Darius was everywhere. Watching. Silent. Dangerous.
It was as if the Academy itself had shifted after that moment in the quad, the very air charged with a tension that made Elara's wolf pace restlessly beneath her skin. Gideon's words still clung to her ears like smoke—He'll regret rejecting you. I'll make sure of it—but it wasn't Gideon who haunted her days. It was Darius.
Everywhere she turned, she felt his presence like a weight pressing against her consciousness.
In the grand dining hall with its vaulted ceilings and long tables arranged by pack hierarchy, she caught his gaze burning across the room like molten silver. Even when he sat surrounded by his usual circle of Alpha heirs—the cream of wolf society with their perfect posture and predatory grace—his attention fixed on her with laser focus. The bond between them pulled taut as piano wire, making her chest ache with each breath.
On the training grounds where combat practice sent tremors through the earth, his shadow loomed at the edge of her vision, silent and heavy as a storm cloud gathering strength. She felt his eyes tracking her every movement, cataloguing her technique, her stamina, her moments of weakness. The sensation crawled across her skin like electricity, raising goosebumps that had nothing to do with the autumn wind.
Even in the library—that sanctuary of towering shelves and whispered study sessions where she'd hoped for peace—she felt his presence like heat against her back when he passed between the ancient tomes. His scent lingered in the air long after he'd moved on: pine and winter storms, tinged with something darker that made her wolf whine with confused longing.
He didn't speak. He didn't approach. He simply watched with the patience of a predator who knew exactly what he was hunting.
And it was driving her absolutely mad.
So Elara threw herself into classes with desperate intensity, trying to drown out the weight of his attention with textbooks and endless note-taking. The Academy's curriculum wasn't designed for the weak—wolf history stretching back millennia, dominance theory that dissected pack dynamics with surgical precision, military strategy adapted for supernatural warfare, combat drills that left students bloodied and exhausted. All of it woven together into lectures that lasted hours and practicals that tested both mind and body to their breaking points.
She scribbled every word the professors spoke, memorized every tactical formation, absorbed every historical precedent like her life depended on it. Because maybe it did. If she couldn't change her reputation as the rejected mate, she could at least sharpen her mind into a weapon that no one could take from her.
The Academy's library became her refuge. Tucked into an alcove between sections on Pack Law and Ancient Rituals, she'd claimed a small table as her fortress, surrounded by towers of books that created a barrier between her and the rest of the world. The afternoon light filtered through stained glass windows depicting the Moon Goddess blessing the first Alpha, casting rainbow patterns across pages dense with information.
One particular afternoon, buried in a stack of notes on territorial disputes that blurred together into a pounding headache, she realized someone had slid into the empty chair beside her with practiced stealth.
"Hey."
The voice was warm honey over gravel, familiar in its easy confidence. She blinked, lifting her head from pages of increasingly illegible handwriting to find herself face-to-face with Caleb Bane.
Beta heir of the Ironwood Pack, one of the strongest allied bloodlines in the northern territories. His sandy hair was mussed like he'd run across campus to find her, his hazel eyes bright with genuine concern. Unlike the other high-ranking students who wore their status like armor, Caleb possessed an easy warmth that seemed almost foreign within these walls of ambition and calculated cruelty.
"You look like you're drowning in those notes."
Elara exhaled a shaky laugh, brushing dark strands out of her face with ink-stained fingers. "Maybe just a little."
The admission felt dangerous. Showing weakness in the Academy was like bleeding in shark-infested waters—it invited attack from every direction. But something about Caleb's open expression, the way he leaned forward with genuine interest rather than predatory assessment, made her walls crack just slightly.
"Here." He slid his own notebook across the scarred wooden table, pages filled with neat handwriting that put her frantic scrawl to shame. "I can help. Professor Halden's lectures are impossible to follow unless you already know the theoretical framework. These should make more sense."
She hesitated, fingers hovering over the offered notes. In her experience, help always came with strings attached, prices that weren't revealed until payment was due. But the relief that fluttered in her chest at the sight of clearly organized information overrode her caution.
"Thank you."
"No problem." His smile widened, transforming his already pleasant features into something that could probably charm birds from trees. "Besides, I figured you could use a friendly face around here."
Something in his easy warmth began to soothe the raw edges of her pride, like salve on an open wound. For the first time since arriving at this place, she felt the constant tension in her shoulders begin to ease. The knot of anxiety that had taken up permanent residence in her stomach loosened by degrees.
Caleb asked thoughtful questions about her other classes, made observations about their shared professors that revealed both intelligence and humor. He even launched into a spot-on impression of Professor Blackthorne's pompous lecture style—complete with the man's tendency to gesture dramatically while explaining pack hierarchies—until she laughed. Actually laughed, the sound bubbling up from somewhere deep in her chest like spring water after a long drought.
It felt normal. Human, even, despite the supernatural world they navigated. And normal was more precious than gold in a place where every interaction carried undertones of dominance and submission.
