comforting, it fell more like a bitter reminder of my place. "Don't let him or any of those guys push you out of this opportunity, it's yours, after all. You won it fair and square. Whether it's a first year thing or a Stirling thing, doesn't matter. You're here regardless." She gestured around us. "Do something about it."

The price of being a champion.

I pursed my lips to a thin line, and gave her a nod. I gave her a salute. I saw myself out.

Do something about it?

She had no fucking clue.

The group of them had indeed gathered about the locker rooms, their formation nearly identical to their lineup order from yesterday, save for the addition of Wynter and Zoe on the ends. Their chatter was nonchalant, too quiet to carry past the tunnel, but just loud enough I immediately reconsidered turning around and fleeing for my life.

I was nearly halfway to a decision about it when someone else made it for me.

"Hey, Monet," someone called. I glanced past Wynter's head and spotted Zahir, his hand in the air. His grin was lopsided and genuine. "You caught up."

"What's Monet?" I asked.

"He means your hair," Rosalie snarked. "As in, the mess of it."

"Is...Monet slang for 'hair, the mess of it'?" I replied.

"I can't tell if you're making a good joke or a terrible insult unto Monet."

"Whichever one is worse," I muttered.

Corvus turned around in one collective gesture to look at me at that reply. I shivered. There was such thing as "too close", and the team was starting to become a living example of it.

Everyone knew about Corvus, but no one knew about Corvus. It was like scientology; you heard of them, and you knew of them, and you knew what they liked to know about them, but there was a certain threshold outsiders could never cross, nor know they couldn't cross. You either knew too much, or didn't know shit. Both had their own set of repercussions.

The "too much" was kicking in.

Rosalie rolled up the sleeves of her cerulean wool sweater and grimaced at me. "What are you wearing anyway?" she asked. "Did you just wake up?"

I frowned down at my attire of black jeans and a blue long sleeve three sizes too big with a large goose at the side giving a resounding, printed QUACK into the navy nothingness. I looked back and said, "Culture."

"Very cultured," Zoe agreed.

"A real icon," Wynter deadpanned.

"Oh, I get it," Diego said from behind Zahir. "It's 'cause geese don't quack."

"Yes, Diego," Zahir said.

"They scream."

"No, Diego."

"They...scream-quack."

"No, Diego."

"Wait, do geese quack?"

"No, Diego."

Diego looked to Rosalie. "I'm at a loss. Your turn."

"Jesus Christ," she muttered. Rosalie swung her head to King, ponytail swishing like a beam of blonde light in the shadows inside the Corvidae. "You decide where we're going yet?"

King was leaned against the stone wall, clad in varying shades of prison-stone gray from head to ankle, the monotonous scheme only coming to a screeching halt at his toxic green skate shoes that reached beyond even the satellites' reach. He refused to look at me, content to stare off elsewhere. When he flicked his hand in a dismissive gesture, light rolled off half a dozen rings trapping his knuckles in thick, signet steel.

I rolled my eyes. "The justified cherry on top would've been if he was ugly," I said to Zoe.

Wynter raised a brow. "How do you know he isn't?" she murmured. "Maybe if you were closer to see him, you'd make out the features. Vertically closer. Unlike someone. Similar. And smaller. And hypocritical. I mean you."

"I've known you for a week!" I snapped.

"I can hear you," King said.

I whirled on him. "Do alphas have better ears or something?" I whispered to Wynter.

"No," he said before she could answer. "You're just bad at whispering."

Zoe patted my shoulder. "You are a little bad at whispering."

"I can't win here," I sighed.

Meredith raised her hand. "Food? Did everyone forget about the food? Because I'm starving. Starving, King." She turned to him with a pointed, "What if I starve? What then?"

"I get your bed," Rosalie replied, and Meredith gasped.

King rolled his eyes. He headed away from us. "Nancy's. We'll walk."

"Made-up names everywhere," I said.

"Including yours?"

"'Echo' is a respectable name."

Diego said, "If I call you 'Echo', what's it echoing? You can't echo an echo. What's the true echo?" He turned to Rosalie. "Rosie, I got a question."

"No the fuck you don't," she said.

"Yun is good," I decided. "Yun is best."

Wynter patted my arm. "Wise choice."

We walked.

