The Alpha's Hybrid Mate

Tessa

I am so dead.

Not metaphorically. Not dramatically. Like, actually, genuinely, biologically dead if I don't get back to the dormitory block before midnight.

The full moon doesn't care that I still have three corridors left to mop. Scholarship students don’t get excuses. Especially not ones like me.

I round the corner at the end of the east hall and immediately flatten myself against the wall, heart slamming against my ribs. The sound of footsteps — heavy, deliberate, hunting — echoes from somewhere behind me.

Of course. Of course, tonight of all nights.

"Levine!" The voice bounces off the stone. Mira. I'd recognise that particular brand of cruelty anywhere. "We just want to talk!"

Sure. The last time Mira Ellsworth wanted to talk, I ended up with a bruised jaw and a mouthful of blood.

Normally, I'd stop. Turn around. Let them see my face and make it clear that I'm not scared, because the moment they think you're scared is the moment it gets so much worse. I know how to handle Mira and her little pack of half-shifted nightmares.

But normally it isn't eleven forty-seven on a full moon night.

I don't have time. I cannot be outside when the shift hits. I've seen what they do. What they become. All that silver-eyed, fang-dropping, blood-hungry power with zero interest in who gets in the way.

So I run.

I duck left, then right, cutting through the narrow maintenance corridor that most students don't even know exists. My cart rattles behind me and I abandon it — I'll deal with that consequence tomorrow — and push through a door, then another, and I'm in a hallway I don't fully recognise.

The footsteps are fading. Good.

My pulse is not. Less good.

I slow to a jog, pressing one hand to the wall to steady myself, and that's when I hear them coming from the other direction. Different footsteps. Fewer. But heavier — the kind of heavy that isn't about size, it's about authority. About people who have never once in their lives considered moving out of someone else's way.

I spin around.

The hallway behind me. The hallway ahead of me. Mira from one end, something worse from the other, and me in the middle with nowhere to—

A door.

I don't think. I just grab the handle and shove it open, slip inside, and ease it shut behind me with both hands so it doesn't make a sound.

I press my back to it and breathe.

Okay. Okay. You're fine.

I look around.

The room is big. Bigger than it should be for this part of the building. There's a long dark table in the centre, chairs that look like they cost more than my entire existence, shelves lined with things I can't identify in the low light. Heavy curtains on the far wall. A cold fireplace.

No windows.

Huh.

I frown. I know every room in this building. Every supply closet, every study room, every back corridor the other cleaners pretend doesn't exist. It's the only advantage I have — knowing the layout better than the people who own it.

I don't know this room.

My stomach drops about three floors.

There is only one room in the East Wing I don't know.

"—already told the northern representatives we'd have an answer before the summit."

The voice comes from right outside the door.

No. No no no no—

I look around wildly. The curtains. I throw myself behind them, pressing into the wall, and not even two seconds later I hear the door open.

Three sets of footsteps.

I clamp a hand over my mouth.

"An answer they won't like," another voice says. This one is lighter, edged with something almost like amusement. "Should be fun."

"Should be handled," says the first voice, flat with irritation. "Not everything needs to be fun, Caius."

"And yet here I am, enjoying myself anyway. It's a gift, Landon. Some people have it."

Landon. Caius.

The names hit me like cold water. Landon Voss. Caius Dray. I've seen them exactly twice up close and both times I made myself invisible so fast I may as well have teleported.

Which means the third one — the one who still hasn't said anything — is him.

The room drops about ten degrees. Or maybe that's just me.

"The northern packs are pushing back on the border ruling," Landon says. Papers shuffle. Someone pulls out a chair. "If we don't respond before the summit, they'll read the silence as weakness."

"Let them read it however they want," Caius says. "Weakness gets them comfortable. Comfortable gets them careless."

"This isn't about being clever, it's about—"

"Enough."

One word.

I stop breathing.

It isn't loud. It isn't sharp. It's the kind of quiet that doesn't need to be anything else — the kind that every single nerve in your body just responds to without asking your brain for permission first.

Knox Alvarez.

Of course it's Knox Alvarez.

"Someone is moving information out of this school," he says. Each word is even, measured, like he's already decided the outcome and this is just the part where he explains it to everyone else. "To the northern packs. To our enemies. Someone with access."

Silence.

"Find them," he says. "Before I do."

"And if you find them first?" Caius asks.

A pause.

"Then there won't be much left to find."

I press harder into the wall. My legs are shaking. I tell them to stop. They don't.

Just leave, I think desperately. Please just take your terrifying little meeting somewhere else—

"That's everything for tonight," Landon says. Chairs scrape. Footsteps move toward the door. "We'll reconvene after—"

Clink.

The sound rips out of me before I can stop it — my elbow catching the curtain rod, a tiny, horrible, metallic clink that rings out in the silence like a gunshot.

Everything stops.

"...What was that?" Caius says.

I don't move. I don't blink. I'm pretty sure I've stopped existing on a cellular level.

A beat.

"Old building," Knox says.

His voice gives nothing away. Nothing at all. Just two words, flat and unbothered, like he didn't even have to think about it.

"Right," Landon says after a moment. "As I was saying — we'll reconvene after the summit briefing."

The door opens.

Footsteps retreating…

I count to thirty. To forty. I wait until the silence is so complete I can hear the faint howl of wind somewhere far above me.

Then I step out from behind the curtain.

The room is pitch black. I cross it fast, arms out, navigating by memory and desperation, and I hit the door with both hands and shove it open and I am out —

I crash into something solid.

Not a wall. Walls don't have hands. Walls don't catch you by the arms before you can fully bounce off them and send you stumbling backwards.

I gasp.

A light comes on somewhere — sconce on the wall, dim and gold — and I blink against it, heart in my throat, and I look up.

Dark shirt. Jaw like carved stone. Dark hair that falls like it was styled by someone who has never had a bad day in his life.

And then — eyes.

Silver. Pale and cold and cutting, looking down at me with the kind of stillness that makes you feel like the most seen and most doomed you've ever been in your life.

Knox Alvarez.

He didn't leave with the others.

He knew.

He knew something was in that room and he sent them away and he waited and I walked right out into him like the world's most catastrophic idiot.

The silence between us lasts exactly one second.

Then his hand moves — slow, almost lazy — and wraps around my throat.

Not squeezing. Not yet. Just there, in a way that makes every single muscle in my body lock up completely. His thumb settles over my pulse point and I know he can feel it. The way my heart is slamming itself against my ribs like it's trying to escape before the rest of me figures out how bad this is.

His head tilts. Just slightly.

"Well," he says quietly.

His silver eyes drop to my throat. To his own hand. Then back up to my face, slow and deliberate, like he has all the time in the world.

"Start talking."