CHAPTER 172: _ DOCLEZZA

They meant to be in front of her? Heidi frowns. They’ve got to be kidding her.

Her eyes narrow, the motion a reflex that might hide fear if she squints hard enough. "I’m already in enough trouble because of you two. Why? You may ask. Well, let me enlighten you. Those stupid girls are onto me because in their delusional minds, they believe each one of you belongs to them. So unless you come to hand me a pardon, you can..."

Morgan doesn’t wait to hear the rest. He closes the distance between them in three quiet, predatory strides and his hand is on her forearm before her brain has time to catch up. The touch is firm but not rough; it pins her by the elbow as if to steady a sparking wire.

His eyes... those unreadable forest green eyes fix on hers and the air around them compresses.

"Someone bothering you?" he asks, the words deceptively casual, except the murderous intent behind them is too chilling to be ignored.

For a moment, everything else dissolves. Grayson’s grin freezes; the crowd’s chatter dims into the farthest background hum. Heidi tastes metal on her tongue and smells the warm, faint citrus of Morgan, and a small, animal part of her thinks this is how safety should feel; a palm with its rough edges.

She’s surprised, prickled by a tiny flicker of relief. Morgan’s face, for all his control, holds a question with sharper concern than she’s ever seen on him in public. She has watched him slice through people with a smile; she did not expect him to knit his brows because of her.

Grayson notices the hesitation sliding over her and his brow lifts. "You okay?" he asks, voice edged with something like worry. It’s awkward, adolescent type, and sincere enough to unsettle her more than Morgan ever does.

"She will be," Morgan says, answering for her, and there is the tiniest, maddeningly human softness around his mouth before he floors the mask back into place. "We marked her. It’s our duty to protect her."

The words should make Heidi laugh. Instead, they make her stomach drop. Her heart, traitorously, tags a staccato beat against her rib. She clamps her jaw shut, resists the warmth curling in her chest at the notion of protection... even if it comes from men who have been architects of her humiliation as often as its remedy.

However, there is a tremor in his hands. His veins are pulsing as though he’s barely holding himself back from shoving Grayson’s face into a nearby windshield just to keep Heidi to himself. That makes her brain continue to trip in a dozen directions at once. All these emotions, for her?

This is wrong. Morgan’s the one who laughs at her; he is the one who turned her life into a dare. And yet, there it is, the tiny, traitorous flicker of relief that someone as lethal as Morgan Bellamy might actually be on her side. She sees Grayson’s mouth drop open slightly behind his brother. Grayson always reads Morgan better than anyone, and the younger Bellamy calls out before he can help himself.

"Bro? You okay?"

Morgan doesn’t miss a beat. He lets the hard edge fade as if he’s doused a flame with calmness. "I’m fine," he says with a small, controlled smile that doesn’t reach those eyes. He’s a perfect actor—no, he’s an alpha who doesn’t bother to act for long because everything he allows to show is an act. He gives Grayson a look that says, ’Stay with the show’, then turns back to Heidi, slipping the cruel geometry of his face back into something serviceable.

"Why would you want to help me?" she asks bluntly, because bluntness is less dangerous than the quiver she feels in the temperature around them. "What’s in it for you?"

Grayson shrugs casually. "Because you obviously need it. And because—Because you’re one of us. Our mark pulses on your neck, doclezza. Doesn’t that count for anything, Cass—Heidi?"

Heidi bristles at the use of her name like it’s warm coal pressed to skin. She forces a laugh to mask the squeeze in her chest. "It should. But in this school, names get stapled with headlines before people learn to pronounce them right."

Morgan’s jaw tightens. "Unless you want them to stitch headlines for you forever, we get involved."

Grayson’s eyes dart between them. "Unless we get involved, you’re a target. Unless you want that..."

"You’re not taking my answer." Heidi protests.

"I am, sweetness. Get in the car."

Heidi gives a breathless laugh. "And how am I supposed to get into your car and let you two babysit my social life without the internet devolving us all into memes?"

"Get in the car," Morgan says, and when he says it there’s an order under the smoothness.

He doesn’t leave room for argument. He steps forward and before Heidi can further protest he takes her hand and guides her toward the vehicle.

Grayson rolls his eyes. "Really?" As if he’s still trying to negotiate minor details of a plan. Heidi is not negotiable.

"I’m not riding with you. I am not..."

Before she knows it, Morgan grips her wrist. It’s so quick and so deliberate that the crowd might not register it as anything but a protective gesture between lovers. Except it’s a Bellamy and they don’t expect such from a Bellamy to an ordinary Moon Blessed.

But Heidi feels the command behind it: do not be stubborn. His grip has the permission of someone who believes he can read her better than she reads herself.

"Don’t be stubborn, girl. You need this." He groans.

Grayson huffs. "We aren’t asking, Cass. Get in the car."

Heidi blinks. "You can’t tell me what to..."

Morgan’s thumb runs a line across the back of her hand like someone smoothing paper for a signature. The small intimacy—if that is what it is, makes her throat seize. He doesn’t let go. "Get in the car," he says again, softer this time, with the kind of awful steadiness that makes refusal seem pointless.

Grayson, who is now at the wheel, shifts his weight impatiently, watching the scene with the dogged restlessness of someone who can’t abide delay. "We’ll drive. I’ll take you where we need to go. We’ll sort it."

The crowd presses closer in instinctual curiosity as students always scent drama like wolves scent rain, and the prying is suffocating. Val gives Heidi a look that says: You owe us a good story when you get back. Helena mouths something like: Don’t die. Jia waves like a small flag of support.

Heidi glances at them, the growing circle of onlookers, and Morgan, whose green gaze reads like a verdict. The decision she has to make snaps through her like a match struck on a damp night. Fine. Let the twins think it’s weakness. Better that than walk into a crowd with hands empty, no plan and a pack of desperate girls waiting to ruin her life before it even started.