Chapter 03

Lucan’s POV

"Why were Ashwood wolves sniffing around our boundary line?" I asked Wren, pacing the length of my study, boots scuffing against the old hardwood. My hand kept dragging through my hair, like that would somehow help me think straight. It didn't. Nothing did, not with Rue lodged somewhere behind every thought I tried to have.

Ashwood wasn't a pack you took lightly. They ran out of a stretch of coastline two counties over, and their reputation wasn't built on rumor  they'd left two bodies behind during last year's tourist season alone, and everyone in this territory knew that was only the count the local police had actually found.

I wasn't about to let them get anywhere near my land. Not with my mate walking around this campus fully human, with no idea what kind of monsters existed in the world, let alone how to defend herself against ones that wouldn't think twice about hurting her to get whatever they were after.

Wren sat perched on the arm of my couch, arms crossed, jaw tight. "We tailed them the whole day. Couldn't figure out what they wanted. Might not be able to, not without starting something."

I exhaled hard and turned toward the door. "Nobody starts anything. Not unless they force our hand first. You know what they're like, and with the semester back in full swing, this is the worst possible time for a conflict."

"Where are you headed?" she asked.

"I need to run."

I changed into old training clothes and took the pine-needle trail that curved back toward campus. I never ran near the school grounds during term  too risky, too many humans  but my wolf had been restless for hours, aching to catch her scent again even though it had barely been an afternoon since I'd last seen her.

Find her.

I pushed my pace, breathing in cedar and damp earth, sunlight breaking through the canopy in scattered patches. When the trail spat me out near the edge of Blackridge's grounds, I slowed to a walk and let my feet carry me along the paths that cut through the heart of campus, the easiest way to catch her scent without looking like I was searching for it.

Students were scattered everywhere, eating early dinners at the picnic tables, tossing a frisbee across the quad. And then there was Rue, stretched out on the grass in front of her dorm, propped on her elbows with her textbook open in front of her.

Like some kind of idiot, I stopped about fifty feet off and just watched her turn page after page, a small, private smile on her face. Nobody smiled like that reading assigned coursework  not in any class I'd ever taught. A piece of hair kept slipping loose and falling across her cheek, and it took real effort not to walk over and fix it for her. I'd wanted to do exactly that back at the doorway that morning, too.

I scrubbed a hand down my face and made myself turn away. This wasn't something I could keep doing. Standing here watching one of my own students like this was reckless. If she caught me, she could report it, and that would be the end of my position here, assuming the Concord didn't get to me first.

I have an idea, my wolf offered.

"What," I muttered, half-desperate for any excuse to close the distance.

Before I'd consciously decided anything, my feet were already carrying me toward her, my wolf clearly done waiting for permission.

What are you doing, I snapped internally.

Talking to her.

That's the whole plan?

He didn't bother answering. I planted my heels and forced myself to stop about ten feet short of her, which felt like an impossible distance with her scent  warm, sweet, sun-soaked  cutting through everything else around me.

"Professor Vance!" a voice called from my left.

Out of the corner of my eye I caught Rue glancing up. My whole body went taut, not from embarrassment at being caught watching her, but from something closer to wanting her to notice me the way she'd notice anyone else worth noticing on this campus full of loud, overconfident boys.

"Hey," I said to the student in front of me, forcing a polite smile onto my face.

Don't look at Rue. Don't look at Rue.

I looked at Rue. Hold it a beat too long. She gave me a small, quiet smile before dropping her eyes back to her book, shifting slightly where she lay, and something about the movement nearly undid every ounce of control I had left.

"Do we have" the student in front of me started.

"A reading check tomorrow," I cut in, feeling my canines threaten to lengthen. "Yes. Come prepared."

There was no reading check. I'd have to invent one now, because I needed an excuse to get away from here before my wolf did something we'd both regret in front of an entire quad of witnesses. All I could think about was closing that last stretch of grass, pressing my mouth to her throat, marking her as mine in front of God and every student on this lawn.

I turned my back on Rue, gave the girl a tight, hurried smile, and jogged off in the opposite direction, passing Declan on my way and not stopping until I'd made it back into the tree line. I braced a hand against a trunk, dragging in slow breaths, trying to force my wolf back under control.

"Hey!" Declan's voice carried across the grass, easy and grinning. "Rue, right?"

I froze. Watched from behind the tree as the two of them fell into conversation. My hands curled into fists at my sides, and something ugly and possessive rose up so fast that even with a wolf's hearing, I couldn't focus enough to catch a single word they said. All I could register was him making her laugh.

After a minute, Declan said something else, nodded, and jogged back toward the tree line, toward me.

The second he was in reach, I grabbed the front of his shirt and shoved him against the nearest trunk hard enough to rattle bark loose. "Stay away from her."

His eyes went wide. "I just invited her to a party  she's a first-year, I figured"

"I don't care what you figured." My voice came out lower than usual, rougher, my canines pressing sharp against my own lip. "You don't touch her. You don't talk to her unless she talks to you first. Are we clear?"

"Yes," he said quickly, hands raised.

"Yes what?"

"Yes, Alpha." He dropped his gaze, and I let him go.

I turned back toward the lawn, where Rue had rolled onto her back, one arm shading her eyes from the last of the afternoon sun, still bent over that same textbook like nothing in the world could pull her attention from it. Every instinct in me wanted to walk over there and settle the matter permanently. No fraternity boy, no rival pack, no council on earth was putting their hands on what belonged to me.

Rue Callahan was mine.