kiss you // S.S.

Chapter fourty-one: jealousy

XLI

The hallway was too quiet.

Ethan stood a few feet away, arms crossed, shoulders braced like he was already expecting a punch to the jaw. Scott lingered just beside him, his stance just open enough to invite conversation, just guarded enough to stop one.

Leo leaned against a locker, arms folded, but there was a tension in the way his shoulders held. His gaze was fixed on Ethan, but every so often it flicked past him—to the side. To where Stiles stood.

Stiles wasn't beside him. Not like he usually was.

He stood a few feet off, hands stuffed deep in the pockets of his pants, foot tapping silently against the school floors. His posture was restless, angled slightly away from Leo, like he didn't know whether to engage or keep the space between them intact. He hadn't looked at Leo since they walked in.

Scott noticed it. The quiet gap where banter should've been. The lack of eye contact. The silence that wasn't comfortable. Something had shifted. Maybe it was something small. But it was enough to turn the familiar rhythm between them into static.

Ethan shifted on his feet, uncomfortable. "Why are you even talking to me?" he asked, voice low and wary. "I helped kill your friend. How do you know I'm not gonna kill another one?"

Scott opened his mouth, but Leo moved first. He pushed off the locker with that signature slow, sharp grace, his voice cutting in like glass.

"Because you're standing here looking like a kicked puppy instead of throwing punches," he said. "If you were gonna kill someone else, you'd already be doing it instead of sulking about the last one."

Ethan's eyes flicked to him, surprised.

Leo's expression didn't change. He wasn't offering comfort, he was stating a fact, bone dry and sharp. "So yeah. You're guilty. But if we thought you were just another unhinged Alpha, we wouldn't be talking."

Stiles took a breath, and then pointed to himself. "Is he looking at me?" He quipped, noticing how Ethan glanced at Stiles when he spoke. "Was that a threat? Because if it was, I swear to God, I will break off an extra-large branch of mountain ash, wrap it in wolfsbane, roll it in mistletoe, and shove it up your freaking—"

"Whoa, Stiles," Scott cut in, eyes widening slightly. "Okay. We get it."

He turned back to Ethan, voice calm but firm. "We're talking to you because I know you didn't want to kill Boyd. And I think if it happened again... you wouldn't."

Leo let out a humorless laugh under his breath, scoffing. "Yeah? That's cute. But let's not rewrite history. He did help kill Boyd. Let's start there."

Ethan's jaw flexed. "You don't know what we owe them. Especially Deucalion. We weren't like Kali and Ennis when we met him. We weren't Alphas."