The next three lessons passed without much in the way of drama. Delon shared the first two with him, but not the class before lunch (Alex was in that one), though he did escort Jack to the door.

Jack kept replaying what Alex had said over and over in his head, especially because she was sat quite close to him in that third class in particular.

What he couldn’t quite wrap his head around was the level of fear that Caitlin seemed to instil in those whom she considered close friends. That he would feel intimidated and vulnerable was completely understandable, she was more like an enormous predator to him than a young woman attending the same school, but for Alex, someone who was popular and sporty and independent in her own right, to be so reluctant to stand up to her was a worrying sign.

He knew that bullying was a fact of life, regardless of scale, and that it often had nothing to do with the threat of physical harm, he just hadn’t expected other Alphas to fear Caitlin the way he did.

The ‘revelation’ that Caitlin got off on bullying people smaller than her came as no real surprise to Jack – he’d known about her penchant for picking on the smallest and weakest for years – but it was still quite raw to hear it described in such frank terms by one of her contemporaries. Whilst most Alphas were dismissive of Betas and treated them with either disdain or ignorance, she actively sought them out for sport, and that made her far more dangerous and difficult to reason with.

He still didn’t fully know why he’d been singled-out specifically to be abducted by her, but the pool of Betas was small, and he was basically the only kid his age for miles around who wasn’t from a minority group or in specialist education. Perhaps she’d patiently been waiting for her opportunity, to corner him, kidnap him, and abuse him in particular.

The bell eventually rang out to signify lunch break had begun, and he tidied up his things slowly to allow time for Delon to reach the door. He felt Alex’s legs woosh past, her powerful stride giving him a little more breathing room than some of the other, less conscientious Alphas as they traipsed off for lunch. He felt strangely put out, and he was having a hard time figuring out exactly why. It wasn’t that his conversation with Alex had been particularly awful or anything, but it had left him feeling emptier than before. He had truly expected to make some headway or at least get some answers, but it had felt rushed and left him no closer to an answer. The hypothesis that maybe she pitied him more than wanted to truly help him was gnawing its way unpleasantly into his mind, and that wasn’t helping his mood at all.

Lunch was quiet. With no Penny, and still no real appetite, Jack was really just picking at his food and thinking to himself. Delon didn’t seem too talkative either, even after demolishing his own food, though it could be argued he was just giving Jack time and space to think. Eventually, the gangly Beta turned to his friend and puffed out a stream of air, as if attempting to release the pressure of the silence between them.

“Are you alright, mate?” he asked finally.

“Sorry,” said Jack, “I’m just a bit out of it again today.”

The weary boy put his lunchbox down and lay back on the grass, closing his eyes.

“Are you worried about your Grandad,” Delon suggested.

“A bit,” he replied, it was definitely a contributing factor, but he had faith his Grandad would pull through.

“Penny too?” probed Delon.

Jack realised that he had neglected to mention that he’d been to see her at all, and couldn’t believe he’d overlooked telling his friend such vital information.

A little more animated, he began to explain to his friend, piece-by-piece, the story of how she’d gotten in contact, and he’d gone to visit both her and his Grandad in the afternoon. He was reluctant to mention exactly what she was in for and was a bit vague on the details, but he insisted that she seemed fine and was on the mend.

It cheered Delon up no end to hear that Penny was ok, and though he was alarmed that she was in a ward, he himself had had a cousin admitted to hospital at a similar age and had returned fighting fit just a few days later, and he sought to reassure Jack with this fact.

There was more of a glow to Jack’s heart now, remembering the time he had spent with Penny, and how he had been able to comfort her, even just a tiny bit.

He checked his phone to make sure he hadn’t received a message from her today – he hadn’t, but he would send one to her later, he promised himself.

The final two periods arrived, the first was Mathematics with both Alex and Delon, and it was yet another mock test, on Mechanics this time. He did his best, which is to say, he answered all of the questions to the best of his ability despite an ever-dwindling sense of certainty that what he was doing was correct, right up until the bell cut things short and it didn’t matter any more anyway. The teacher weaved around the classroom collecting all the papers as Jack packed away his things, letting Alex et al stomp past, then went over to the door where Delon was waiting for him, ready to escort him to English.

