Chapter 5:

By the time class ended, Faye was more than ready to return to her dorm.

But first, there was something she needed to do.

She rose from her seat and stopped beside the desk next to hers.

Rowan glanced up at her.

"No one's girl," he drawled, amusement flickering in his eyes. "What do you want?"

"Don't tell anyone about this." She lifted her chin, balling her fists at her sides.

Rowan's lips twitched.

He looked almost entertained by her attempt at intimidation.

"We haven't even done anything yet."

Faye ignored the insinuation, fighting the heat crawling up her neck.

"We're rival packs," she said. "We cannot be seen together."

Rowan leaned forward, resting his forearms on the desk.

"You want to be a little secret?"

"I'm serious!" she snapped.

His amusement faded.

Rowan pushed to his feet and stepped closer, his expression hardening.

"Listen, Archer." His voice dropped. "I don't take orders from anyone."

He took another step.

"Especially not a damn Archer."

There it was.

The contempt.

Their packs had been rivals for years, following a war that had cost both parties great devastation.

Her mother had warned her about Lockwood specifically, about what association with one of them would mean.

Desperation clawed at her throat.

She couldn't afford to disappoint her mother. Not again. Not after Ryan.

"You're a Lockwood, you know what's at stake," she reasoned, stepping closer.

By now the class had emptied out, leaving only the two of them.

Rowan stared at her, his jaw set.

"I don't give a damn about that," he whispered, leaning in slightly. "You're an Archer, my goal is to torment you."

Faye swallowed, her heartbeat starting to pick up.

"I—you can't be serious."

Rowan took another step closer.

Faye took one back. The back of her thighs hit a desk.

She was trapped.

She saw the moment he realized it—saw the mockery in his eyes.

But she didn't register it. The scent of him was doing things to her body she couldn't explain.

Her breathing quickened.

"You want to be a little secret so bad," he hummed, his voice low, "then stop looking at me like you're already imagining what I'd do if no one was watching."

His words, his voice, goddess. It did something unexplainable to her.

She felt something move in her chest. Something almost—

It wasn't her wolf.

That was the strangest part. She knew her wolf's reactions by now, knew the warm, consuming pull that came with Luca's nearness, the way her wolf pressed toward the surface whenever he was close, eager and familiar.

This was nothing like that.

This was quieter. Older. A low heat uncoiling somewhere beneath her ribs that had nothing to do with instinct she recognized—no snarl, no claws scraping for purchase, no wolf clamoring to be let out. Just heat, patient and strange, settling into her bones like it had been waiting there far longer than she'd been standing in this room.

Her breath caught.

Rowan's eyes narrowed slightly, like he'd felt something shift in the air between them, though his smirk didn't waver.

"What was that?" he murmured, close enough now that she could feel the words more than hear them.

"Nothing." The word came out unsteady.

It wasn't nothing. She just didn't have a name for it.

The heat pulsed once, low and deliberate, curling tighter in her chest the longer his eyes stayed on hers—not urgent, not frantic, but sure of itself in a way that unsettled her more than panic would have.

She shoved past him before he could say anything else, her shoulder brushing his as she fled for the door, her heart hammering a rhythm she didn't recognize as fear.

Behind her, Rowan didn't move for a long moment.

He was still standing there, watching the space where she'd been, an unreadable look settling over his face—like he, too, had felt something he didn't have a name for yet.

Faye's heart thrummed loudly in her chest as she moved down the hall.

'what was that?' she asked her wolf Claire. The wolf responded with an unsettling silence.

She didn't t have time to press before a voice stopped her dead in her tracks.

"There she is."

Faye's blood ran cold. She had been too distracted by Rowan to realize she was being followed.

She turned slowly.

She recognized the girl—she'd seen her during scent training, when she'd finished first position.

Bianca Thorne. The Alpha female of the Ironfang Pack.