Roommate

NOVA

Pine cleaner. That is the first thing that hits you. Pine cleaner and the smell of sixty wolves who didn't know each other yet, all crammed into the same hallway. They were all making noise and taking up space because they didn't know who they needed to be afraid of or who they did have to spend the rest of their training with as roommates.

Nova kept her bag on her shoulder and her eyes on the road.

Around her, conversations blend.

"Voss is actually staying in the block this year; I heard it from —"

"No chance. Why would he?"

"Crown Pack connections, that's why. Someone said he's —"

She tuned it out.

Crown Pack.

Her jaw tightened. That was her father's whole play, wasn't it? The grand alliance. The thing he'd decided was worth more than seven fights won clean. He'd looked at her standing over Garrett's body in the dirt and seen a bargaining chip, not a successor. Packed her future into a marriage contract and handed it to strangers.

And now those strangers were apparently in her corridor.

Stay away from anyone with Crown Pack ties. Day one rule. That should be easy, right?.

She found the room number. Stopped. Checked it against the sheet.

Checked it again.

Her brain, apparently, was in the business of wishful thinking, wishing that she did get the room to herself alone.

She pushed the door open.

Narrow room. Bunk beds on either side, one window splitting the back wall, and a bathroom door hanging open on the right. Fine. Standard. Manageable.

Then she saw the man at the far side of the bunk with his back to her, one hand fishing a shirt out of his bag —

Not manageable, not manageable at all.

He turned around.

One second. That was all Caden Voss needed to look at her before the corner of his mouth did that thing. That slow, unbothered thing.

"Evening, roomie."

Nova said nothing; this was far from manageable. This was worse.

He dropped the shirt on the bunk. Didn't pick it up. Just stood there, arms loose, training pants sitting low on his hips, watching her with the particular calm of someone who'd never once had to fill a silence because silences tended to fill themselves around him.

Her eyes went to his chest.

No, they didn't.

She looked at the wall behind him.

"Put a shirt on."

"My room," taking one step after the other toward her. "My rules."

"We're sharing it."

"Yeah." Another step. "Doesn't change anything for me."

Her back hit the door.

She hadn't felt him reach past her to close it. Hadn't registered his arm, his hand, the soft click of the latch. Which meant she'd been looking at his face the whole time and hadn't noticed anything else, which was a problem she was going to deal with later when she wasn't currently dealing with this.

"Why did you close that?"

"What do you think I'm going to do?"

Close now. Close enough that she had to tip her chin up to hold his gaze, which she hated, and close enough to feel the heat off his skin, which she hated more. He ran warm. Of course he did. Deeply unhelpful. Filed and never to be thought about again.

Something shifted inside her chest. Low. Urgent. Her wolf was pressing forward like it recognised something her brain hadn't caught up to yet.

He's my mate?

The thought detonated.

No. She shoved it back hard. Sit down. Not him. Not here. Not ever.

But it didn't move. Just sat there, solid and certain, the way Cass had described it once — they'd been sixteen, lying on the cottage floor, talking about things neither of them believed would actually happen to them. 'You'll just know,' Cass had said. Like recognising a word you've always known but never seen written down.

Nova knew.

She wished she didn't.

His eyes moved over her face. Reading something. She kept it blank and felt him reading the blankness too.

"Something's off with you, kitten." Quiet. Almost like he was talking to himself.

He can't feel it. The mask kills the scent. He doesn't know what he's looking at. He just thinks you're weird.

"You're imagining things," she said.

He looked at her for a long moment.

"Am I?"

Not a question. Worse than a question.

She held his gaze and said nothing, and her wolf pressed against her ribs like it was trying to get out and introduce itself, and she told it, firmly and internally, that if it did that, she would never forgive either of them.