Mag-log inDECLAN'S POV
There are lies we tell ourselves sometimes that make even us laugh. Because of how outrageous they were.
This was one of them.
She was simply breathtaking. Her silver hair fell around her face in soft waves right now, and she had done the most subtle makeup. It brought out the gold in her brown eyes.
The only better place she would belong in was my arms. But that could wait.
And those eyes were staring daggers at me.
“What the hell did you say to me?”
“I said you don’t belong here, omega.”
Her eyes widened in shock. So, I was right. She was using suppressants to hide her designation. But why? I was proud to be alpha. I expected everyone else to feel that way. So why was she hiding it?
“What the fuck? How did you know?”
“I can smell your sweetness under all that suppressant, sweet omega.”
She scoffed at me, and it brought a smile to my face. I loved my women with bite.
“What the hell are you laughing at? And don’t call me sweet omega. Or any type of omega actually. Who the hell do you thank you are?”
“Declan Hayes at your service.” I gave a little bow.
She watched me with narrow eyes, as if she was waiting for the other shoe to drop. Like I was going to spring on her and take a bite. She wouldn’t be wrong to be cautious. I wanted to take a bite of her.
I hated the fact that she was here in a frat house partying. Omegas should know better.
“You really don’t belong here, you know.”
“Here you go again with the bullshit. Just get out and leave me alone.”
I snarled and walked towards here. Her eyes grew bigger, and she unconsciously scrambled backwards until her back hit the counter. I placed my hands on both sides of her body and trapped her within them.
Her scent was even more potent this up close. It clung to my nose, and my brain and body drank it in hungrily. I wanted to run my nose all over her neck, lick the skin there and taste her sweetness. But I didn’t want to scare her away. I could be patient.
“You’re really starting to get on my nerve, Declan.” The sound of my name on her lips made me suck in a breath. Goosebumps rose on my skin. I was so cooked.
“Do you know what happens to little omegas who don’t stay safe?” I asked and held her eyes in my gaze.
“Looks like you’re itching to tell me.”
“Damn right I am. They get hurt by the big bad alphas>”
“Aren’t you an alpha? Are you threatening to hurt me?” She laughed, a cold dark noise that promised terrible things. I wanted her to do it again. “The nerve on you Declan. Now get away from me before I make you.”
I laughed. I couldn’t help it. “And exactly how are you going to do that?”
Before I could blink, her knee caught me in the stomach, and the pain made me bend over. My hands dropped away from the counter, and she escaped my hold.
“Shit. That hurt.” I stood and smirked at her. She was tough, and I could feel my cock hardening. I loved a woman who could put me in my place.
“That was the point. Now get away from me.”
“But I don’t want to.”
“Oh my god! Why the hell are you tormenting me? What do you want from me?”
I leaned against the counter and just started at her. Her eyes dropped lower, and I looked down to see what she was staring at. I was wearing a tank top, and my arms were bare and folded across my chest. It made my biceps bulge, and that was what she was looking at with the hungry look in her eyes. Good to know that the attraction was mutual.
“I want you to leave the party.”
“Not a chance in hell!” She snapped at me. “You’re just an ordinary student like me. You don’t get to boss me around.”
“Well, there you are wrong. I'm captain of the football team too.”
“Should have known only a jock would have the audacity to be all up in my business.”
“I’m just trying to keep you safe.”
“You don't even know my name! Now leave me alone.”
“I don’t want to. And you can easily tell me your name.”
She got up in my face and pushed my chest with a finger. “That’s not happening jock-face. Now leave me the fuck alone.”
She walked out of the kitchen, and I didn’t follow after her immediately. I watched her ass sway, unable to resist.
She was making me act out of character. This wasn’t me, but I’d heard that mates would do that to you.
I wasn’t even sure that was what she was to me, but the signs were pretty damning. Did she feel the same things I did? Did my scent make her go all crazy? If it did, she was great at hiding it.
I hated that she was here. Too many alphas. Too many other scents in the air that my brain only interpreted as competition I had to dispatch to keep my omega safe from prying hands.
I sighed and got up from the counter. Her scent was like a train in the air. It made it easy to follow her. The moment I stepped out of the kitchen, the noise of the house enveloped me.
Bodies were everywhere. Rubbing up against themselves, kissing and touching. Doing all the things they hadn’t been able to do under their parents’ roofs. College was like that. It gave you freedom. It gave you the opportunity to make a new life for yourself. Many tried and succeeded, and others failed. That was the game. It respected no one.
I caught the scent of the omega and turned around. My breath seized in my throat. There she was. She was on the dance floor, and the people had parted to give a circle of space to her. As if they knew she was their better.
The music seemed like something alive that she was caught under its trance. Her waist swayed, and I was caught under its hypnosis.
I badly wanted to go forward and hold her in my embrace, but I held myself back.
She already had me on a leash, and she didn’t even know it.
