The hallways were already alive with the usual morning disorder—lockers slamming like distant gunfire, voices overlapping in a constant electric buzz, the feral energy of teenagers running on caffeine, hormones, and poor life choices.
And the girls.
God help him, the girls were everywhere.
White button-downs tucked into black pleated skirts. Blazers worn properly, slung carelessly over shoulders, or carried like status symbols.
They moved in clusters of two and three, orbiting one another with practiced precision.
Some wore the uniform with obedient exactness—collars buttoned, skirts regulation length, posture straight enough to please parents and future employers.
Others treated the dress code like a polite suggestion. Extra buttons undone. Skirts hemmed just short enough to flirt with suspension.
Shirts cut thin enough that lace whispered beneath the fabric, bra straps tracing quiet declarations of rebellion.
Phei felt the Dominance Aura breathing outward as he walked—twenty feet in every direction, invisible but undeniably present. A pressure. A suggestion. A recalibration.
And he could see it working.
Girls who had spent years looking through him now looked at him. Not boldly. Not stupidly.
Just enough to matter. A blonde with a shirt stretched tight across a generous chest met his gaze and held it a beat too long before turning back to her friend, color creeping into her cheeks.
A redhead lounging against a locker followed him with her eyes, gaze dipping briefly to catalog the new uniform, the way it fit instead of swallowing him whole.
None of them approached. None spoke.
But they noticed.
He wasn't turning heads like a celebrity. He wasn't stopping traffic. But the invisibility that had both protected and imprisoned him for years was cracking—hairline fractures spreading under the quiet weight of Charisma seventy-five.
His locker waited on the second floor, buried in a neglected corner far from the gravitational pull of the popular kids.
He'd chosen it deliberately during freshman year. Out of sight. Out of mind. Fewer opportunities for "accidents."
Phei climbed the stairs, thighs burning with every step—residual punishment from the morning—and turned down the hallway.
That's when he saw them.
Brett.
Anderson.
Kyle.
The unholy trinity.
They stood directly in front of his locker, blocking the path with casual entitlement, bodies angled like they owned the corridor.
Which, in several ways, they did.
Brett's family controlled half the commercial real estate in Paradise. Anderson's father sat on the school board. Kyle's mother was a tech executive whose donations had entire buildings named after her in tasteful serif fonts.
They were untouchable.
And they knew it.
Phei's first instinct was muscle memory—turn around, wait them out, vanish until the threat passed.
His second instinct was newer. Sharper. Fed by violet eyes and systems he was still learning not to doubt.
Fuck that.
He kept walking.
Brett noticed him first. His face split into that specific grin—anticipatory, delighted, already savoring whatever cruelty he'd queued up.
"Well, well," Brett drawled, pitching his voice loud enough to carry. "Look who finally decided to show his face. Where were you yesterday, Maxton? Too sick to come in? Or just too embarrassed after Sunday?"
Sunday.
Right.
The ice sculpture. The spectacle. The public humiliation delivered in front of forty guests with champagne flutes and selective amnesia.
Of course Brett knew.
What Danton did, the holy trinity always knew. Hell—they probably helped storyboard it.
Phei stopped a few feet away from them, close enough to speak but not close enough for easy hands to reach him. The Dominance Aura was already active, already washing over the three of them like a slow tide they couldn't quite name.
"Move," Phei said. "You're blocking my locker."
His voice came out different. Smoother. That low, resonant warmth the Charm Speech lent it, even when he wasn't actively wielding it. It landed like velvet over steel.
Brett blinked. His confident smirk flickered—surprise, or confusion, like hearing a song played in the wrong key.
But it was the girls nearby who reacted most visibly.
Two of them—a brunette and a blonde, standing at a locker a few feet away—both turned at the sound of his voice.
The brunette's lips parted slightly. The blonde tilted her head, that unconscious gesture of interest, like she was trying to hear him better.
Anderson noticed. His eyes flicked to the girls, then back to Phei, something uncertain crossing his face.
"Did he just tell us to move?" Anderson said, but his voice was off. Less confident than it should have been. "Did the charity case just give us an order?"
"I think he did," Kyle added, shifting his weight, looking uncomfortable in a way he probably didn't understand.