“Last one,” the lanky boy noted optimistically, “Nearly there.”

Jack gave him a half-hearted smile and started to step off, but as they were about to cross the threshold, the teacher called out after them.

“Delon, can I have a quick word please,” he asked, gesturing for the gangly teen to stay behind.

“Uh…” Delon paused, as he realised instantly that this would scupper his ability to accompany Jack. It was a request he couldn’t readily refuse without good reason.

“It’s about your college application, shouldn’t take 2 minutes,” the teacher went on, placing the collected exam papers into two trays – the Alpha-sized ones right next to Jack and Delon’s far smaller sheets.

Jack’s pulse began to race as he realised he’d need to do this corridor run solo. He made eye contact with Delon as if to say, ‘it’s ok, I’ll be fine’, despite the fear in his veins.

“Yeah… of course…” Delon replied to his teacher, taking a step back inside the room before turning to Jack.

“Be safe, head down, walk fast,” he said with concern in his eyes.

“I will,” Jack said, with more conviction than he felt.

The corridor was busy, and without the comfort blanket of Delon guiding him through the maelstrom, Jack was completely and utterly petrified. He tried to keep his head down, but it was hard to find his bearings without looking up every so often – the school had several sections where it was only really possible to gauge exactly where you were by the numbers on the doors, especially when most of your field of view was blocked by the bodies of giant children jostling in front of you.

He split off from the main corridor to head towards the English department when he saw something that made his heart stop dead in his chest. A face visible through a gap in the crowd, taller than the rest, with fiery red locks, glaring down scornfully at the younger, more excitable members of the school as they bustled around in front of her.

He instinctively stopped in his tracks, fighting the urge to yelp out loud, and span his head around to see if he could join the stream of giant bodies heading in the opposite direction. If he could at least stay ahead of her, he could hide in a corner and let her past, then at least he’d know the way she’d come from would be clear.

Judging a gap to perfection, he threw himself across to the other wall and hugged it closely as he stalked back to the main corridor, re-entering the fray and working his way towards to a bank of lockers off to one side. As he did so, however, he failed to factor in that a 13-year-old Alpha boy with a short brown buzz-cut had cut across the flow of traffic whilst talking with his friends, and Jack barged straight into him, knocking a stack of books loose from the boy’s arms.

It wasn’t the most violent impact; it was mainly the shock that caused the books to scatter, but the boy was most displeased. As Jack checked that his glasses were still on his face with floundering hands, he felt a sharp pain in the back of his knee as the boy kicked him from behind.

Jack yelped in pain, crumpling onto his side in a heap and clutching the back of his leg. His glasses clattered to the floor by his side.

“Watch where you’re going, you little turd,” the 13-year-old spat, looming over him, his dumpy face reddening with anger and what looked like embarrassment. A Beta had startled him and made him look a fool in front of his friends, and as they laughed, the boy placed his thick rubber-soled boots on one of Jack’s sprawled legs and pressed down hard, causing Jack to yell out once more. The sharp edges of the new rubber threatened to cut his skin even through his jeans, such was the pressure, and Jack prayed his leg would not break from the careless and spiteful actions of an angry child.

“Stop it,” he screamed in agony, “Stop iiiit!”

“Make me,” the brat sneered.

As Jack tried to twist his body around to try and push the boy’s boot off, he saw a huge arm swoop in and grip his assailant by the scruff of the neck, lifting him clean off the ground and freeing Jack’s leg in the process.

As the initial shock of the searing pain bled away, Jack’s eyes followed the arm back to the enormous, muscular body looming almost directly over him. Fire-red hair, jutting breasts, powerful legs.

Out of the frying pan, into the fire.

“What’s going on here?” Caitlin’s voice asked firmly, but calmly, as if she was asking for the time, not breaking up a fight in a school corridor.

“N-nothing,” the buzz-cut kid stammered, bringing his hands up to grip Caitlin’s bulging forearm and alleviate the strain on his precious shirt collar.

“Had a little accident?” she suggested, cocking her head to one side at him.

The boy nodded frantically, petrified of what the oversized senior was considering doing to him.