This so-called Nancy's was set on a corner in the Birdhouse, the main downtown square that spanned nearly the entire length between Avaldi's campus, the Corvidae, the football field, the soccer field, and the apartments. Nancy's was a brick-made thing with red brick insides and white brick outsides. Windows breached most of the walls, letting in light where it was needed, the rest supplied by a large neon sign posted for all to see reading an unmistakable NANCY'S CAFE around a star-faced angel. Students already filled the black tables inside, waiters shuffling to and from the counters in a hurricane of fresh sandwiches, iced lattes, lousy tips, and laminated menus.

As good as overpriced college campuses could do for you, I suppose.

We were given all of a minute to sit down at a round, red leather booth beside the tall window peeking out into the breadth of the Birdhouse. I glanced at a menu and searched the simplest—and cheapest—option available.

Meredith leaned forward on her elbows, red hair a wild flame around her smiling face. "So," she said. "You three seem to know about us a lot, but since you're new recruits, it'd be nice to know more about you."

"Oh, my God," I whispered to Zoe. "We've been lured."

"We're first years," Wynter said to Meredith.

"Well, we know that," Meredith giggled. "What are your majors?"

"Art and design," Zoe replied just as Wynter added, "CS."

They all nodded to each other at that, save for Kenzo and King, who both simply settled for blankness. Diego jutted his chin at me with a devilish smile.

"What about you, cobayo?" Diego asked. I was simultaneously tempted and hesitant to ask him what that word meant, but he was talking again before I could make up my mind. "Color theory? What with the hair. Ow." He rubbed his arm, frowning at Meredith who looked remorseless at her jab.

I returned to the menu. "Biochem," I said.

Diego's brows shot up. "Wait, for real?"

Rosalie hummed. "You curing cancer?"

Just selling corpses. "Maybe senior year."

Meredith laughed sweetly. She tilted her head at Kenzo. "Kenzo's a chem major, you've got that in common."

"An undiagnosed psychosis," Diego said with a shake of his head. "Anyone who dares to study a pure science has got a switch flipped off."

"Like all of yours are on," Rosalie said.

I set the menu down and figured a muffin would hold me over until dinnertime. I said, "What about all of you?"

Rosalie glanced at me. "Finance. Zahir's in electrical engineering and Meredith is English," she said. "King is the only one who likes his major. History buff."

I turned to King. "You like history?"

He didn't look at me, but said, "You don't?"

"Not even a little."

"Okay."

"'Okay'?"

He didn't look up from the menu, but his face did flash that same bored, barren look of disdain. "And what's it to me?" he continued, as if it was obvious.

"King," Meredith said. "Play nice."

"Or at least pretend like you wanna," Diego added.

King acted as though neither had spoken, continuing to scan the menu. A waitress approached us, ears sharp and nose boneless and flat. Her gold eyes sparkled at us and she grinned a wickedly sharp, bright smile. Her voice was too many octaves too high. Pixie. Best in service. Worst in, frankly, everything else.

"Welcome to Nancy's," she said. "What can I get you folks?"

We all ordered and she took our menus with a quick nod before fluttering back to the kitchen with a wave of her hand. Rosalie turned back to me, a new hunger in her green eyes.

"Where are you three from?" she asked.

"Cambridge, in Massachusetts," Wynter replied.

"London," Zoe said. "I came here for college."

They looked at me. I bit the inside of my cheek. I'd play. I had to at some point. I tried to calculate my timeline right, take out the nitty gritty details, smooth it out until things blurred.

"LA," I said. "North."

"What about schools?" Rosalie asked.

Wynter and Zoe both gave their replies without blinking. I tugged at my sleeves.

"Arleta," I said, which wasn't entirely a lie, as it was a high school I'd gone to at some point.

Rosalie's eyes didn't look very happy with that answer, but Meredith willed them to move on with, "How do you all like Avaldi so far? Is it very different?"

"Hell of a lot nicer than anywhere else," Wynter scoffed. "It does all right."

"She loves it," Zoe assured. "It was my dream school. I wanted to come overseas for racing."

Meredith grinned warmly. She continued plastering us with questions, most of them innocent, inquiring about education or hobbies or whatnot. I sat back as much as I could, my answers curt or nonexistent as Zoe and Wynter began to fill more and more of the space with their stories. I was content to watch the group instead. Rosalie, Meredith, Diego, and Zahir filled in most of the gaps of conversation, the ball never not rolling between them. It was Kenzo and King where the talking was sparing. That being said, "sparing" didn't mean meaningless.

