Tainted Legacy

Maeve

The hallway lockers rattled as a knot of older guys boxed my brother against the wall.

"Word is your old man was a cold-blooded killer," one of them jeered.

"Yeah, and your mother had the exact same blood on her hands."

"So where does that leave you, Knox? Huh?"

"Fuck off," Knox snapped back.

He wasn't scared of these ranked wolves, not by a long shot, but grit wouldn't stop him from getting hurt if they decided to jump him all at once. Five against one were garbage odds, especially since every single guy in that circle had three years and a hell of a lot more muscle on him.

"Hey, if you're volunteering, go right ahead and drop to your knees," one of the pricks sneered, grabbing a fistful of his own crotch while his buddies busted up laughing.

"Run that mouth one more time. I fucking dare you," I warned, marching straight up to the circle of ranked seniors who were roughly my age and currently crowding my freshman brother.

I didn't waste a second pulling my arm back before driving my knuckles dead into the center of the taunting Beta's face. Cartilage crunched under my fist with a deeply satisfying pop, and bright red blood immediately poured down his chin, soaking the front of his shirt.

The rest of the group whipped their heads toward me, automatically scrambling a step back to clear my reach. Everyone in this building knew my track record for dropping wolves flat on their backs regardless of their rank, and it sure as hell wouldn't be the first time I laid out multiple idiots in one go.

"Not acting so tough when you're facing someone your own size, are you?" I challenged, pivoting my weight to plant myself squarely in front of Knox.

"You fucking bitch!" the bleeding Beta roared, cupping his ruined nose.

Every last one of these jerks knew I could beat them into the floor. I had busted my ass in the training ring to make sure I stood as one of the deadliest fighters not just in our pack, but across every territory around us. Back when I was a kid, all that sweat was meant to earn the Moon Goddess's ultimate favor—the blessing of a rare white wolf. Instead, when I finally shifted at ten and met Vesper, she turned out to be a completely ordinary wolf, leaving a heavy, hollow ache deep in my chest.

I probably would have dialed back the brutal training regimen right then, except the nasty gossip tearing through our school corridors never let up. My uncle might be an immensely powerful werewolf—the kind of leader nobody would ever dare disrespect to his face or anywhere near my Aunt Valeria—but out here on school grounds, none of these kids gave a damn. Now that Knox was finally old enough for high school, all that venom was aimed straight at him as a potential Alpha heir. He was my baby brother, and my instinct to keep him safe ran bone-deep; if I took my eyes off these older wolves for a second, they wouldn't stop at words.

Our younger sister, Lyra, got the easy road. She grew up right alongside Maddox, my aunt and uncle's eldest son and the rightful heir to the pack, calling the two of them Mom and Dad from as far back as she could remember. Knox and I never got that kind of shield.

"You're gonna pay for that, Moping Maeve," the Beta grunted through a mouthful of blood. He cocked his right arm back, gearing up to swing at my head—and he could certainly try, though we both knew I could beat him to the punch any day of the week.

"Touch her. See what happens," Kastor Vanguard V cut in.

His voice was dead calm, slicing right through the growing murmur of students crowding the hallway to watch the show. He had his shoulder propped lazily against the lockers a few feet away, taking in the whole mess.

I choked back an irritated growl. What the hell was he doing over here again?

"My bad, Alpha Kastor," the Beta mumbled, dropping his fist immediately.

He didn't offer me a single word of apology, and he sure as hell didn't say it to Knox. He just bowed and scraped for the one Alpha he was genuinely terrified of crossing. Total coward.

"What is the meaning of this?" our principal barked from somewhere down the hall. The ring of gawking teenagers was packed tight enough that he hadn't pushed his way to the center yet.

My best friend, Carmen, slipped through the gap to my side, giving Knox a quick once-over to make sure he was in one piece before squaring her shoulders next to mine, ready to throw down if the seniors tried anything else.

"Take Knox and get out of here. Now!" I ordered under my breath.

"Wait, Maeve..." she started.

"Carmen, please!"

"You can't spend your whole life fighting my fights, Maeve," Knox muttered, keeping his voice low.

"Just watch me, little bro. Now get to class before you get dragged into this," I told him, giving him a small shove toward the clear end of the hall.

