Third Person's POV Carmen had lived through Riley's ruin. She had watched the light fade from her sister's eyes after Alpha Alaric and his family tore her apart piece by piece. Carmen wasn't the same girl she had been in junior high. She had become something new-something sharp, vengeful, and ready to strike. Carmen stood against the hallway's icy concrete wall, arms folded, waiting. She didn't need to hear what they were doing inside. She already knew. Ten minutes passed. Long enough. Her toothbrush had been jammed deep into the dorm toilet, its bristles scraping the rim as one of the girls laughed. Her towel had been dragged across the bathroom floor and used to mop up grimy water. Her shampoo and body wash had been tainted with toilet water-again. "Almost done. Let's clean up and head to the dining hall," one of the girls chirped. Then came the sound that froze every muscle in the room. Click. The dorm door opened slowly, and a sudden, deathly silence blanketed the air inside. Carmen stood in the doorway, one hand still on the knob, a crooked smile playing on her lips. She leaned casually against the frame, eyes scanning the wreckage of her belongings. "Well," she said smoothly, voice like velvet over a blade. "You three seem to be having a great time." The three girls inside stood frozen. Their perfect makeup seemed to crack along with their courage. The blood drained from their faces. Carmen stepped into the room. And locked the door behind her with a slow, deliberate click. Panic flashed in their eyes like lightning in a storm. "Y-you're back early?" one of them stammered, lips trembling under layers of glossy lip stain. "We-we were just tidying up a bit for you-" Carmen chuckled. The sound was brittle, sharp, and bone-chilling. It cut through the silence like the snap of a frozen branch in the dead of winter. Her peach-blossom eyes shimmered with a kind of quiet madness. "Oh? If you liked my toiletries that much, you only had to ask." Her voice was light, almost kind-but beneath it thrummed a power that made the walls seem to press in. "They're yours now." The girls shifted uneasily. They couldn't read her. They didn't know what came next. And that terrified them more than any overt threat. Then Carmen raised her hand and pointed directly at the bathroom door. "Inside. All of you." Her voice dropped to ice. "I want to see you use everything. Toothbrush. Shampoo. Body wash. Towel. Everything. While I watch." Their lip quivered. "N-no... we can use our own, really-" The smile vanished from Carmen's face. What replaced it was pure frost. "I wasn't asking." From her coat pocket, Carmen pulled out a butterfly knife. With a flick of her wrist, the blade danced through the air in a deadly bloom of metal. She twirled it with practiced grace, the sharpened edges catching the dim overhead light with every motion. The girls backed into the corner like trapped prey. They whimpered, "P-please don't do anything crazy... we were wrong, okay? We're sorry-" Carmen didn't blink. "Sorry?" she said sweetly. "One sorry to erase everything? I must look very easy to fool." She advanced one step."You remember what I told you two months ago?" The girls shuddered in unison. Of course they remembered. Carmen had once cornered them in the hallway, her knife cold against the small of their backs, whispering in a voice that haunted their nightmares: "You can bully me, but I can kill you. One life for three. That's a trade I'm happy to make." Tears welled up in their eyes now. They clung to each other, their pride shattered, their bravado long gone. And Carmen just watched. Smiling. Eventually, under her command-and her knife-they filed into the bathroom. They scrubbed their teeth with the tainted brush, washed their hair with the contaminated shampoo, rubbed their bodies clean with the towel they had desecrated. Carmen remained in the doorway, arms folded, watching in serene silence. Her smile was still there, but it had no warmth. No life. Only control. "Good girls," she said at last. "Now we understand each other." Because that's the truth, wasn't it? Snakes needed fangs. Not to strike, but to survive. Because no matter how much you cowered, begged, or hid-there would always be someone waiting to strike first. And Carmen? She'd rather be the first to bite. As the girls sobbed and scrambled to their beds, Carmen turned toward the door, her expression unreadable. She ran a hand through her dark hair and exhaled slowly. Her thoughts shifted back to the Maybach.The man who had promised her a return. Duke. He had driven past like she didn't exist. But she wouldn't let that be the end. Her fingers flexed slightly, as if already imagining grabbing his collar. Looks like I'll be heading to the Silverfang Den tonight, she thought coldly.