Chapter 01

Lucan’s POV

In a lecture hall full of kids scrolling under their desks instead of listening.

It happened every single year, and every single year I kept showing up anyway, because the old myths still had something to teach people who'd let themselves forget where they came from. The handful who actually paid attention always walked away understanding more about themselves than they expected to.

"Alpha Vance."

Declan leaned against my office doorway, one of my pack's younger wolves, still gangly in that way twenty-year-olds are. I looked up from stacking the syllabus copies for my first Mythos and Legend lecture of the year and jerked my chin toward the chair, letting him know he could come in. He slipped inside and shut the door softly, dipping his head the way the pack always did around me.

Blackridge Academy sat tucked into the Vermont hills, and most of the student body had at least a passing awareness of what really lived in these woods. A few didn't, though  some students, even a professor or two, were fully human. If word ever reached the Wolf Concord that one of them had learned the truth, they'd have my head, and every other shifter on faculty besides.

"Talk to me," I said.

Declan shoved his hands into his hoodie pocket. "Ashwood pack. Spotted three of them pacing our eastern line at dawn."

Something cold locked down my spine. "You're certain it was Ashwood?"

"Positive. Beta Wren already sent word  she wants you to know."

I ran my tongue over my teeth and felt my canines start to ache behind my lips. "Nobody engages them. If Ashwood's sniffing around our territory, they want something bad enough to kill for it. Tell everyone to stand down and watch."

He nodded, already turning for the door, but I called after him before he made it through. He froze mid-step as a human faculty member passed behind him in the hallway. "Something else?"

"Get to class," I told him. "And don't try skipping mine again."

"Come on, can't you just pass me this once"

"Not a chance."

He muttered something uncharitable under his breath and stalked off toward the lecture hall, where my first class started in under ten minutes. I didn't have time to run the news back to my own den myself, so I'd have to catch someone on patrol and pass it along that way.

I checked my watch, pushed through the side exit, and the October air hit me square in the face, cool and sharp with the smell of dying leaves. Someone crashed straight into my shoulder, a phone and an armful of textbooks scattered across the pavement in front of the doorway.

She let out a startled little gasp and dropped to her knees to gather them. "Oh  I am so sorry, I wasn't looking"

The air went out of my lungs.

Mine.

I crouched down to help her retrieve a notebook that had skidded under the bench, watching loose waves of caramel-brown hair fall across her face as she scrambled. "My fault, not yours," I said, mostly just to keep her talking, to hear that voice again, to get her to actually look at me.

She glanced up, and I nearly lost my footing. Her eyes were this strange shade of gray-green, almost silver in the light. Color rushed into her cheeks as she took the notebook from my hands, her fingers brushing mine for half a second too long. Something low and possessive stirred in my chest, a growl I had to swallow whole.

Mine.

"Sorry, I'm trying to find my building and clearly failing at it," she said, standing and smoothing down a pleated skirt that fell just past her knee. My composure took another hit watching her do it. "This is the Humanities building, right?"

"It is."

I curled my fingers into fists inside my coat pockets, forcing my wolf back down where he belonged. She was a first-year, obviously new to campus, which meant one very simple, very absolute rule: I couldn't touch her. Not here, not like this, not ever, if I wanted to keep my position  the Wolf Concord didn't forgive faculty who crossed that line, mate or not.

"Thanks. I really don't want to be late on day one." She stepped around me and disappeared through the doorway.

I stood there another second, resisting every instinct screaming at me to follow her, pull her against me, bury my face in her hair and just breathe her in until the scent was burned into memory. Instead I turned on my heel and jogged toward the tree line, found the nearest patrol wolf, and passed along the warning about Ashwood before doubling back toward the lecture hall.

Our mind-link used to stretch for miles. Not anymore since the Concord had clipped that particular privilege from every alpha under their thumb.

I took the back stairwell two at a time and slipped into the auditorium just as the room was filling. My eyes swept the rows, searching, but with a hundred different scents tangled together I couldn't isolate hers. I set my bag on the desk at the front and scanned the crowd again, jaw tight.

Then the door opened. Her scent rolled into the room a full second before she did, and she nearly tripped over the aisle carpet trying to find a seat.

She tucked a piece of hair behind her ear, worried about her bottom lip between her teeth, and scanned the rows with her brows drawn together, clearly hoping nobody would notice her walking in a beat late. I went rigid, pulse hammering somewhere up in my throat.

Mine.

My canines lengthened behind my lips, sharp enough now that I had to press them into my gums to keep from breaking skin. This classroom wasn't full of wolves, and she wasn't one either. I wasn't ready to send her running before I even knew her name.

Her gaze caught mine for half a second and I looked away first, unable to hold it. She made her way down toward the front, checking the row nearest the center, the one that would've put her directly in my line of sight all semester. She passed it up. Settled one row over instead, close enough that I'd still be able to watch her without it looking deliberate.

Her sweet, sun-warmed scent hit me again and it took everything in me not to react. She set her laptop and phone down, thumbed open a string of unanswered texts, frowned at whatever she read, and shut the screen off without replying. Then she looked up at me again.

Those eyes nearly knocked the air out of me a second time. I cleared my throat and dropped my gaze to the roster on my laptop, scrolling through names, telling myself I was just checking attendance, something I never actually did with a hundred students in the room.

Isla Calder. Nash Whitfield. Priya Sandoval. Rue Callahan. Marlow Voss. Odessa Fane...

"Hey." Declan had dropped into the seat beside her, hand already extended. "I'm Declan."

My fists clenched behind the desk hard enough to ache, a growl building low in my chest that I forced myself to swallow.

"Rue," she said, cheeks going pink again.

My mate. Blushing for someone who wasn't me.

"Don't touch her," I snapped through the mind-link, and Declan's hand dropped before hers ever reached it.

She blinked, gave him a small, flustered smile, and turned back to her laptop. Declan shot me a confused look over her head. I ignored it, cleared my throat instead, and let the room go quiet.

"Welcome to Mythos and Legend. I'm Professor Vance. Let's begin."