At some point though when Zoe began to chat away about her writing class to Zahir, Kenzo turned to me.

"High school," he said carefully. "Did you race?"

I blinked. "Not on the teams."

"Then when?"

I clenched my jaw. "Outside of school."

Rosalie eyed me at that. "I thought you were with the Jackdaws."

"I know a Jackdaw," I said.

"You've never raced before?"

"That's not what I said."

"Have you then?"

"Why's it matter?"

"Inquiry," she said, shrugging with a non-existent nonchalance. "You're pretty familiar with a bike for a rookie, that's all."

"She means you're the closest rookie that's come to beating King in a while," Diego piped, and glanced at King. "I think these two are trying to justify it."

"Are you ever helpful?" King snapped. "What's this got to do with me?"

"Better be careful, man. Cotton Candy over here might catch up to you faster than you think." Diego pointed at me. "Hey, what is with the hair?"

My real hair color was a non-negotiable secret, as having it made me look too much like my brother, and it wouldn't take a genius to put two and two together soon enough, so I was left choosing the most oppositional shade I could just to deter the relation. You couldn't really get any more oppositional than pastel rainbow.

I patted my head. "Maybe I like cotton candy."

"He's just eclectic," Zoe said.

"He's fucking weird," Wynter said.

"Maybe I really like cotton candy," I argued.

King finally turned to look at me. When he did, I saw the faintest slither of the black threads on his neck shift with it, disappearing from my point of view just as fast. "Where have you raced before?" he asked. His black eyes were calculating.

I swallowed. "Around."

"What's that?"

"Gyms, amateur leagues, I don't know."

"Where?"

"Why does it matter?" I said.

"You just said you've never even really raced before," he snapped. "How do you learn to race without really doing it?"

I gritted my teeth. "I got creative."

"Did you," he said, eyes narrowing.

"You got a weird way of having a conversation," I said. "You don't really have a knack for being nice, do you?"

King's eyes were ice in an instant. "You seem to have one for being a nuisance."

I scoffed at that, bristling. "Takes one to know one."

His lip twitched. "I wouldn't know one."

"Well, then I've got someone I think you should meet."

King glanced at Meredith. Meredith pointed a finger. "You said two weeks."

"I'm rescinding," he said.

"Hey, you can't rescind unless you wanna owe us all lunch for a month," Diego pointed out.

"Having him is a bigger price to pay than your lunches."

The pixie said, "I got a BLT on French bread?"

She dueled out the dishes one by one until we all had our food. Per its high maintenance demographic, the cafe had a vegan menu on the back of its regular, to my relief, leaving me with a basic lemon pasta defiled only by a few florets of broccoli. Veggies hadn't really hit anyone else's concern though, as most of Corvus had cold cut sandwiches or burritos out for them, save for King, who had turned to a green salad and coffee.

"You're vegan?" Diego gaped. "I'm sorry, kid, but I don't think this'll work out."

Zoe stopped with her chicken tender halfway to her mouth. She glanced at me. "It isn't offensive, is it?"

I frowned at them all. "I just don't eat meat," I said.

"A lycan that doesn't eat meat." Diego cackled. He held a ham sandwich, the meat pink and thin. "Jeez, cobayo, who hurt you?"

"Why not?" Meredith asked. Chicken breast, a deli-man's dream.

I dug my nails into my jeans. The tendons of Zoe's tenders looked too pink for me to stomach. The edges of Diego's ham were too soft, too flesh-like.

My grin was wider than my face. I shrugged. "I...don't like the taste."

They glanced about each other, but didn't push. We returned to safer topics as we ate, although my appetite was a bit stifled by the questions. My story was practiced, but it wasn't flawless, and it had been a long time since I'd needed to unearth it. It'd also never been under such magnified scrutiny before, which meant keeping things linear was crucial.

Zoe nudged me, hazel eyes darkened by furrowed brows. "You all right?"

"Fine," I assured.

Wynter craned her neck at me. "You've never raced before? Not even in JV?"

I shook my head. "My school's teams weren't very good anyway." True.

"What amateur leagues did you do?"

"Local ones." Lie.

"Your racing style makes a lot more sense," she murmured, taking a bite of her sandwich.

"How did you start?" Zoe asked.

"Friend recommended it." Lie. Christ alive, it was like playing Whack-A-Mole with my integrity.

"Have you always been front port?"

"I hop around. I like it best." Half-truth.

