Chapter 8: Scent Science Class

Roxanne's POV

"You're in Scent Science Class?"

I stopped walking and turned around.

Tyson was behind me in the corridor, bag over one shoulder, looking like he hadn't just appeared out of nowhere to ruin the first thirty seconds of my morning.

"Apparently," I said, turning back forward.

"I didn't know that." He fell into step beside me like he'd been invited to, which he had not.

"You don't know my schedule." I said.

"I do now." He glanced sideways at me. "How are the heels coming?"

"They're fine." My voice was flat.

"Yeah?" He said an eyebrow. "Because I'm not walking into that party with someone who..."

"I've been practicing, every day." I looked at him flatly. "Like you told me to. Can we not do this in the corridor?"

He looked at me for a moment then shrugged one shoulder and walked off toward the other side of the lecture hall without another word.

I found a seat in the middle row, dropped my bag, and pulled out my notes. I did not look back to see where he sat, my wolf immediately told me anyway. He was three rows behind, slightly to the right. She'd clocked him the second we walked in and had been quietly insufferable about it ever since, sitting up straight and paying attention in a direction that had nothing to do with the professor.

You are not helpful, I told her.

She ignored me, she'd been ignoring me alot lately.

Professor Bramwell started without delay, which I appreciated. She started with foundational mechanics first, how scent patches worked at a biological level, what they targeted, what they were actually capable of. I uncapped my pen and started writing.

"Patches operate on emotional scent output," she said, moving across the front of the room. "Anxiety. Attraction. Grief. Aggression. The patch reads the chemical signature of the emotional state and suppresses the corresponding scent compound before it can be detected externally."

I wrote that down, It was standard stuff. I already knew most of it from the pamphlet they'd handed out when I first got my prescription.

"What most people don't know is capacity," she continued. "A patch is not a wall, it is a filter and like any filter, it has threshold." She turned to write something on the board. "When the emotional state producing the scent is strong enough, intense enough, the patch does not fail outright, it thins. Wolves at close proximity begin to detect signal through it."

I stopped writing for exactly one second, then I started writing again, faster.

I thought about the suite, the towel, my wolf pushing forward with zero warning while his scent sat at my throat and my suppressants were already running low.

I wrote it again on the next line, the whole thing, then I underlined it.

"Alpha biology is particularly relevant here," Professor Bramwell said, and I heard the quality of the room's attention shift slightly, the way it did when something landed as more than just academic. "Alpha patches operate under additional strain. The territorial instinct, the possessive drive, these run at a biological baseline that standard emotional scent suppressants were not designed to fully contain. Under certain conditions, an Alpha's patch is first to thin "

I wrote that section down too, even though my pen was moving slightly harder than necessary and I was aware of it and I tried very hard not to look back.

The lecture ran for forty minutes. I packed up my notes, stood up, and made it six steps toward the exit before he fell into step beside me again.

So," Tyson said.

"What?" I pushed through the door into the corridor.

"That was an interesting lecture," He said.

"It was like another lecture," I kept walking.

"Patch absorption," He said it casually. "I didn't know you were in the market for that information."

"Every wolf in that room needed that information." My jaw tightened. "It's a foundational class."

"Sure." He was quiet for exactly two seconds. "You wrote it down twice."

I stopped walking, and turned around slowly.

"Were you watching me?" My voice came out very controlled. "During the lecture. You were actually watching me instead of..."

"You were three rows in front of me." He tilted his head slightly. "Hard not to notice."

"It's a lecture hall." I said. "You're supposed to be looking at the professor."

"So the patch thing." He said, completely changing the topic. "Anything you want to share?"

"No, nothing." I turned back around and started walking. "Leave me alone."

"I'll see you at practice on Thursday." He said to my back. "For heel check."

I stopped and turned around again.

"Heel check." I repeated. "You want to do a heel check?"

"I need to know you can cross a room without any incident before Saturday." He crossed his arms. "My place on Thursday, at six."

"I'm not coming to your place for a heel check." My voice was sharp.

"Would you rather do it in public?" He asked.

I stared at him and he waited.

"Fine," I said through my teeth. "Thursday at six."

"Don't be late." He said.

I turned around and walked away before I said something I couldn't take back. Behind me I heard nothing, no footsteps following, no parting shot.

Charlotte was waiting at the end of the corridor, with two coffees in hand, already reading my face.

"How was it?" She handed a coffee.

"Fine." I took it.

"That's your not fine voice." She took a sip of her coffee.

"It's my I don't want to talk about it voice." I started walking and she fell in steps beside me. "Tyson's in the class."

She made a sound. "Of course he is."

"He was watching me during the lecture." I said.

"Ohh, and?" She asked.

"And nothing." My voice was sharper than I wanted. "It's fine, it doesn't mean anything."

She looked at me sideways but didn't push it.

"Thursday he wants to do a heel check at his suite," I said.

"A heel check?" She raised an eyebrow.

"His words." I said.

"That man," she said quietly. "He's something else."

"He really is." I said.

That evening I sat on my bed with my notes from the lecture open beside me, the patch absorption Section staring back up at the ceiling.

I reached over to my nightstand and picked up the pill bottle and turned it over.

I opened it and tipped the contents into my palm. There was two pills. One that was clearly broken, a clean crack down the middle, half a does at best.

So I had two and a half. I put them back carefully, put the lid on and set the bottle back on the nightstand and looked at it for a moment.

The party was in less than two weeks. My appointment was in four days. I could manage for four days.

I closed the notebook and turned the light off .