Monday

 🌑Elara🌑

Monday arrived and Elara with it, walking through the university gates with her bag on her shoulder and her expectations carefully lowered.

She had spent the weekend convincing herself things would be better. Quieter. That the story had run its course and people had moved on to something else.

She realized within the first five minutes that she had been optimistic.

The looks were still there. Subtler than last week, but present, the slight pause in conversations when she passed, the awareness of being seen and categorized and filed away under her, the one Aiden humiliated. She kept her head straight and her pace even and reminded herself that she had survived last week, which meant she could definitely survive this one.

She was crossing the main path toward the Humanities block, papers in hand, when she heard his voice.

"Well, look what we have here."

She stopped.

Aiden stood directly in her path, four of his friends arranged loosely around him with the comfortable posture of people who had never once worried about taking up too much space. He looked at her the way he had looked at her in that classroom, not with cruelty exactly, but with something worse. Amusement and indifference, Like she was still entertainment.

He stepped forward and took the papers from her hands before she could react, letting them fall to the ground.

She looked at them. Then at him.

"Move," she said quietly.

He planted his foot on one of the pages.

"Haven't seen you since the breakup." His tone was light, easy, the voice of someone who had rehearsed this. "You look better than I expected."

His friends laughed. Nearby students began to slow.

Elara crouched and reached for her papers. He shifted his foot at the last second and she missed. More laughter.

She stood up.

"What do you want, Aiden."

Not a question. She was past asking him questions.

He shrugged. "Can't a guy say hello to his ex?"

"The one he replaced in a week," one of his friends offered.

Another: "Less than a week."

The laughter grew. Someone had their phone out. The crowd was thickening, that specific campus phenomenon of people drawn to conflict the way they were drawn to anything that broke the ordinary rhythm of a Monday morning.

Aiden leaned in slightly.

"I always wondered why I stayed with you as long as I did." He said it loudly, clearly, for the benefit of the audience that had gathered. "I think I felt sorry for you."

The words landed exactly where he intended them to.

She hated that they did.

Her heart was going too fast. Her hands, hidden in the fabric of her sleeve, had curled into fists. She kept her face still through sheer practice, but underneath it fear had begun to move, quiet, humiliating, impossible to stop and she hated herself for it, because she knew she shouldn't be afraid of him, because she knew this was exactly what he wanted.

She drew a breath.

She was about to speak.

And then the crowd shifted.

Not because of anything she did. Not because of anything Aiden did. The shift was immediate and physical, like pressure dropping before a storm, students stepping back without quite knowing why, conversations dying mid-word, the atmosphere of the courtyard rearranging itself around something that had just entered it.

Elara turned.

Lucian Voss was crossing the courtyard toward them, and the look on his face made Aiden go very still.

Any werewolf around could perceive the slow burn of anger Lucian was walking with towards them.