Chapter 41: The Night She Stayed

Roxanne was walking out of the academy building with Isla after classes, still going over dance competition details, when Liam appeared directly in front of them, blocking the path entirely.

"You’re coming with us."

"No."

"I haven’t even told you where."

"That makes the answer even more no."

Isla laughed as Liam clutched his chest dramatically, insisting he’d thought they were friends. Roxanne reminded him they were classmates, and he corrected her to teammates, and she said unfortunately, and he pushed further to dance partners, which earned him a pointed finger and a warning not to remind her of that particular arrangement.

Kai walked up behind him. "We’re going to the lounge."

"Why?"

Lucien arrived next, looking already exhausted by his brother’s antics. "Because Liam decided everyone needed a break from festival preparations."

"That is not how I said it," Liam protested.

Roshan passed by without slowing down. "You said, and I quote, everyone is boring and we need snacks."

Roxanne laughed, and Liam pointed accusingly at Roshan, calling him a traitor, though it didn’t take much more convincing before both she and Isla agreed to come along.

The lounge turned out to be nothing like she expected from four royal Lycans, just a cozy space with oversized couches, food scattered everywhere, a television running quietly, board games stacked on a shelf, and soft music playing in the background. It felt more like a normal teenage hangout than anything remotely intimidating.

"You actually come here?"

Liam dropped onto the couch immediately. "Whenever Lucien starts acting like our father."

"I can hear you," Lucien said flatly.

"That’s because you’re old."

"I’m twenty."

"Exactly."

Roxanne burst out laughing, and for once Lucien didn’t try to shut the argument down, just shook his head and let it happen. Watching the four of them together, stripped of the attention that followed them everywhere at school, she realized they were simply brothers who annoyed each other constantly, and something about seeing that made her feel closer to all of them.

Liam pulled out a board game next, and Roxanne refused on principle. "I don’t play games with people who cheat."

"I don’t cheat."

Roshan glanced up from his book. "You cheated last time."

"That was strategic creativity."

Kai sat down across from him. "You lost."

"Because everyone ganged up on me."

"Because you were cheating," Lucien said, settling in across from him.

Roxanne finally joined, and the game turned ridiculously competitive almost immediately, Liam trying every possible distraction, Roshan calculating quietly, Lucien taking the rules far more seriously than necessary, and Kai barely speaking while somehow still winning most rounds. When Roxanne finally beat Liam outright, he stared at the board in disbelief.

"You cheated."

"Strategic creativity," she said, and Roshan actually laughed out loud, even Kai’s mouth curving slightly as Liam declared he’d created a monster.

"You created someone who can beat you."

"Same thing."

Liam’s energy didn’t slow down for long before he came up with another idea entirely. "New game. Who knows Roxanne best."

She nearly choked. "Excuse me?"

He laid out the rules anyway, ignoring her protests completely, asking each of them questions about her while she insisted she wasn’t participating. The first question, her favorite drink, got an immediate answer from Roshan, the exact brand, and when she asked how he and Liam both knew, Liam simply said she drank it constantly.

The next question asked what she hated most, and Kai answered without hesitation. "Being treated like she’s helpless." That landed a little too close to the truth, and she looked at him without a response ready.

Lucien answered the next one, what she did when she was nervous, saying she became argumentative, and she gasped in protest, insisting that wasn’t true, though the way all four of them looked at her told her exactly what they thought of that denial.

The last question asked what made her laugh, and Liam answered instantly. "Me."

"Unfortunately," she said, rolling her eyes while he grinned.

What surprised her most wasn’t that any single one of them knew her particularly well. It was that all four had noticed entirely different pieces of her, Roshan noticing what she needed, Kai noticing what she tried to hide, Lucien reading how she behaved under pressure, Liam noticing whenever she stopped smiling. It left her strangely quiet for a moment.

Later, as the game wound down and Isla argued with Liam over something else entirely, Lucien noticed her sitting quietly and asked what she was thinking about.

"This," she said, gesturing around the room.

He waited, and she admitted that when she’d first arrived at the academy, she’d expected to hate it here, not knowing anyone, not trusting anyone. She didn’t mention Dorian directly, but he seemed to understand enough without needing the details.

"What do you want now?" he asked.

The question caught her off guard, and she thought through everything, the Alpha Challenge, the dance competition, proving herself, Dorian, Arabella, but none of it felt like the right answer.

"I want to have fun," she said finally.

Lucien smiled faintly. "Then you should."

"That’s it?"

"That’s it."

He went back to cleaning up the mess Liam had scattered across the room, and something in her loosened at the simplicity of that answer. She didn’t have to spend every single day proving she’d survived something. She could just live.

She stepped outside a little later for air, and Roshan followed a few minutes after, standing beside her without crowding the space. "You looked happy tonight."

"I was."

He reached into his pocket and handed her something small, a bookmark connected to the Founders’ Festival theme, and she asked if it was for her.

"Yes."

"You really can’t stop giving me things, can you?"

"Not when I find something you might like."

She turned it over in her hands. "Why do you always notice?"

He took a moment before answering. "Because I like knowing when you’re happy."

There was no joke behind it, no deflection, just plain sincerity, and something fluttered in her chest that she wasn’t quite ready to name. Before she could respond, Liam’s voice carried out from inside, accusing Roshan of cheating again, and Roshan closed his eyes with quiet resignation before heading back in, Roxanne laughing behind him.

Inside, Kai stood near the window while everyone else argued nearby, and he asked if she’d enjoyed herself.

"More than I expected."

He watched her for a moment. "Good."

She admitted she hadn’t thought she’d fit in here at all, and he said simply that she did.

"You say that like it’s obvious."

"It is."

"You’re not very good at compliments."

"I wasn’t complimenting you."

"Then what were you doing?"

"Telling you the truth."

That caught her more than she expected it to.

As the evening stretched later, Isla finally checked the time and mentioned they should head back before the dorm supervisor locked them out. Roxanne looked around the room, Liam still arguing with Lucien, Roshan buried back in his book, Kai still leaning against the window, and realized she didn’t actually want to leave. Not out of fear of being alone.

Because she genuinely wanted to stay.

"Coming?" Isla asked.

"Actually," Roxanne said, settling back into the couch, "I think I’ll stay a little longer."

Liam cheered immediately, declaring she was officially one of them, and she threw a cushion at him, telling him not to ruin the moment. Everyone laughed, Roxanne included, and for the first time since arriving at Moonstone Academy, she didn’t feel like a visitor stepping into someone else’s life.

She felt like she belonged there.