Chapter 20: The Table Everyone Wants

Roxanne walked into the cafeteria with Isla, the noise hitting her immediately. Students crowded around long tables, athletes on one side, popular girls claiming another section, older students clustered near the windows. Different pack groups sat together the way they always had, an unspoken map nobody had ever drawn out loud.

"There are rules," Isla said, guiding her toward an empty spot. "Not official ones. Just the kind everybody knows."

"Like what?"

"Who sits where. Which table belongs to the Moonball team. Who’s considered untouchable."

Roxanne found the whole thing absurd. She wanted food, not a seating chart. They settled at a quieter table near the side, and the moment she sat down with her tray, some of the tension in her shoulders finally eased.

"If I survive an attempted murder and get taken out by cafeteria politics instead, that’s going to be embarrassing," she said.

Isla laughed. For a few minutes, nothing existed except lunch and her friend across the table. No principal. No hearing. No Arabella.

Then the atmosphere shifted.

The Moonstone brothers walked in, and the room reacted almost immediately. Whispers, girls straightening their hair, a student abruptly abandoning a seat because one of them had glanced in that direction.

Roxanne rolled her eyes and expected them to head toward whatever table they usually claimed.

Instead, all four walked straight toward her.

Isla nearly choked on her drink. Roxanne glanced behind herself just to be sure they weren’t heading somewhere else.

They weren’t.

Liam dropped into the seat beside her like he’d always belonged there. "You’re in my space," she told him.

"You stole my drink once. We’re even."

"You grabbed it first."

Roshan took the seat across from her without a word. Kai sat on her other side without asking. Lucien claimed what was left, and just like that, the quiet table she and Isla had chosen became the most watched table in the room.

"Everyone’s staring," Roxanne said flatly.

"I thought you liked attention," Liam said.

"I absolutely do not."

He grinned. "Then you’re going to hate us."

She groaned, but she was smiling before she could stop it.

Liam reached across her tray and stole a fry. She snatched it right back out of his fingers.

"Buy your own food."

"Sharing is the foundation of friendship."

"We’re not friends."

"We’re getting there."

Meanwhile, Roshan slid something across the table toward her without comment. Her favorite dessert. The same one she’d mentioned in passing days ago.

She looked at it, then at him. He kept eating like nothing had happened.

The pattern clicked slowly in her mind... the drink at the bonfire, the notes, the snack from yesterday. Her suspicion sharpened, but before she could say anything, Lucien told Liam to stop stealing her food. Liam grabbed another piece anyway, earned a look, and put it back.

Kai watched the whole exchange in silence. Then he reached over and took the last piece off her tray entirely.

"Are you serious?"

"Yes." He ate it without a hint of apology.

"You’re all impossible," Roxanne muttered.

Isla leaned in, delighted. "You know half the girls in here would trade places with you."

Roxanne glanced around. She wasn’t wrong. Several girls were openly staring. A few were whispering behind their hands. Joanna was watching from across the room, expression unreadable.

Sitting with the Moonstones had changed something. She could feel it.

Joanna approached a few minutes later, pleasant on the surface, addressing Liam and Kai first, asking about some upcoming academy event. Liam answered easily. Kai gave short, clipped responses.

"Is the team practicing later?" Joanna asked.

"Roxanne will be there," Liam said before Roxanne could open her mouth.

"I never agreed to that."

"You’re on the team."

Joanna’s eyes flicked over Roxanne, and her smile sharpened slightly. "You’ve settled in with the royal brothers so quickly."

It wasn’t an insult. Not openly. But everyone at the table understood it anyway.

"I’m comfortable around people who don’t treat me like I’m made of glass," Roxanne said simply.

Kai’s attention shifted toward her. Liam looked thoroughly entertained. Roshan watched quietly. Lucien’s expression carried the faintest hint of approval.

Joanna, realizing there was no fight to be had, smiled once more and walked away.

