The shed felt suddenly airless, the scent of sweat, leather, and sawdust turning cloying. Kane's presence was a physical weight, a gravitational pull that seemed to warp the very light in the room. His slow, measured applause died away, leaving a silence so profound Lia could hear the frantic drumbeat of her own heart.
Corbin groaned, pushing himself up to his elbows. Blood, dark and slick, matted his hairline and trickled down his temple. He blinked up at Kane, his expression cycling from pain to fear to a sickening, ingratiating deference. "Kane—she attacked us! The scholarship bitch lost her mind!"
Kane didn't even look at him. His eyes remained locked on Lia, that unnerving, analytical interest burning in their pale depths. He uncrossed his arms and took a single step into the shed. The third boy scrambled backward as if burned.
"You're bleeding, Corbin," Kane said, his voice devoid of concern. A simple observation.
"She's a freak! A violent, lying—"
"You're in an unauthorized storage area, three against one, and you're bleeding," Kane cut him off, his tone flat. "The narrative writes itself. Poorly." Finally, his gaze flicked to Corbin, and the fox-like boy flinched as if struck. "Can you walk?"
"Y-yes."
"Then get out. All of you. Now."
It wasn't a suggestion. It was an expulsion. Corbin scrambled to his feet, swaying slightly. His redheaded friend finally managed a wheezing breath and stumbled upright. They didn't look at Lia again. They didn't speak. They simply fled, the door swinging shut behind them with a soft, definitive click.
Lia was alone with Kane Wolfe.
The adrenaline that had carried her through the fight was leaching away, leaving behind a cold, crawling dread. She'd been seen. Not just her fighting skill, but the body she worked so hard to conceal. The damp tank top clung to her like a second skin, outlining every contour, every line of muscle. She felt naked in a way that had nothing to do with clothing. Her disguise lay in tatters on the floor: the blazer, the sweater, the glasses. The mouse was gone, and the wolf was staring at the creature that had been hiding inside.
She forced herself to move, to break the paralyzing spell of his gaze. She bent, her movements deliberately slow and non-threatening, and picked up her sweater. She pulled it on, the thick wool immediately swallowing her shape, restoring a layer of anonymity. It felt like donning armor. Then she retrieved her blazer and glasses. She didn't put the glasses on. She held them, a flimsy plastic shield in her hand.
Kane watched her, a faint, unreadable curve at the corner of his mouth. He leaned back against a stack of tumbling mats, his posture deceptively relaxed. "Where did you learn to move like that?" he asked. The question was casual, but his eyes were not.
Lia's mind whirled, constructing a lie that was close enough to the truth to be believable. "Self-defense classes," she said, her voice quieter than she intended. She cleared her throat. "In the city. Where I'm from, it's… prudent."
"Prudent," he echoed, as if tasting the word. "And do your 'self-defense classes' usually teach you to disassemble two larger opponents in under ten seconds? One of whom, I might add, is the backup hooker for the academy's lamentable rugby team?"
So he'd seen it all. The efficiency, the precision. It hadn't been a street brawl; it had been a clinical takedown. "They started it," she said, a thread of defiance finally piercing the fear.
"I don't doubt it." He pushed off the mats and took a few steps closer. Lia stood her ground, refusing to retreat. He stopped a few feet away, close enough that she could see the fine stubble along his jaw, the faint gold flecks in his grey irises, the impossible length of his dark lashes. He smelled of cold air, crisp cotton, and that underlying wildness—clean and dangerous. "Corbin is a sycophant with the strategic intellect of a mayfly. But he's connected. His family provides certain… services to the De Leon consortium."
Elara's family. Of course.
"He'll run to her," Kane continued, his voice dropping to a low, confiding rumble. It was almost intimate. "He'll be bleeding and whining, and he'll tell her the little scholarship mouse isn't so meek after all. He'll tell her you're a liar. A fighter." His gaze dipped, just for a heartbeat, to where her hands clenched the fabric of her blazer. Her knuckles were reddened, one slightly split from connecting with the redhead's sternum. "He'll make you interesting to her."
A new kind of cold settled in Lia's bones. Being on Kane's radar was one thing. Becoming a project for Elara De Leon, a woman whose cruelty seemed as refined as her beauty, was something else entirely. "What do you suggest I do?" The question was out before she could stop it, laced with a frustration she couldn't fully conceal.
Kane's eyebrow lifted a fraction. A spark of something—amusement? interest?—flared in his eyes. "You're asking me for advice?"
"You're the one who laid out the problem."
A slow, genuine smile touched his lips. It transformed his face, softening the harsh angles, but it didn't reach his eyes. It was the smile of a predator who has just seen its prey take a step into a carefully laid snare. "Direct. I like that." He studied her for another long moment, his head tilted slightly. "You're not what you appear to be, Lia Black. The glasses, the clothes… they're a costume. A poor one, now that I've seen what's underneath." His voice was a velvet-wrapped blade. "The question is: why wear it at all?"
Panic, cold and sharp, lanced through her. He knows. He sees too much. She forced her breathing to stay even. "I'm here to learn. To get a degree. I don't want… trouble."
"Trouble has a way of finding people who try too hard not to be seen," he said softly. He took another step, closing the distance between them. He was so tall she had to tilt her head back to meet his eyes. The space felt charged, the air thick with unspoken threat and a strange, magnetic tension. "It creates a vacuum. And nature abhors a vacuum. People like Corbin… and Elara… they rush in to fill it."
