-Vaughn Blackmore:
The cafeteria is always loud in a way that never fully settles into background noise. It's not just the sound of people talking or trays clattering against metal counters—it's the constant pressure of it all mixing, like the room itself can't decide where one sound ends and another begins. Every step inside feels slightly heavier, not because of anything physical, but because of the way the space is always full without ever feeling alive. It's just routine, repetition, bodies moving because they have to, not because they want to.
I fall into line with Darien beside me, tray already in hand, moving forward with the same mechanical rhythm as everyone else. Darien is talking about something again—training, sleep, the food, all of it blending into the same kind of complaints he always has—but I only half-register it. I answer when I need to, but most of my attention stays forward, focused on the slow movement of the line and the simple goal of getting through it without thinking too much.
That's when the atmosphere shifts.
It's subtle at first, almost easy to miss if you're not used to noticing things like that. A dip in conversation somewhere behind us, a pause that lasts half a second too long, then another one further down the room. It spreads quietly, like the entire space has recognized something before the mind has fully caught up. Darian notices it too, because he stops talking mid-sentence and tilts his head slightly, his voice dropping as he leans closer to me.
"The rich boy is here," he mutters.
I already know who he means before I even turn.
Ryland Grayson.
I glance back anyway.
He's walking through the cafeteria like the space was built with his movement in mind. There's nothing rushed about him, nothing uncertain. He doesn't look around like he's trying to understand where he is or who is watching him. He just moves forward, steady and controlled, and the room reacts to him without anyone admitting they're doing it. Conversations soften, then pause, then continue again once he passes, like his presence interrupts something briefly and then releases it back into motion.
I don't understand people like that. People who don't need to adjust themselves for a room, people who make the room adjust instead. It's not my business to understand him anyway, so I look away before it becomes anything more than a passing observation. I've dealt with enough Alphas here to know what matters and what doesn't, and I don't have time to turn someone else's presence into a problem.
We move forward in line. The food is the same as always—bland, forgettable, something that exists only to keep you going rather than to be enjoyed. I don't think about it as I put it on my tray. I don't need to. Everything here is functional, nothing more.
Darien peels away to get extra food, still complaining under his breath, and I end up at a table near the middle of the room. It's not isolated enough to feel separate, but not close enough to the center to feel exposed. It's just a place to sit, nothing more than that. I place my tray down and settle into the chair, rolling my shoulders slightly to release the stiffness still sitting in them from training. Around me, the cafeteria continues as it always does—constant movement, constant noise, constant nothing that actually matters.
Then the tray hits the table, the same table I'm sitting at.
The sound is sharp enough that I feel it more than I hear it. Metal against metal, close enough that it shouldn't belong there. My body reacts before my thoughts fully catch up, a slight shift in tension through my shoulders, my posture tightening just enough to register that something is wrong with the pattern of this moment. I don't look up immediately, because I already know that whatever is there is not supposed to be there.
When I do look, Ryland is sitting down next to me.
Not across.
Not nearby.
Next to me.
Like the space was assigned to him the same way mine was assigned to me, like there was never any question about whether he should be here or not. He doesn't look at me when he sits. He doesn't acknowledge the fact that I'm there at all. He just places his tray down, adjusts it slightly, and begins eating like this is the most normal arrangement in the world, like I'm simply part of the background he happened to sit within.
My grip tightens slightly around my fork before I even realize it. Not enough to show. Just enough to feel.
I don't speak right away because there's nothing to respond to yet. That's what makes it worse. If he had said something directly, it would've been easier to define. Easier to push back against. But he didn't. He just inserted himself into the space beside me and treated it like it had always belonged that way.
The silence between us is not quiet in the way the cafeteria is quiet. It's heavier than that, more contained, like the noise around us has stopped reaching this exact point. People are still talking, still eating, still moving, but it feels distant now, like we've been cut slightly out of sync with the rest of the room.
Ryland eats for a moment before speaking, still not looking at me.
"You eat slowly."
The sentence lands flat, simple, almost casual. There's no tone attached to it that would help me decide what it's supposed to be—no mockery, no friendliness, no real emotion behind it. Just an observation, stated like it's a fact.
I blink once, slowly, forcing myself to stay still instead of reacting too quickly. My jaw tightens slightly, but I keep my voice controlled when I finally respond. "And you sit wherever you want."
Only then does he turn his head slightly, just enough to acknowledge the words, though his expression doesn't change. He looks at me for a brief moment, like he's checking something, then returns to his food as if the exchange didn't really require attention in the first place.
"Yes, I do," he says simply.
And that's it.
No explanation. No follow-up. No attempt to justify anything.
Just confirmation.
Like it was never in question.
I sit there for a moment longer, tray untouched, listening to the noise of the cafeteria slowly return to awareness around us, but it doesn't feel like it fully reaches this table anymore. Not properly. Because somehow, without doing anything obvious, Ryland has turned a simple lunch into something that feels entirely different from everything else happening in the room.