Chapter 6

Serena:

I stepped sideways, heel pivoting, and let Foster's momentum carry through empty space. My right hand caught his wrist, guided it forward. Left palm to his elbow joint, angled just right. His own weight did the rest.

He stumbled forward. Off balance, arms flailing for something that wasn't there.

I was already back where I'd started, hands loose at my sides.

The room went quiet. Then someone made a noise like they'd just watched a goal get scored, low and involuntary.

Foster turned around slow. His face had shifted into something tight and mean, the kind of look that comes when you've been made to look small in front of people who are supposed to respect you.

He reset his stance, rolled his shoulders. This time he didn't rush.

He feinted right, threw his hand up. I tracked it for half a second. Weight's still on his back foot. The hand's a lie. Real move's coming from the left leg.

I waited.

His fist came down hard and fast. I moved left, let it pass close enough to feel the air displacement, then drove my right fist short and direct into the soft space below his ribs.

No leverage. No technique. Just force delivered to the right spot.

Foster bent forward with a choked sound. His hand went to his stomach, face going red, and for a second he just stood there trying to process what his body was telling him.

The mat exploded.

"Oh my god—"

"Did she just—"

"Mr. Foster?!"

Keira was frozen on the sideline, both hands over her mouth, eyes ping-ponging between me and Foster like she was trying to reconcile two incompatible facts.

I lowered my fist, brushed my palms together.

The door opened.

Hunter crossed the mat in four long strides. He glanced at Foster's posture first — still bent, hand pressed to his ribs — then at me, and something in his face did a small, quiet thing, like a decision getting made without fanfare. He positioned himself between us, shoulder angled so it cut off most of Foster's direct line to me.

"Mr. Foster." Voice level, carrying. "Sorry about this. My sister doesn't know the protocols yet."

Sister. No emphasis. No hesitation either.

Foster straightened up, one hand still pressed to his ribs. He looked at Hunter, then at me. Didn't say anything.

"She just transferred in. Still learning how things work here." Hunter's tone didn't change. "I'll make sure she understands."

The silence stretched. Students waiting to see which way this would break.

Foster exhaled through his nose, waved a hand. "Fine. Everyone back to drills."

He walked toward the equipment rack, moving a little stiffly.

Hunter turned his head slightly. "Outside."

On the far side of the room, Julian Vance leaned against the equipment cage with his arms crossed, watching. When Hunter's eyes moved across the space and landed on him, Julian's mouth curved — not quite a smile, just the suggestion of one. Hunter looked away without responding, which seemed to satisfy Julian more than any reaction would have.

Not a question.

I followed Hunter into the hallway. He stopped a few feet from the door, leaned his back against the wall, hands in his pockets.

The hallway was empty except for the distant sound of lockers slamming.

"You trained?" he asked.

"Yeah."

"Where?"

"Wherever I could. Had to fight for food sometimes."

He studied me for a few seconds. Something moved behind his eyes but he didn't voice it. Just made a short sound in his throat, turned toward the far end of the hall.

Three steps away, he looked back.

"Wait for me after school. I'll drive you."

Then he was gone around the corner.

I stood there looking at the spot where he'd been. My eyes dropped to a scuff mark on the floor.

In my last life, nobody said "wait for me" after watching you put someone down.

The feeling of being stepped in front of — strange. Unfamiliar. But not bad.

I went back inside, slid into the seat next to Keira.

Foster didn't look at me again for the rest of class. He moved through the drills with his back to the mat where we'd sparred, calling out corrections to other pairs in a voice that was slightly too even, like he was working to keep it that way. A few students glanced over at me periodically — quick, sideways looks they pulled back the moment I turned my head. Nobody said anything out loud.

Keira leaned over immediately, voice barely above a whisper but vibrating with barely-contained shock. "Serena. You just. You actually hit Mr. Foster."

"He came at me first."

"I don't—" She opened her mouth, closed it, then just hugged her caramel latte tighter against her chest and stared very hard at the middle distance.

"Did you see that just now? Your brother and Julian are like oil and water — they literally just stared each other down from across the room." Keira's face lit up with the expression of someone about to spill premium gossip.

"So what exactly happened between them?" I asked, genuinely curious.

Keira leaned in and dropped her voice to a near-whisper, the way people do when the story is too good to risk anyone else overhearing. "Short version? It's a whole mess of bad blood over resources — the hockey team and the fighting club have been at each other's throats for years."

Keira kept going, rattling off a string of minor incidents between the two teams — scheduling disputes, equipment conflicts, the kind of petty grievances that stack up over semesters until they calcify into something permanent. I stopped tracking the details somewhere around the third story and let my gaze drift toward where Julian was standing.

He caught it immediately.

I pulled my eyes back to Keira before he could make anything of it.

The parking lot after school was the usual end-of-day sprawl — backpack zippers, shouted goodbyes, engines turning over in clusters.

I stood near the entrance watching it thin out, not really meaning to catalog anything: the way groups fractured when someone spotted their ride, the blind phone-scroll drift, the exposed angles on people who'd stopped paying attention to the world around them. Just background noise my brain insisted on processing.

"Your sister?"

One of Hunter's teammates, tall, dark-haired, helmet in hand. Grinning.

Hunter walked past him without answering, unlocked the passenger door, looked at me once.

I got in.

The door shut, cutting off the noise. Hunter pulled out of the lot and onto the access road that ran along the school's perimeter — quieter out here, the last of the student traffic peeling off toward the main boulevard.

The AC kicked on, leather and cool air. I leaned back and started composing something that resembled gratitude, decided it sounded wrong, shelved it.

The car got hit.

Not a fender-tap. A real impact from the rear quarter panel, enough to kick the whole frame sideways. My hands moved before I'd thought about it — left braced against the door handle, right hooked around the seat edge, locking my weight in place.

I looked at the mirror.

Hunter had already reacted, brake then gas, pulling distance. "Someone just hit us on purpose," Hunter said, eyes on the rearview. "Looks like Julian's people."