Chapter 618 | A Hidden Mark is a Public Invitation

Chapter 618: 618 | A Hidden Mark is a Public Invitation

Sloane walked me back to the cafeteria like a bailiff escorting a man to his sentencing, one hand hooked through my belt loop and the other holding my wrist, and she didn’t let go of either until we reached the 1-B table by the south windows. Felicity already had a plate of pasta waiting in front of the empty chair beside her. She had also saved a second chair on my other side, which meant she had planned for Sloane, and that meant the two of them had talked about me without me again.

"You look terrible, bestie," Felicity sang, and she patted the seat. "Sit down before you fall down. I got you the carbonara because you have the eyes of a man who needs cream sauce."

I sat. Sloane took the other chair and dragged it six inches closer to mine, until her knee pressed against my thigh under the table and stayed there. She stole a piece of garlic bread off my plate before I had even picked up a fork, bit into it without asking, and settled into her seat with a level of territorial confidence I was starting to recognize as standard Sloane behavior when she thought someone was looking at me wrong.

Felicity’s blue eyes went straight to my collar. She took in the fresh bruise—dark, visible, absolutely not from training—and her gaze slid over to Sloane with that specific smile she wore when she was about to say something that sounded sweet and landed like a filed complaint.

"Oh, that’s new," she purred, and the sweetness in her voice had sharp edges underneath it. "Did the stairwell attack you, or did the stairwell have help?"

"The stairwell had pink hair," I said around a mouthful of pasta that was better than anything I had earned this morning. "It was a very aggressive stairwell."

Sloane chewed her garlic bread without breaking eye contact with Felicity, her expression completely flat, and I felt the bond hum hot against my ribs. The heat stayed clean, though, none of the static it carried when she was scared or worried about something I was doing. This was a different kind of heat. This was ownership.

Felicity held the stare for three full seconds before she broke into a real laugh, the performance dropping entirely, and she bumped her shoulder against mine.

"Okay, I like this energy," she admitted, still grinning at Sloane. "You’re doing the thing where you mark your territory without technically marking anything, and I respect the commitment. Also, Lukas, you look like death, and I mean that in the hot way but also in the ’please eat this pasta before you pass out in it’ way."

I swallowed the carbonara. It was thick and rich and exactly what I needed after the last forty-eight hours, and Felicity was right about the cream sauce.

"I’m fine," I told her, which was an obvious lie, but it was the lie everyone at this table was going to accept because the alternative required me to explain what had actually happened in the last two days, and I was not doing that in a public cafeteria with witnesses.

Sloane leaned in, close enough that I could smell the faint hint of vanilla from whatever shampoo she used, and she took another piece of garlic bread off my plate without asking. Her knee stayed pressed against my thigh, warm and solid and completely unapologetic about the contact.

"You’re not fine," she muttered, still chewing. "But you’re also not bleeding, so I’m calling this progress."

"That’s a low bar," I pointed out.

"It’s your bar," she shot back, and she wasn’t wrong.

"Fine, you win this round, Fitzgerald. Now I want the goth girl story, and I want it before Hero Brand, and I want the drool."

"There’s barely any drool to tell," I protested. "She fell asleep at five in the morning, I didn’t move for forty minutes, and she woke up and deducted points from me for it."

"You didn’t move for forty minutes?" Sloane’s voice dropped half a register. "Why didn’t you move?"

"Because moving would have woken her up, and she has a bear that files reports."

The interface popped up in the corner of my eye, gold border and all, like it had been waiting for its cue.

〘Observation: Host rationale for remaining stationary has been flagged as 34% genuine.〙

〘The remaining 66% has been classified as "comfortable."〙

I closed it without reading the rest. Across the table, Caden leaned back until his chair balanced on two legs, and he pointed his fork at me.

"Dude, you went to the Eastside for one night, and you came back with a new girl, a thief, and forty-seven grateful families. I went home and ate cereal and watched a raccoon video."

"There was a raccoon," I told him. "I filed the report this morning, and it was a hundred and sixty-four words long."

"You filed a raccoon report?"

Marco threw a chip at him. "Of course he filed a raccoon report. He’s Belmont, so the raccoon probably got a sponsorship deal too."

Percy sat at the end of the table with his notebook open beside a tray of grilled chicken portioned into neat squares, and his pen stopped moving long enough for him to look up. His blue hair was flat and combed, and his eyes carried the tired edge of someone who had stayed awake running models on my night.

"Your supervisor’s report used the word returned," Percy said. "He didn’t write that you rescued anyone, or that you recovered anything, or anything else of that kind. He used returned, and I think it was intentional."

"Dralun doesn’t do intentional. Dralun grunts at coffee, and it grunts back."

"The report was nineteen words long," Percy continued, "and he chose every one of them. You should keep it."

I didn’t answer that, because Percy was right, and Percy being right about my feelings before lunch ended felt unfair to both of us.

Hero Brand Management started at one, and I walked into the amphitheater with my collar buttoned all the way to the top in a lecture hall that ran warm from six windows of afternoon sun. Isabelle Crane stood at the bottom of the tiered seats in a white blouse that fought for its life across her chest and a black pencil skirt that ended a respectable four inches above her knees. The purple domino mask sat over her eyes and swept back into her midnight-blue hair. When I came through the door, her azure gaze landed on my buttoned collar and stayed there.

"Mister Belmont," Crane said, and her rich alto rolled up the rows until every head turned. "You have buttoned your collar, which means you are hiding a mark. Every one of my students knows that a hidden mark generates twice the speculation of a visible one."

The room laughed. I dropped into my seat in the middle row and slid down half an inch.

"With respect, Professor, I’m cold."

"It’s seventy-one degrees, and you run hot. I have your file, and I’ve watched your footage." She crossed her ankles and leaned against her desk, and the pencil skirt pulled tight across her hips.

"Since you have volunteered yourself, let’s use you. Class, a Hero leaves a scene with a visible injury of unclear origin, and the press photographs it. Who wants to tell me what happens next?"