Meredith slid away from the upperclassmen, slowly transitioning to our conversation. To my dismay. She flashed us a bright smile.

"Did you grow up in LA?" she asked.

I swallowed. "Mostly."

"Mostly?"

"I...moved once or twice. Around the area," I said, then hurried, "Where are you from?"

Meredith took that transition with a tilt of her head, but she humored me with, "I was born in Switzerland, but my family moved a lot, so I've spent time everywhere." She flicked her hand around. "It's nice being settled at Avaldi, though. You three will see, the Talon is a great place to live. Far better than the other dorms, I'll say. It's got a Dunkin' Donuts."

"So I've heard," I said. "I'm sorry you moved so much."

She shook her head. "Oh, no, I loved it. I loved seeing all the different places. Everywhere is its own little world, you know? I'd love to travel more after college, maybe go east."

I hadn't asked, but it was a strange thing to hear nonetheless. Moving was a means of survival, a method of life. Mercy tugged, and I went tumbling. If Mercy needed me elsewhere, elsewhere was where I went. There was no luxury. There was simply work.

I sat like the other side of the moon to Meredith, and said nothing.

She clasped her hands. "The guys will help you out whenever you choose to move in on Friday," she told me. "Your room is furnished, but you're free to change whatever you'd like."

I drummed my fingers against the table. "Do the first years room together?"

"It's boys and girls split," King said. He took a swig of his pitch black coffee. "So, no."

"I swear that guy has a wire in his ear," I sighed.

"No, you're just a bad whisperer."

Wynter made a face. "You do have to work on that."

Diego laughed. "He's loud enough to make an echo."

King gave a heavy sigh and swallowed another mouthful of greens. He downed the last of his coffee, then pushed the empty mug across from him, where Kenzo sat. Kenzo snagged the mug and waved a lazy hand to flag the waitress back down for a refill. Once she did, he slid it back to King, who tapped the table with his ring, then the mug's handle, before taking it back.

"You three are set to move in before practice," he said. "If you have stuff you can't bring with you, then let one of us know, we'll go help you. But if not, you'll meet us at the front gate of the Talon in the afternoon," he said. As if I needed the reminder. "Pass your phone, Rosalie, and get their numbers. We'll add you all to our group chat so you can hear the info without us having to go through the pain of constantly relaying everything to you."

"I don't have a phone," I said.

Diego threw his hands up almost as high as his brown curls went. "A vegetarian lycan with pink hair and without a phone. I think this is the best day of my life."

"No phone," Rosalie repeated, slightly incredulous. "Why not?"

"Never needed one," I said.

"Get one," King said. "You need one for college anyway, I don't know how you expect to get through without one."

Considering I had (now) less than a year of actual life left ahead of me, I didn't think it would be too difficult, but that wasn't exactly a statement for the atmosphere, so I settled for a simple, "I'll be fine. If we're in the same building, can't you just let me know?"

"We should be able to contact you," Rosalie said, then muttered, "God knows we might trip right over you at some point."

"How tall are you?" King said.

"Four eleven," Wynter guessed.

"And a half," I snapped.

"That's gotta be a record in the racing world," Diego said.

"Do you have an email?" Rosalie asked.

"School."

"Social media, then." At my head shake, she looked to King. "Fix this."

"Get a phone," he told me, then looked to her. "Fixed."

"That pixie waitress was at least five one," Diego observed.

"Don't make him feel bad," Meredith scolded.

Zahir cocked his head from side to side. "That is...quite the height." He turned to me. "Do you have...a landline?"

"A landline?" Rosalie exclaimed. "God help me."

"What's a landline?" I said, and Rosalie thumped her head into her hands.

"How'd you get in here?" she snapped.

"Chemical leak threats," I said. When they were quiet, I cleared my throat. "Wrong crowd."

"I'm not sending you a pigeon just to tell you one sentence," Rosalie said.

Zahir tilted his head. "We're across the hall."

"That's a pigeon's worth of width to me."

King rubbed his temples. "You're not going to get a phone," he said, not really a question but rather a deduced statement.

I still nodded. "Sorry." I wasn't sorry, but the principle. "Ready your local pigeons."

"I like him," Meredith told King.

"That makes one of us." King reached into his back pocket for his wallet. "At least get a social we can find you on to make our lives easier."

I coughed up the measly bills I had, but Kenzo had already flagged the pixie waitress, who flew over promptly enough, grabbing our check with a flick of her tiny hands and nothing but King's credit card to accompany it.

