"Is it on the down low?" I demand, pacing while he strolls into my empty living space like he owns it. "The situation. Is anyone keeping it quiet, or is the whole campus talking?"
Bastien's smirk widens.
"Nope. It is being spread pretty fast, actually. The hockey team is having a field day with it. Something about a clericalerror and the captain getting evicted from his own dorm to make room for his brother from Paris." He shrugs, examining the bare walls with theatrical disappointment. "You know how gossip works here. By lunch, they will be saying you cried during the move. By dinner, there will be a betting pool on when you will beg to be let back in."
"Fuck."
"Indeed." He turns to face me, his gray-blue eyes glittering with amusement. "But no worries. I can get two people over here to fill the pack problem. Alphas I know, owe me favors, will not ask questions about the arrangement. You will have a functional pack on paper within the week."
The offer hangs in the air.
Practical. Transactional. Exactly the kind of solution Bastien specializes in.
But it is not what I want.
"Well..." I hesitate, and I hate myself for the hesitation. Hate the vulnerability it exposes. Hate the way my voice dips into something softer when I ask, "Can you not just stay? Here? With me?"
The question escapes before I can stop it, carrying a hope I did not give permission to feel. Heat rushes to my cheeks, and I turn away to hide the flush, pretending to examine the empty shelf by the window.
Bastien's footsteps cross the room.
Slow. Deliberate. The predatory pace of someone who knows exactly what he is doing and enjoys watching the effect.
He stops behind me, close enough that I can feel the warmth radiating off his chest, close enough that his scent intensifies into a fog that clouds my ability to think clearly.
"What?" His voice is a murmur now, low and teasing, his breath ghosting against my ear. "You want me again? I thought I was old used goods, hmm? I thought you were done with myparticular brand of distraction. Moving on to bigger and better things, you said. Finding a proper Omega to settle down with, you said."
I say nothing.
My hands curl into fists at my sides, nails pressing into my palms hard enough to leave marks.
The history between us is complicated.
That is the word people use for relationships they do not want to examine too closely. Complicated. A catch-all term that covers the nights we spent together during my freshman year, when Bastien was still at Valenridge and still part of the pack that I inherited after he left. Covers the way he taught me things about myself that I was not ready to learn. Covers the way he left without warning and I spent months pretending it did not matter while the absence ate me alive.
Complicated covers the fact that no one knows about us. Not Cal. Not Etienne. Not Vanessa or any of the Omegas I have paraded around since then, using them as distractions, as shields, as evidence that I am exactly what everyone expects me to be. A straight Alpha with normal desires and predictable patterns.
Bastien was the exception.
The secret I carry like a stone in my chest, too heavy to hold and too shameful to put down.
Complicated.
"I will think about it," Bastien says finally, his voice carrying the casual cruelty of someone who knows he holds power and enjoys wielding it. "My arrangements are being changed anyway. Returning to Valenridge requires certain accommodations that the university is scrambling to provide. Maybe I can mention that I want to dorm with you. Make it happen. If you miss me that much."
He puts emphasis on the last three words, drawing them out like taffy, savoring the way they make me tense.
I bite my bottom lip.
A reflex. A tell I have never been able to control when he is this close, when his scent is filling my lungs, when the memories of what we used to do are flooding back with an intensity that makes my skin flush and my blood heat.
Bastien laughs.
The sound is soft and knowing, the laugh of a man who has learned all your secrets and kept them catalogued for future use.
"So," he leans in further, his lips brushing my ear as he whispers, "I guess no one is satisfying that need of yours, huh? Poor Rafe. All alone in his empty dorm. Kicked out by his brother, abandoned by his packmates, without anyone to scratch the particular itch he refuses to admit he has."
I do not respond.