Dominance Aura working on weak-willed targets. Making them instinctively want to back down.
"I'm not asking," Phei said, taking one step closer. Letting his voice drop into that register he'd first used on Melissa. Low. Commanding. Certain. "Move."
The blonde girl by the nearby locker actually inhaled audibly. Her friend grabbed her arm, whispering something, but both their eyes stayed fixed on Phei.
Brett's smirk had vanished entirely now. His eyes narrowed, studying Phei like he was trying to solve a puzzle that had suddenly changed shape.
"Or what?" Brett said, but the bite was missing. "You gonna make us?"
Phei held his gaze. Purple eyes locking on. Not looking away. Not backing down.
This was the moment. Right here. Where he either established that things were different now, or got shoved into a locker and reminded that nothing had actually changed except his eye color.
"I could," Phei said quietly, towering over them despite being far too lean for his own good. The Charm Speech made the words land like silk wrapped around iron. "But I don't think I'll need to."
He took another step forward.
Anderson moved first. Just a half-step to the side, creating a small gap. His face showed confusion—like his body had acted without his brain's permission.
Kyle followed, shifting away, widening the gap further.
Brett stood his ground for another few seconds, jaw tight, clearly not wanting to back down in front of the growing audience. Students had stopped to watch. Phones were probably already recording.
But then his eyes flicked to Anderson and Kyle, saw them already retreating, and something in his posture broke.
He stepped aside.
Not far. Just enough for Phei to get to his locker. But he'd moved.
Phei walked past them, close enough to smell Brett's expensive cologne, and opened his locker. The combination clicked smoothly.
The door swung open.
The hallway had gone quieter than it should have been. People were watching. Whispering. The brunette and blonde were still staring, and Phei could see others doing the same—not just looking at the confrontation, but looking at him.
Brett just stood there, face reddening, fists clenched at his sides, clearly wanting to do something but held back by forces he couldn't name or understand.
Phei grabbed his books for first period, closed his locker, and turned back to face them.
"Thanks," he said, letting the Charm Speech flow. Making even that single word sound smooth and unhurried and subtly powerful. "Appreciate it."
A girl three lockers down—dark hair, the top two buttons of her shirt undone, generous curves the blazer couldn't quite contain—made a small sound. Not quite a gasp. Just a soft exhalation, like she'd been holding her breath.
Brett's face went from red to purple. "This isn't—"
"See you around," Phei interrupted, already walking away.
He could feel their eyes on his back. Could hear the whispers starting up behind him, people trying to figure out what they'd just witnessed.
And underneath the whispers, softer, he caught fragments:
"—his voice, though—"
"—when did it get hot?"
"—those eyes, are they contacts?"
"—never noticed him before—"
Phei Maxton—the school's favorite punching bag, the charity case everyone ignored—had just made Brett back down in front of witnesses.
And apparently, he'd done it while making half the girls in the hallway wonder who the hell he was.
Small victory. Tiny, really.
But it was blood in the water.
And everyone could smell it.
First period was AP Literature. Phei slid into his usual seat in the back corner, dropped his bag, and tried to look like his heart wasn't hammering against his ribs.
He'd done it. Had actually confronted them and won—if you could call making someone move a few feet "winning."
But it felt like winning. Felt like the first real proof that any of this system bullshit worked outside the bedroom.
The rest of the class filtered in. Normal faces. Normal people who'd never looked at him twice.
Except now a few of them were looking. Glancing his way. Whispering to each other.
A girl he'd never spoken to—dark hair, pretty face, skirt shorter than dress code allowed—took the seat one row up and two over from him. As she sat down, she glanced back over her shoulder, meeting his eyes for a moment before quickly looking away.
Word spread fast at Ashford Elite.
Phei pulled out his copy of whatever book they were supposed to be reading—something by Shakespeare, always bloody Shakespeare—and tried to focus.
But his mind kept drifting back to Brett's face. To that moment of hesitation. To the girls whispering in the hallway, looking at him like he was someone worth looking at.
To the blonde's parted lips when he'd spoken. The brunette grabbing her friend's arm. The dark-haired girl three lockers down making that soft sound when he'd said "appreciate it."
This was what power felt like.
Small, fragile, barely-there power.
But power nonetheless.
And he wanted more.