He reached out. Lia held her breath, her entire body going rigid. But he didn't touch her. His hand hovered near the side of her head, where a strand of her damp, ordinary-brown hair had escaped its loose tie. "You could make the vacuum disappear," he murmured, his eyes holding hers captive. "You could become… visible. On your own terms."
"How?" The word was a whisper.
"By having a protector." He let his hand fall back to his side. "Someone whose interest makes you untouchable. Someone who makes it clear that any 'trouble' directed at you is, by extension, a challenge to them."
The implication hung in the air between them, heavy and undeniable.
"You," Lia stated flatly.
"Me," he confirmed, no arrogance in the statement, just fact. "My… association… would be a shield. Elara would be forced to pause. Corbin and his ilk would scatter. You could walk these halls without looking at the floor."
"And in return?" Lia asked, her voice hardening. Nothing in this world was free. Especially not from Kane Wolfe.
"In return," he said, his gaze intensifying, becoming speculative, "you would be my project. My… curiosity. You would drop the pitiful mouse act. Not entirely—that would be suspicious. But enough. You would be seen with me. At certain events. In the library. You would become a part of the scenery of my life here."
"A human shield for your fiancée's temper?" Lia shot back, a spark of her real anger breaking through.
A shadow crossed his face, there and gone. "My engagement to Elara is a political contract. It is not a romance. Her 'temper' is the least of my concerns." He paused, his eyes scanning her face as if reading a complex text. "But it would serve a dual purpose, yes. Your presence, as my acknowledged… interest… would complicate the simplistic narrative our families prefer. It would introduce friction. And friction," he said, echoing his word from the mixer, "can be useful."
Lia's mind raced, weighing the horrific risks against the potential rewards. Being close to Kane meant being under constant, intense scrutiny. It would make every move harder, every secret more vulnerable. But it also meant access. Proximity to power. To information. To the resources of the Student Council President. To the Restricted Archives?
As if reading her thoughts, he added, "My… companions… enjoy certain privileges. Access to spaces otherwise restricted. A level of autonomy within the academy rules."
It was a siren's song. The very thing she needed, wrapped in barbed wire.
"You want me to pretend to be your girlfriend," she said, forcing the crude simplicity of it into the open.
"I want you to pretend to be under my protection," he corrected smoothly. "The semantics are for the gossip mill to define. Our arrangement would be private. A business transaction."
"And when you're bored? Or when your 'political contract' demands you drop the distraction?" She needed to know the exit strategy, the expiration date on this devil's deal.
"The arrangement lasts until one of us terminates it," he said. "With reasonable notice. A week should suffice. As for boredom…" His eyes traveled over her again, a slow, deliberate journey that felt more invasive than Corbin's leering. It wasn't lust; it was assessment, like a collector evaluating a potentially valuable but dangerous acquisition. "I find I'm not bored right now."
Lia looked away, breaking the intensity of his gaze. She stared at a crack in the stone floor, her thoughts churning. This was insanity. It was walking directly into the lion's den and asking for a job as its toothpick.
But Elena's face floated in her memory, her smile bright and unguarded. The official report, so clean, so final. The feeling of her parents' silent, shattered grief.
She needed in. And Kane Wolfe was offering her a key.
She took a deep, steadying breath and looked back at him. The fear was still there, a cold knot in her stomach, but it was joined now by a steely resolve. "What are the rules?"
A slow, triumphant smile, sharp and predatory, spread across his face. He'd known she would agree. He'd counted on it. "Rule one: you answer to me. Not to Elara, not to any of her pack, not to any faculty who might take issue. You bring any problems to me. Rule two: you maintain the fiction. In public, you are under my wing. You do not cower. You do not flinch. You stand your ground, with my authority behind you. Rule three: you do not lie to me."
The last rule struck her like a physical blow. She, whose entire existence here was a lie.
"About anything pertaining to our arrangement, or your status at this academy," he amended, as if sensing her internal panic. "Your past, your 'self-defense classes'… you can keep your secrets, Lia Black. For now. But if they become a threat to this," he gestured between them, "to my position, you will tell me. Immediately."
It was a loophole, but a precarious one.
"And in return," she said, her voice firmer now, "you grant me the privileges of your… association. And you ensure my safety from reprisals from Corbin, Elara, or anyone else."
"Agreed." He didn't offer his hand to shake. This wasn't that kind of deal. It was a pact sealed in a dusty shed, witnessed by ghosts and the scent of blood. "We begin tonight. There's a reception in the Chancellor's Gallery for the alumni donors. You will attend. With me."
"I don't have anything to wear to something like that," she said, the practical obstacle a sudden, grounding reality.
"That," Kane said, turning toward the door, "is no longer your concern. Be ready at seven. I'll send someone to your room." He paused at the threshold, looking back at her. The fading afternoon light from the high window caught the silver in his hair and the sharp plane of his cheekbone. The predator was leaving, but the cage door was now shut with her inside. "Oh, and Lia? Wear your hair down."
Then he was gone, leaving her standing alone in the silent shed, the weight of the bargain settling on her shoulders like a leaden cloak. She had just sold a piece of her freedom to the most dangerous person in the academy for a chance to find a ghost. She touched her temple, where he hadn't touched her this time, but where his gaze had felt just as tangible.
The game had just changed. The mouse had made a deal with the wolf. And she had no idea which of them was truly being hunted.