The Fat Human both Alphas wanted

VANESSA

The lecture hall smelled like old wood and chalk dust, and I'd claimed a seat in the back corner before anyone else arrived, close enough to the door to leave fast if I needed to. After yesterday, I wasn't taking chances.

Catherine swept in ten minutes late with her cheerleader friends trailing behind her, and I felt her eyes find me across the room before she even sat down.

She didn't say anything. She didn't need to. The look alone did the job.

The lecturer arrived without ceremony, a tall, narrow man with wire glasses and a voice that carried without needing volume.

He wrote his name on the board, Professor Halden, then turned to face the room like he was sizing us all up individually.

"Differential synchronization," he said, tapping the board. "Anyone care to explain why a pack's collective shift time correlates with lunar gravitational pull rather than simple hormonal triggers?"

Silence. A few students shifted in their seats. Someone coughed.

"No one?" Halden's mouth twitched, it wasn’t quite a smile. "Miss Coleman. Surely a student of your bloodline has an opinion." He said to Catherine.

Catherine straightened, visibly caught off guard. "It's, um. Because the moon is closer during certain phases, so it's stronger?"

"Stronger than what, exactly?"

"Stronger... in general?"

A ripple of quiet laughter moved through the room. Catherine's jaw tightened, her ears going pink, and for a second I almost felt sorry for her. Almost. But i didn’t care to laugh too, she would make an example of me of course.

"That's not an answer, Miss Coleman. That's a shrug with vocabulary." Halden turned away from her without waiting for a second attempt, scanning the room like he expected the same silence from everyone else.

I understood the material. I'd read ahead the night before, unable to sleep, needing something, anything, to think about besides Dariel's voice asking me what I saw.

The concept wasn't even that complicated, not if you thought about it as a rate problem instead of a biology one. I raised my hand before I could talk myself out of it.

Halden's eyebrows lifted. "Miss Dodge." I took to my feet, slowly fighting the pain I felt in my knees. Eyes watched me with the usual mockery.

"It's not about proximity," I said, my voice steadier than I expected.

"Gravitational pull doesn't peak at physical closeness alone, it's about rate of change, how fast the pull is increasing or decreasing relative to the pack's baseline sync threshold. That's why the correlation holds even during a new moon in a different hemisphere, when the moon's actually farther away. It's the acceleration of the pull that triggers synchronization, not the distance itself."

The room went quiet in a different way now, the kind of quiet that comes from surprise instead of boredom.

Halden studied me for a long moment; then something like approval crossed his face. "Correct. Precisely correct." He turned back to the class. "That, is how you think about a system instead of memorizing a fact about it."

I could feel eyes on me from every direction, most of them wide with the same startled disbelief, like they'd forgotten a person my size was allowed to be smart, or maybe forgotten I was a person at all until that moment.

Catherine's stare burned the hottest, somewhere between fury and humiliation, and I understood I'd just made an enemy sharper than she already was.

Halden didn't dwell on it. He moved on to the next section of the lecture like nothing had happened, and I spent the rest of the hour trying to disappear back into my seat, aware of the whispers rippling around me that I couldn't quite make out but could absolutely feel.

When class ended, Halden caught my eye as I gathered my things. "Miss Dodge. A word, if you have a moment."

I followed him to his office, a cramped room stacked with journals and yellowing papers, the walls lined with framed degrees from universities I'd never heard of.

He gestured for me to sit, then settled behind his desk, folding his hands.

"You have a mind for this," he said, without preamble. "Rare, for a first-year. Rarer still for someone who's clearly spent this week fighting for her life instead of studying."

My stomach tightened. "I don't know what you mean sir ."

"I mean," he said, not unkindly, "that word travels fast at Stormville, and you've had quite a week."

He let that sit for a second, watching me, then moved on before I could figure out how to respond.

"I have a proposal. The rugby team is required to maintain academic standing to compete, and at the moment, several of them are failing spectacularly. I need a tutor. Someone patient enough to work with a room full of boys who'd rather be tackling each other than reading. Someone sharp enough to actually get through to them."

"You want me to tutor the rugby team." I asked with trembling lips.

"I want you to tutor the rugby team," he confirmed. "Twice a week, after practice. I'll arrange compensation through the department, on top of your existing scholarship stipend."

My hands got sweaty all of a sudden, I could swear I heard my heartbeat seep in my eyes. This was an Insane offer that'd help with my needs and all.

I mean it was a chance to make some extra money, but the bully? I noticed a couple of times how the team players looked at me while I walked around, with the same usual mocking expression.

I wanted to say No, for my own sanity, but I really needed the extras that I could offer.

I thought immediately of Dariel, of the bleachers, of his voice telling me to be there, like I hadn't already had enough of that team looking at me like I was something to solve or something to threaten. The last thing I wanted was more time in that orbit.

But I also thought of Catherine's face when I answered the question correctly, and some small, stubborn part of me liked that feeling more than I wanted to admit.

"Okay," I said, before I could talk myself out of it a second time. "I'll do it."

Halden nodded like he'd expected nothing less. "Good. Practice ends at five. I'll let the captain know to expect you."

The captain. Of course.

I walked out of his office already regretting the decision, already bracing for the moment Dariel found out I'd be spending even more time somewhere he could watch me, and yet some reckless, tired part of me couldn't quite make myself feel sorry about it.

Whatever came next, at least this time, I'd walked into it with my eyes open.