Chapter 1

The bass from the speakers rattled Nova's ribs.

She shouldn't be here.

She knew she shouldn't be here.

But Kira had shoved a red cup into her hand and said, "One party, Nova. One. You're eighteen, not eighty," and somehow that had been enough to get her through the iron gates of Wilder House — the most untouchable address at Blackwood University.

The frat house smelled like cedar, musk, and something wilder underneath. Something that made the hairs on Nova's arms stand up.

Full moon energy.

Every werewolf on campus felt it — that low, electric pull in the blood that made everything sharper, louder, more dangerous. Nova pressed herself against the wall near the staircase and watched the crowd. Beautiful people. Powerful people. Alphas and their chosen omegas moving like they owned gravity itself.

She was neither beautiful nor powerful.

She was a freshman omega who'd gotten a scholarship because she could run fast and write essays about pack history. That was it. That was the whole résumé.

*Blend in. Drink your drink. Leave before midnight.*

"Well. Look who crawled out of the library."

The voice hit her before she even saw him.

Deep. Lazy. Amused in the worst way.

Jax Wilder.

Star quarterback. Future Alpha King. The boy who had made her first week of college a slow, targeted nightmare — stolen notes, knocked-over lunch trays, comments about her secondhand sneakers loud enough for the whole cafeteria to hear.

He materialized from the crowd like the party had been waiting to part for him. Six-foot-three, jaw like something carved from stone, dark eyes catching the low light and holding it. He was wearing a plain black shirt that did absolutely nothing to hide the fact that he was built like a weapon.

Nova straightened. "I was invited."

"By who?"

"Kira."

He looked at her the way a wolf looks at something small that wandered into its territory. Not angry. Just... assessing. Like he was deciding whether to play with it first.

"Kira invited the pack's charity case." He smiled. It was not a kind smile. "That tracks."

Nova's jaw tightened. "Move. I'm trying to get to the kitchen."

"You're trying to get *out*," he said. "You've been hugging that wall for twenty minutes."

The fact that he'd been watching her was worse than anything he'd said.

"Don't flatter yourself," she said. "I'm having fun."

"You look terrified."

"I look *unbothered.*"

He stepped closer. The full moon energy in the room surged — or maybe that was just her pulse spiking because suddenly he was close enough that she could smell him. Pine and smoke and something underneath that her wolf recognized before her brain could catch up.

Her wolf went very, very still.

*No,* she thought. *Absolutely not.*

"You're shaking," Jax said quietly. The amusement had shifted into something else. Something that made her more nervous, not less.

"It's cold."

"It's eighty degrees in here."

She looked up at him. That was a mistake. His eyes were darker than usual, the pupils blown wide the way alphas' eyes got when the full moon hit them wrong. Or right. Depending on who you asked.

"Go find someone else to bother," she said. Her voice came out steadier than she felt.

He didn't move.

Instead he reached out and tucked a strand of hair behind her ear — slow, deliberate, like he had all the time in the world. Like this was something he did. Like she was something he did.

"You know what's funny?" he murmured.

"Nothing you say is funny."

"I've been watching you since September." His thumb grazed her jaw, feather-light. "And every time I get close, your wolf goes quiet. Like she's listening."

Nova's throat was dry. "You're imagining things."

"Am I?"

He was close enough now that the crowd didn't matter. The music didn't matter. His hand dropped from her face and settled at her waist like it had been there before, like this was a continuation of something rather than a beginning.

"I don't like you," Nova said.

"I know."

"I mean it."

"I know that too." He tilted his head, eyes scanning her face with an intensity that made her feel exposed down to the bone. "Doesn't seem to be slowing either of us down."

She meant to step back. She meant to throw her drink in his face and walk out the front door and call Kira a traitor in the morning.

What she did instead was stay perfectly still while Jax Wilder lowered his head until his lips were a breath from her ear.

"Come upstairs," he said.

It wasn't a command. Not quite. His alpha voice was tucked away, restrained. He was *asking* — which was somehow more dangerous than if he'd ordered her.

Her wolf howled.

Her brain said *this is a trap.*

Her heart said *run.*

Her feet said nothing. Her feet stayed planted.

"This is a terrible idea," Nova whispered.

"Probably," he agreed.

She went upstairs.

---

Three hours later, Nova lay in the dark of his room listening to his heartbeat slow to something almost peaceful. The full moon pressed silver light through the curtains. Her whole body felt rewired, rebuilt from the inside — like she'd been taken apart and put back together wrong. Or exactly right.

She stared at the ceiling.

*Oh no.*

Jax's hand rested against her waist. His thumb moved in a slow, unconscious circle — like even asleep, his body knew she was there and wanted to keep her.

*This changes nothing,* she told herself.

He would wake up and be exactly who he always was. Jax Wilder didn't fall for freshman omegas. He collected them for a night and forgot them by breakfast.

She knew this. She had watched it happen to other girls.

She started to slide out of bed.

His arm tightened. Not hard. Just enough.

"Stay," he said. His voice was rough with sleep, stripped of every sharp edge she was used to. In the dark he sounded almost like someone she could trust.

Nova's heart did something stupid and dangerous in her chest.

She stayed.

His lips grazed the curve of her neck — right over the place where a mate mark would go — and she felt his exhale against her skin like a promise neither of them had agreed to yet.

"You're mine," he murmured. Half-asleep. Maybe not even conscious of the words.

Nova closed her eyes.

Her wolf settled into something terrifyingly close to peace.