I turned to King and handed him the bills instead. He didn't look at me, either because he didn't want to or he just didn't care. I cleared my throat and tapped him.

King glanced at me, then the bills. He said, "Forget it."

"It's not asking."

"I'm not taking." King faced forward again, content to abandon me in his peripheral. "We need to talk about the lineup."

I placed the bills down in front of him and slumped back in my seat. Zahir pushed them to me. "It's all right, man," he said, waving it away. "Don't worry about it."

The last thing I needed was to be owing anyone anything, especially someone like Kane King. Whether it was three or three hundred dollars, I didn't want to even owe him a penny.

"Take it," I said. "I can pay for myself."

They looked a bit confused at that. The waitress returned with the receipt and King pocketed his card before signing off. He got out of his seat, signaling the rest of the team to rise with him and scurry out of the booth. I trailed behind. I spotted the cash left on the tabletop to gather dust until the pixie waitress snagged it up for her day's tip.

I flexed my fingers at my side, but kept my mouth shut.

"Practice starts in an hour," King called as we headed out onto the sidewalk. He made his way towards the street that crossed into the Corvidae.

I turned on my heel at that to head the other way, but Corvus stopped in the center of the sidewalk, frowning after me.

"Where are you going?" Rosalie said.

"Er, to study?"

Diego looked at me as though I was speaking something foreign. "Why?"

"Because...practice starts in an hour?" I said.

"So?"

"So...I'm going to study? I feel like I'm being set up right now."

Rosalie rolled her eyes. "Are you impaired?" she snapped. "We're going back to the Corvidae lounge."

"Okay."

"So let's go."

"What? Why?"

They looked at me, quizzical. Zoe slid closer to my side to hold my arm.

"Corvus is a sort of singular unit," she explained. "They go where each other goes, mostly where King goes."

"Okay, maybe I am impaired, because you gotta be kidding," I said. "We're all grown. As long as I show up on time, what's the issue?"

"I doubt you'll even show up on time," King said.

I pointed at him. "You have to stop that."

Rosalie snagged my eye with a dark look, a warning shielded behind her green irises. "You're part of Corvus, contractually now. You follow the rules."

"Listen, man, I'm not trying to become a Mormon," I drawled. "What rules?"

"This is Corvus," she said plainly. "It's how it is. And like the Mormons would ever take you."

"That's racist."

"That's not what I—"

"Corvus goes nowhere alone." King turned to face me from afar. His black eyes were solemn on me, black ice and carbon. "It's just an hour."

"Why does it matter?" I said. "You're right. It's just an hour. What's the deal?"

"You should adjust," he told me. "You're on this team." He said the last part with a lilt of acid, a twinge of distaste.

I scoffed. "To being attached at your guys' hip? Do you all have attachment anxiety?" I shook my head. "I'm all right."

His gaze narrowed. "To being on this team," he corrected. "And I didn't ask. Stop being difficult."

"I don't think it's being difficult to tell you no," I snapped. "You just seem unadjusted since your crow club eats out the palm of your hand."

Rosalie shot me a scathing glare. "What did you say?"

I hesitated. King stalked towards me, his figure like a tower over a town. He loomed over me, his eyes threatening to gouge my own out.

"This 'crow club' is the best racing opportunity you'll find in the entire NCAA," he said, his voice calm but taut with heat. "And for a kid with zero real experience and nothing but the streets to train you, the best racing opportunity you'll find period. You think I don't know you weren't even supposed to be at that tryout in the first place?" His lip twitched like the idea was amusing. "This might be your new plaything to feel like a hotshot and ride the waves to wherever you wanna be, and that's your prerogative. But this is my team. And as long as you're on it, you'll respect it. If not, then I don't care how well you think you can race." He turned on his heel to walk away. "I'm not scared to cut my losses."

I could feel the heat in my face, all the way down to my neck, seeping into my hands. I ground my teeth together until I feared the bones would break.

"See you at one," King called.

Corvus followed after him, along with Wynter and Zoe.

I heaved a heavy breath and shoved my pink and blue bangs back from my face. The air was thick with cold weather and colder truth.

This is not your world.

And with my luck, it never would be.

I headed the other direction, until the Corvidae disappeared behind me, and the streets swallowed me whole.

(ty for reading! you're very much appreciated :D how is the story going so far?)