Jack was too scared to move or scream or draw any kind of attention to himself. All eyes were on Caitlin and the whimpering Alpha boy she had raised up towards the ceiling.

After a second or so, it seemed to dawn on Caitlin that nobody was moving away, and she glared around at the small crowd that had formed, daring them to get caught in the crossfire.

“Does this concern you?” she said menacingly, scowling down at one of the boy’s particularly awestruck friends in particular.

“No m’am…” he replied, momentarily forgetting he wasn’t talking to a teacher.

“Then get lost,” she instructed, swivelling her head around to show that she was referring to everyone in the vicinity.

Jack, meanwhile, was in the middle of a full-blown panic attack.

All of the feelings of terror and vulnerability and insignificance were overloading his brain. She was simply colossal. He was right down by her shins and he might as well have been an inch high given how enormous she looked.

His faculties were returning, slowly, and it was becoming increasingly obvious he had to either make a break for it now or be completely at her mercy in a few seconds’ time. Reaching out very slowly and carefully, he swept his glasses towards his body, pocketed them, and prepared to run.

Caitlin’s focus returned to the snivelling schoolboy she held in her grip, and she extended her arm to push his back flat against the bank of lockers.

“You get lucky this time, kid,” she snarled at him, giving her arm a sharp jolt to slam him against the locker door a second time, “You pick your books up and scram.”

“Yes, yes. I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” he pleaded.

“Good,” she cooed sarcastically, beginning to lower her arm.

Jack bolted.

The pain in his leg was bad, but he found the fight-or-flight push he needed to scrabble away before Caitlin had time to react, as she was too busy man-handling the Alpha kid.

He didn’t look back as he hotfooted it to the spur off the main corridor and tore between the giant pairs of legs to try and put as much ground between himself and Caitlin as he possibly could.

After a good twenty to thirty paces it dawned on him exactly how weak his leg actually was as the immediate surge of adrenaline faded. The English department was going to be too far, she’d surely catch him despite a head start.

Thinking fast, he noticed that the Beta toilets were just ahead on the left; a half-size door in a sheer wall between classrooms, often overlooked by those that never used them.

With another mighty effort, he grit his teeth and forced himself over to the door and clattered through it, stumbling over to the far cubicle before his leg completely collapsed under him.

He heard the washroom door thud closed automatically, and pulled himself up to sit on the toilet lid, backpack against the cistern, closing and securing the cubicle door by sliding the bolt shut. He ran his hands along his damaged leg, grimacing as he felt where the sharp indents from the boy’s sole had broken the skin. There was a little sliver of blood soaked into his jeans where a particularly deep indent had pressed into his shin near the knee, and another one half-way up his thigh where the toe of the boot had pressed down.

Nothing was broken, as far as he could tell, but it hurt like buggery and would probably need disinfectant when he got home, plus a regular dose of painkillers to deal with the aches to come.

He didn’t want to roll up his trouser leg to view the damage the boy had caused, but he knew it wouldn’t be pretty; it would all come up in lovely purple-and-yellow patches before the day was out.

He cursed his luck once more. The one time he was on his own, of course she would show up, and of course some dumb-ass kid would happen to get in his way.

Pressing his head to his hands, he fought to contain the urge to scream, the sheer terror of the moment and the knowledge that Caitlin was now aware he was back on campus threatened to engulf him.

A creak of the washroom door.

He froze.

The sound of a person coming into the room, but it was not a Beta walking in, this was someone far larger, making far more considered an entrance.

He had the most terrible feeling.

Drawing his injured leg up onto the toilet lid with a wince, and then his other one, he tried to stay calm, to stay deathly quiet.

The door was still open, but someone was hauling themselves inside, a slight clunk on wood as a foot or knee bumped into the door, and then the mechanism slowly closed with a thud.

He was not alone, he could hear the Alpha’s breathing as whoever it was got closer and closer to his stall.

Jack tried to hold his own breath, but he knew it was only a matter of time.

As his heart threatened to burst from his chest, the arresting, stern features of Caitlin Reid raised themselves up over the top of the cubicle, her expression settling into one of vainglorious satisfaction.

“Oh, boy, if it isn’t my little buddy Jack,” she crowed, barely able to contain her toothy smile.