But of course, normal couldn't last. Not here. Not for her.
The air in the library shifted without warning, growing thick and charged like the moment before lightning strikes. Every wolf instinct she possessed screamed danger, hackles rising as her senses sharpened to combat readiness. Students throughout the vast space fell silent, conversations dying mid-sentence as that particular brand of Alpha presence flooded the room.
Her wolf stiffened instantly, pressing against her ribs as if trying to escape her very skin.
Elara knew before she even looked up. The mate bond yanked tight in her chest, a physical pull that made her breath catch.
Darius Fenrir stood in the aisle between towering bookshelves, tall and imposing as a monument to controlled fury. His storm-gray eyes had gone cold as winter ice, his expression carved from granite that might weather centuries without showing a crack. Every line of his body radiated the kind of lethal stillness that came before explosive violence.
His gaze cut straight to Caleb with surgical precision, then dropped to the open notebook between them—innocent study materials that might as well have been evidence of high treason from his reaction. When those deadly eyes returned to her face, she felt pinned in place like a butterfly on display.
The temperature in their corner of the library seemed to drop by several degrees.
Caleb's easy smile faltered as he registered the threat bearing down on them. "Fenrir."
Darius didn't acknowledge the greeting. Didn't even glance in the Beta's direction. Instead, he addressed Elara directly, his voice pitched low enough that only supernatural hearing could catch it—a rumble of barely leashed dominance that made her bones vibrate.
"We need to talk."
Her chest tightened as if someone had wrapped steel bands around her ribs and begun tightening them slowly. The mate bond pulsed between them, wounded but unbroken, carrying undertones of possessiveness that made her wolf whimper with confused longing.
She set her pen down with deliberate care, each movement precise despite the tremor in her hands. "I'm busy."
His eyes narrowed to silver slits, the Alpha in him clearly unaccustomed to defiance from any source, let alone his supposedly weaker mate. "Now."
The single word carried the full weight of his authority—a command that would have sent lesser wolves scrambling to obey without question. Her own wolf pressed against her consciousness, desperate to submit to the call of their destined mate despite his cruel rejection.
But Elara's pride snapped back like a whip crack, sharp and uncompromising. She met his gaze steadily, pouring every ounce of defiance she possessed into her voice. "I said I'm busy."
Caleb's jaw tightened as he sensed the escalating tension, his own protective instincts flaring in response to the threat posed to someone under his unofficial protection. "You heard her, Fenrir."
The silence that followed stretched taut as a bowstring, thick with the kind of tension that preceded bloodshed. Other students throughout the library had abandoned all pretense of studying, books forgotten as they tracked the confrontation with wide eyes and bated breath. Phones appeared in hands, ready to record whatever explosion was about to occur.
Elara's skin prickled under the weight of so many stares, but all she could focus on was the electric pull of the bond dragging at her chest. It felt like hooks sunk deep in her heart, yanking her toward him with every breath despite her mind's desperate resistance.
She forced steel into her voice, drawing on reserves of strength she'd built from years of surviving in a world that didn't want her. "You made yourself clear, remember? You don't want me. So stop haunting me like some kind of territorial ghost."
For just a split second, something flickered in those storm-gray depths. Pain, perhaps. Regret. The ghost of what might have been if pride and prejudice hadn't poisoned the well between them.
But it vanished as quickly as it had appeared, smothered beneath layers of Alpha arrogance and wounded pride. He took a slow, deliberate step closer, and the very air seemed to compress under the weight of his dominance. Power rolled off him in waves that made weaker students stumble back, their wolves recognizing a predator far beyond their ability to challenge.
Caleb shifted almost imperceptibly, subtly placing his body between Elara and the advancing threat. The gesture was small but unmistakably protective—Beta instincts rising to shield someone he'd claimed as pack, however informally.
Darius noticed. Of course he did.
His lips curved into something that might have been a smile if smiles could promise violence and bloodshed. When he spoke, his voice dropped to a guttural growl that seemed to bypass human hearing entirely and speak directly to the primitive wolf brain.
"Stay away from her."
But the sound that emerged wasn't entirely his own. It rumbled deeper than any human throat could produce, rougher than stone grinding against stone. His wolf had pushed forward without permission, golden light flashing through his eyes like molten metal, transforming his features into something far more dangerous than merely human.
The growl reverberated through the library's vaulted space, shaking dust from ancient rafters and sending smaller books tumbling from their shelves. It carried the unmistakable weight of Alpha command—not a request or suggestion, but a decree backed by the full force of his bloodline's power.
Gasps broke out around them like scattered applause. Students pressed back against the shelves, instinctively seeking distance from the display of raw dominance.
Because this wasn't just Darius speaking anymore.
His wolf had taken control, and it had claimed Elara as its own regardless of what the human half might have said about rejection and worthiness.
"Stay away from her."