Maeve’s POV Three days before finals, the world finally caught up to the secret I had been trying to outrun since September. My phone suffered a digital cardiac arrest. It wasn’t the battery—I’d been meticulous about keeping it charged, a habit born from months of needing to be reachable at a second’s notice in case Declan needed me or my mother decided to strike. It was the sheer velocity of the fallout. The notifications came in a tidal surge that paralyzed the hardware. The screen lagged behind reality, a stuttering, frozen backlog of mentions, tags, and messages from ghosts of my past. People I hadn’t spoken to since primary school were suddenly "checking in" with transparent curiosity, and strangers were dissecting the intimate details of my biology with the clinical coldness of a forensic lab. I sat on the edge of my bed in the dorm, the rhythmic, frantic vibration of the phone against my thigh feeling like a second heartbeat that wasn’t mine. It was a physical manifestati
Declan’s POV The sun was a pale, weak sliver on the horizon when we finally sat down at the small wooden table in my apartment. The air was cold because I hadn't turned the heat up, but the bond was acting like a space heater, a constant, low-frequency thrum of shared warmth that filled the kitchen. Maeve was sitting across from me, her silver hair pulled back in a messy knot, her laptop open. She looked like a general surveying a losing battlefield, her eyes darting across spreadsheets and bank statements with a clinical, terrifying focus. This was the Ashford in her; the part that didn't panic but planned. "Okay," she said, her voice steady now, though the exhaustion was etched into the corners of her mouth. "If we're doing this, we need rules. We can't survive on adrenaline and romance, Declan. Not with my mother holding the deck." "I'm listening," I said. I pushed a mug of coffee toward her. She took it without looking, her fingers brushing mine, sending a jolt of static throu
Maeve’s POV The walk from the arena back to my dorm was a study in sensory overload. Every shadow seemed to have a voice; every footfall behind me felt like a subpoena. I kept my head down, the cold night air biting at the exposed skin of my neck where the mark was still thrumming with the adrenaline of being seen. It felt raw, as if the camera’s lens had physically scraped away the protective layers I’d spent months applying. I reached the safety of my room and leaned against the door, the wood cool against my back. The silence of the dorm was a lie. My phone, abandoned on the duvet, was a glowing, vibrating insect. I didn't want to touch it. I knew what was waiting there. The Ashford machine didn't sleep; it recalibrated. When I finally picked it up, the screen was a wall of notifications. News alerts, Instagram tags, and the one that made my stomach drop into a cold, dark void: seventeen missed calls from my mother. There was one voicemail. I hit play, my hand shaking so viole
Declan’s POV The locker room felt like a pressure cooker. The air was thick with the scent of pine-sol, wet equipment, and the sharp, ozone-scented anxiety of twenty young men who realized their captain had just nuked his own social standing in front of the entire student body. I stripped my gear off in silence. Every snap of a strap, every clatter of a pad against the floor, sounded like a gunshot. I could feel the eyes on me—the sideways glances from the freshmen, the worried frowns from the seniors. Nobody knew what to say. In the world of collegiate sports, "low-drama" is the currency of the elite. I had just spent that currency and gone into a massive, unpayable debt. I sat in my stall, my head in my hands, letting the sweat drip onto the rubber mat between my feet. My phone was already vibrating in my bag. I didn't have to look to know who it was. Dan, my agent, would be spiraling. The scouts from the Bruins and the Rangers would be recalibrating their "character" assessm
Declan’s POV The ice was a mirror of my own adrenaline, a cold, slick surface reflecting the violent strobe of the arena lights and the frantic motion of twelve men chasing a frozen disc of rubber. My lungs burned. It was not the sharp, clean burn of a normal sprint, but a heavy, oxygen-deprived ache that felt like I was breathing in liquid lead. I was deep into the second period, my jersey damp and clinging to my skin, my heart a frantic hammer against my ribs. But the physical exhaustion was a secondary concern. The primary concern was the tether. I could feel her. It wasn’t just the usual low-frequency hum of the bond; it was a high-tension wire pulled so tight it was vibrating. It was pulling my focus away from the puck, away from the defensive assignments, and upward toward the rafters of the Ashford Arena. I found her during a whistle at the twelve-minute mark. She was tucked into the upper tier, the nosebleed section where the air was thin and the students usually went to
Maeve’s POV The transformation didn't start in my head; it started in my hands. On Monday morning, I stood in front of the bathroom mirror in the dorm. The lighting was harsh, illuminating the faint blue veins in my wrists and the shadow under my eyes from a weekend of not sleeping. I picked up the foundation stick, the same one I had used every morning since October to hide the truth from the world. I looked at the bond mark. It was vivid today, a deep, bruised violet that seemed to pulse in time with my heart. It was a brand. To my mother, it was a defect. To the law school, it was a distraction. I thought about the six weeks. I thought about the video. I thought about the way Declan’s voice had broken when he said he wanted his mate. I looked at the foundation stick, and for the first time, it didn't look like a tool for survival. It looked like a tool for betrayal. I put it back in the drawer and closed it. Alana noticed at breakfast. We were sitting in the dining hall, the
Maeve's POVMy mother called on Sunday at noon as usual. I was ready for her this time. I had spent the week building the version of myself that sounded settled, productive and completely fine, so when her contact photo lit up my screen, and I answered on the first ring. "Maeve." Her voice was pl
Maeve's POVOlder omegas were nothing but lies. They spoke about knots like they were just things that locked you and your alpha together so he could knock you up. They were always so prudish about it, and God, I wished they’d told us the truth. I'd felt Declan shoot his seed inside me, and it h
Maeve's POVI had to stand on the tip of my toes to get my hand behind Declan’s head, but the moment he realized what I was trying to do, his eyes widened, and he closed the rest of the gap between us. The kiss started as a light brush at first. His lips were soft against mine, and I took my time
Maeve's POVWe were standing on the deck of the house. It was a pretty large space with a small sofa, a round table with two chairs, and some plants. There was a pool table on one side, a table tennis table, and a basketball ring. For a jock house, it was pretty. And it was clean. Color me surp







