Chapter 6 - Damage Control

Grant

The walk back to the command suite should have cleared my head.

It didn’t.

The academy had quieted since dinner, but not enough to hide the whispers that followed us across the courtyard. Students clustered near the dormitory steps and beneath the old stone arches of the leadership wing, pretending not to watch while doing a terrible job of it.

Brax walked beside me with the remaining pizza box tucked beneath one arm, perfectly relaxed, as if leaving Rae’s room with contraband food after half the school had already started talking about her was a reasonable way to end the first day.

I let the silence stretch as long as I could.

“Where did you even get that?”

Brax glanced down at the box. “The pizza?”

“What else would I be talking about?”

His expression brightened with immediate, suspicious pride. “Pizza connections.”

“There are no pizza connections.”

“That is exactly what someone without pizza connections would say.”

“You smuggled food into a restricted dormitory.”

“I delivered morale.”

“You delivered grease.”

“Morale often comes with grease.”

I gave him a look.

He gave me one right back, completely unbothered, then lifted the box slightly as though presenting evidence in his own defense. “She ate, didn’t she?”

I didn’t answer.

That was the problem with Brax. Every ridiculous thing he did usually had something solid buried underneath it, and he knew it.

He hid instinct behind jokes, care behind noise, and kindness behind whatever nonsense happened to fall out of his mouth first. It made arguing with him irritating because he could be completely absurd and still somehow right.

We passed a group of third-years near the fountain. Their conversation dropped the moment they saw us.

I caught pieces anyway.

Brax. Human. Pizza. Rae.

That last one settled harder than the rest.

“She’s going to hear all of this tomorrow,” I said.

Brax’s grin faded enough to tell me he understood exactly who I meant. “Probably.”

“You don’t seem concerned.”

“I am concerned.”

“You’re eating pizza.”

“I can do both.”

I exhaled through my nose and kept walking. “You made it worse.”

“Maybe,” he said, and for once there was no joke tucked inside the word. “But she was already alone before I got there.”

That shut me up for longer than I wanted.

The command suite occupied the far corner of the leadership wing, separate from the standard dorm rooms and close enough to the main building that the academy could pretend it was about convenience instead of hierarchy.

Future Alphas, Betas, Gammas, and Deltas were expected to learn command structure early, which apparently included shared living arrangements. We each had our own bedroom, but the four of us shared a common room, kitchenette, and bathroom.

It was practical.

It was also the reason I knew far more than anyone should about Brax’s eating habits.

He reached the door first, pushed it open, and walked in like he’d returned victorious from war. The pizza landed on the coffee table before he dropped onto the couch with a satisfied groan.

“I’ve had a productive evening.”

“You broke at least three academy rules.”

“Only three? Disappointing.”

I set my bag beside one of the chairs and picked up the book I had left on the end table before dinner. Leadership Theory. I opened to the marked page, but the words blurred together almost immediately.

The door opened again less than a minute later.

Julien entered first, still in the sweater he’d worn to afternoon classes. Linc followed behind him with his usual quiet, shutting the door before his gaze moved across the room and settled on the pizza box.

Julien paused. “Is that pizza?”

Brax sat up straighter. “Victory pizza.”

Linc crossed the room and lifted the lid. “Victory over what?”

“Sadness.”

Julien looked from the box to Brax, then to me. “Do I want to know?”

“No,” I said.

“Yes,” Brax said at the same time.

Julien sighed and took a slice anyway.

“Where did you get it?” Linc asked.

Brax leaned back against the couch, visibly pleased that someone had asked. “Pizza connections.”

Julien closed his eyes for a moment. “Please tell me we’re not doing this again.”

“We are absolutely doing this again.”

“There are no pizza connections.”

Brax pointed at him. “You keep saying that, yet here we are, surrounded by pizza.”

Linc took a bite and sat in the armchair near the window. “The evidence supports Brax.”

Julien looked betrayed. “Not you too.”

Linc shrugged. “I follow facts.”

Brax spread both arms. “Thank you.”

I turned another page I hadn’t read.

The room settled into the kind of noise I usually found easy to ignore. Brax ate like he hadn’t just consumed half a pizza in Rae’s dorm room.

Julien questioned him about logistics with increasing frustration. Linc listened in silence, occasionally offering one sentence that made Brax look more credible than he had any right to be.

Normally, it would have been familiar.

Tonight, everything kept dragging back to the same image.

Rae sitting on the edge of her bed with laughter still on her face.

Brax had gotten that out of her in less than an hour.

I couldn’t remember the last time I had.

“You’re quiet,” Julien said.

I didn’t look up. “I’m reading.”

“No, you’re holding a book.”

Brax leaned over the back of the couch to see the page. “It’s upside down?”

I glanced down.

It wasn’t.

Brax grinned.

“Made you look.”

I closed the book because pretending had become more annoying than silence. “What do you want?”

Julien sat forward slightly, pizza forgotten on the napkin in his hand. “I want to know what happened.”

“You already know what happened.”

“I know Brax disappeared with food, you went after him, and both of you came back from the girls’ dorm with half the campus whispering.”

Brax lifted a finger. “Important correction. I came back with leftover pizza.”

“That is not the part anyone cares about.”

“It should be.”

Julien ignored him and kept his attention on me. “Did something happen with Rae?”

The question was simple enough. The answer should have been too.

“No.”

Brax made a sound.

I looked at him.

He took another bite and wisely said nothing.

Julien noticed anyway, because of course he did. “Brax?”

“She laughed.”

The room changed in a way I didn’t like.

Julien’s expression shifted first, sharpening with interest. Linc looked up from his slice. Brax, for all his usual lack of restraint, suddenly seemed to realize he had said more than he meant to.

I kept my voice even. “People laugh.”

“Rae doesn’t,” Linc said quietly.

I looked at him.

He didn’t elaborate.

He didn’t need to.

That was Linc’s worst habit. He could place one sentence in a room and leave everyone else to bleed around it.

Rae had laughed harder in the last hour than I could remember hearing in years. The realization bothered me because I couldn’t place when that laugh had disappeared. There had been a time when it was everywhere. In the woods behind the Alpha house, in the kitchen before my mother caught us stealing food, under the old cedar tree where she used to hide when pack children were cruel enough to make her run.

At some point, the sound had stopped belonging to my life.

I had let that happen.

Brax had walked into her dorm with stolen pizza and brought it back in twenty minutes.

“Don’t look like that,” Brax said.

I turned toward him. “Like what?”

“Like you’re trying to turn guilt into a strategy.”

Julien’s brows lifted slightly.

I stared at Brax. “That isn’t a thing.”

“It is when you do it.”

“You know,” Julien said, almost thoughtfully, “he might be right.”

“He’s not.”

“I am,” Brax said. “And I don’t like it either. It ruins my brand.”