I spent half my life sitting in a chair outside the principal's office anyway. It made zero difference to me that most of those detentions came from stepping in when some jerk tried to push Knox around, and I intended to keep it that way. I could handle the troublemaker label; Knox needed his record clean as a future Alpha.

The second Carmen steered him around the corner, I squared up to face the principal, who was barreling through the parting crowd with his glare pinned exclusively on me. Out of the corner of my eye, I caught the Beta nursing his bloody nose with a smug little grin, clearly banking on me taking the fall while he walked out of here playing the innocent victim.

"Maeve Davenport. Somehow, I am not the least bit shocked," the principal growled, coming to a halt.

"Principal Garver, if you let me explain—" I started.

"Save your breath. I'll be getting your uncle on the phone. Yet again."

"She didn't start this," Kastor said smoothly, pushing his weight off the lockers and strolling into the center of the circle.

"Alpha Kastor?" Principal Garver blinked, his gaze jumping between the two of us. "What are you saying?"

Kastor didn't even look at him, pinning his stare directly on the bleeding senior. "You kicked this off, didn't you, Blaise?"

Blaise pressed his bloody lips into a thin, tight line before forcing the words out. "Yeah. That's right," he grunted.

Principal Garver's eyes darted from Blaise to Kastor, over to me, and right back to Kastor again. He looked half-tempted to push the issue, except nobody with half a brain argued with a Vanguard. Kastor's bloodline stretched back so many generations that his family was practically werewolf royalty. If the Moon Goddess had actually seen fit to grant me a white wolf, I might have stood on similar ground—but since things didn't pan out that way...

A soft, miserable whine echoed inside my head from Vesper.

*None of that is on you, Ves. It's on me. You're everything I could ask for—I was just never worthy of a white wolf,* I told her silently.

*You're perfect for me, Maeve,* she sent back.

Goddess, I loved my wolf to pieces.

"Very well, then, but I better not catch wind of another hallway brawl with your name attached to it, Maeve. Are we clear? And your uncle is still getting a phone call about this," Garver huffed.

"Do make sure you mention the part where she shattered a Beta's nose with one hit. Actually, maybe you ought to ring up Blaise's old man too—let him know a she-wolf rearranged his son's face because he couldn't keep his mouth shut," Kastor drawled, drawing a wave of snickers from the kids still lingering around the lockers.

Blaise shot me a filthy, narrow-eyed glare over his soaked collar, making it plenty obvious he wasn't going to let this drop.

"Everybody get to class!" Principal Garver bellowed, waving his arms until the crowd finally broke up and scattered down the hall.

Once the corridor cleared out, Garver turned a sour look back on me. "I swear, if your father wasn't the man he is..."

"He isn't my father. He's my uncle, and the whole damn school knows it," I bit back.

"Just keep your nose clean," he grumbled, pivoting on his heel and marching back the way he came.

I let out a breath and rounded on Kastor. "Why is it that you always manage to show up in the exact places I least want you?"

"Here I thought I was doing you a favor."

"Yeah, well, keep your favors to yourself," I snapped, angling my shoulder to brush right past him.

His hand shot out and clamped around my forearm, hauling me back around until we were chest to chest. My free hand balled into a fist and snapped up between us, cocked and ready to take his head off, though he didn't so much as blink.

Instead, a slow grin curved his mouth as his eyes dropped straight to mine—then lower, lingering on my lips. "Makes a guy wonder what it'd feel like to kiss a girl with that much fire in her, Maeve."

"Well, with any luck you'll run into somebody half as charming as me one day and find out for yourself. Seeing as I want nothing to do with you, drop the hand or you're taking a fist to the jaw. Principal Garver would probably throw a parade if I handed him an excuse to expel me."

He kept his fingers wrapped around my arm for one more long, deliberate beat, that infuriating grin practically radiating a promise, before he finally let me go.

I spun around and stalked down the hallway without looking back.

"You know, usually when somebody bails you out, a simple thank you is standard practice," he called after me, his voice echoing off the lockers.

I didn't break stride—just threw my middle finger high in the air over my shoulder and kept on walking, the low, bastardly sound of his laugh trailing me all the way to the corner.