"That was possibly the most polite insult I’ve ever witnessed," Isla said.

Roxanne shrugged like it didn’t matter. She told herself it didn’t.

Then Arabella walked in with Dorian, and the cafeteria quieted in that particular way it always did around her. Arabella spotted the Moonstones immediately, then registered exactly where they were sitting.

Her expression shifted.

She didn’t approach right away. Instead, she leaned toward a girl beside her and murmured something. The girl glanced toward Roxanne. Then another student looked. Then another. Whispers began threading through the room.

"She really knows how to move fast."

"First royal protection, now she’s eating with all four of them."

"Maybe protection wasn’t all she wanted."

Roxanne’s grip tightened around her fork. Isla noticed immediately.

Arabella didn’t need to confront her directly. She’d already done exactly what she came to do.

Then she finally walked past the table, offering Roxanne a sweet, careful smile. "It must be nice, having royal protection." A pause. "Some people get very comfortable with their protectors."

Roxanne understood the implication instantly.

Liam’s expression darkened. Kai went still. Lucien’s eyes sharpened.

Roxanne didn’t give her the reaction she wanted. She simply kept eating, and Arabella walked away.

"Should we leave?" Isla asked quietly.

For a moment, leaving would have been easier. Roxanne hated being stared at. Hated the whispers. Hated that Arabella still had some invisible thread she could pull to make her feel like disappearing was the safer option.

Then she looked down at her untouched tray.

This was her academy too. Her table. Her lunch.

She wasn’t running.

She picked her fork back up. The brothers didn’t make a scene about it. They simply stayed, which somehow mattered more than anything they could have said.

"Don’t let other people decide where you sit," Lucien said quietly.

"I wasn’t planning to."

"I knew you were too stubborn to run," Liam said.

She kicked his ankle under the table. He laughed, and the tension finally broke.

Across the room, Dorian watched her. She wasn’t looking at him. Not once. She was laughing with Isla, arguing with Liam, quietly thanking Roshan, comfortable beside Kai, listening to Lucien.

She looked happy. Not performing it. Not trying to make him jealous.

He told himself it shouldn’t matter. He’d made his choice. He’d gotten exactly what he wanted.

So why did watching her fill the space he used to occupy feel like losing something?

"Are you watching her?" Arabella asked.

"No."

She didn’t believe him. "She’s not your problem anymore."

"I know." But his eyes drifted back anyway.

As lunch wound down, the academy announcement system crackled to life. The headmaster’s voice cut through the noise, announcing the upcoming Inter-Pack Competition.

Moonball, combat, wolf-control challenges, relay races, academic events, all of it feeding into a single academy-wide tally.

The cafeteria erupted.

"We’re winning this," Liam said instantly.

"You’re assuming a lot," Roxanne said.

"Are you saying we won’t?" Kai asked.

"I’m saying don’t get ahead of yourself."

Roshan was already running through possible opponents in his head. Lucien reminded everyone that talent meant nothing without discipline.

Roxanne realized, somewhere in the middle of it, that she wanted to win too.

After lunch, she followed Isla and the crowd toward the competition board posted in the main hallway. The Moonball brackets had just gone up, and Roxanne scanned for her team’s name.

She found it. Then she found their first opponent.

The academy’s undefeated senior team. Undefeated for two straight years.

Isla winced. Roxanne studied the bracket in silence.

Then she noticed the message scrawled across the bottom in thick black ink.

MOONSTONES DON’T BELONG ON OUR COURT.

Her first instinct wasn’t fear. It was anger.

Then, slowly, the corner of her mouth lifted.

She didn’t care about Dorian anymore. She didn’t care about Arabella, or the whispers, or what any of them thought they knew about her.

She wanted to win.

Roxanne pulled out her phone, opened the team’s group chat, and added the match to her calendar.

Tomorrow.

Her first real competition at Moonstone Academy.

Her first real chance to show every single one of them exactly what she was made of.