Shifting so that he was facing me, Lyle steepled his fingers beneath his chin, gazing down at me from his position without blinking.
“Oh, is that so? So youaren’tsaying you have several alphas around you, willing to do God knows what?” Lyle scoffed, rolling his eyes in the first show of emotion I’d ever seen on him,which was… odd. “And just how many alphas are you planning on bonding? Because I’m quite certain that any more leaves of absence would damage your academic standing—permanently.”
The hairs on my arms stood on end, the words leaving my mouth before I could stop them. “Wait, did you flunk mebecauseof my bonding leave? Why would you do that?”
Lyle slid back in his seat slowly, staring daggers at me. But why would he even bethatupset? Why would he be upset about the bonding leave at all? It was totally normal for omegas in college to take them. There was a Google form to let professors know, for fuck’s sake.
“I find it quite presumptuousyou would assume I have control over your entire academic probation. I merely grade the assignments for thissingularclass. I think you need to consider your future, Flora. Bonding willy-nilly with alphas who do not support your academic career is agravemistake. You can’t count on the three of them to understand what it takes to succeed at Avalon.”
“Lyle, that’s not how it is at all. You need to understand that?—”
I stopped, my brain catching up to the words that had actually come out of Lyle’s mouth. Had he saidthree? No one, except for Percy and Mable, knew who I was seeing, the number of alphas in my pack? Was I going crazy? This was my TA. Lyle had never even looked twice at me.
No, you’re in your head. You’re just paranoid.
“I’m not sure what I have to understand at all, Miss Hewitt.I’vebeen the one looking at your assignments. I knowpreciselywhat’s happened since you’ve been spending less time focused on your studies. You would be an absolutely perfect student if you just did what youshouldbe doing.”
Sweat broke out across the back of my neck, and I was all too aware of the way my heart pounded against my rib cage. This didn’t feel right. TAs didn’t talk about their students like this. Hell, professors certainly didn’t, and this guy wasn’t even at that level yet.
I stood slowly, lifting my bag over my shoulder. “I’m sorry if my work as of late has been less than exceptional. I’ll do my best to make up for what happened.”
Lyle rose too quickly for my liking, and I shuffled out from between my chair and the desk, heading for the door. Behind me, I heard a drawer open and close, Lyle’s footsteps clicking across the tile floor toward me. Every instinct told me I needed to get out of there, an alarm bell in my head, trying to get me to see something I wasn’t putting together.
And then Lyle’s hand was on my elbow. “You really think I’m just going to let you walk out of here like that? Go running back tothosealphas. Look at you, not even bothering to cover up that disgusting mark on your neck.”
The screaming in my head reached full volume, and my mouth dropped open.
“You.”
It was all I could say, everything swirling together in a maddening blend of dread and realization. The texts after class, the knowledge of the route I took to get home from campus, and how he’d blended in so perfectly because he was meant to be on campus.
Lyle had been the one haunting me from the beginning, a ghost sitting only ten feet from me every day in class.
The noise of sucking in a deep breath pulled me out of my head—Lyle’s nose by my hair.
“Me. I'm the one who’s been there for you, watched over you, and you thank me by flitting off withthem.”
Something snapped inside me, the frozen panic I’d been experiencing evaporating in an instant. I yanked my arm free and sprinted to the door, gripping the knob to twist it and fling the door open. But I only made it that far, seconds away from freedom in the hallway and my alpha, who was waiting for me outside, when something soft and chemically sweet-smelling was pressed against my face, making my nostrils burn. My vision went fuzzy, my head suddenly too light and floating, as if connected to me by a string.
“Ah, ah, ah, Flora. You’re not going anywhere.”
Chapter 43
Spencer
Waiting never used to bother me. Hell, I was good at it. Patience had always been important in my line of work, and usually I excelled at it. It was a requirement, and I had never been one to let a little discomfort affect my dedication to getting the job done.
Until now.
Because, when it came to Flora, all the patience I had worked years to hone evaporated. It had been almost twenty minutes since she had gone to meet with the greasy-haired TA, and I was going out of my mind. The appointment with her other professor only lasted five minutes.
All I wanted to do was barge in and demand the faculty fix whatever was going on because, clearly, there was an issue with their system. There was no way Flora was failing all her classes. The very idea was utterly ridiculous. This was the omega who would rather study than go and get ice cream. We’d all seen the efforts she put in.
Flora was dealing with enough stress from the sudden move and someone following her—and trust that I was beyondpissed we hadn’t found the fucker yet. He had been evading us at every turn as if he could see us coming. We knew he was on campus, sure, but that was pretty much it.
We had been reduced to waiting for the fucker to make a move so we could catch him, and that made me uneasy. I wasn’t used to that. It felt… wrong.
Sighing, I threw my head back, lightly banging it on the brick wall. Subtlety had gone out the window, so instead of waiting from a distance, I was standing in the hallway right outside the professor’s office.
