Emily’s jaw tightens. She shifts, the high-backed chair creaking under her.
“And you agreed?” Jared asks as he leans in.
“For six weeks.” I swallow, listening to the mantel clock’s echoing tick. “Long enough to realize the mentorship was never real. The first week, he was…attentive. Holding doors, leaving coffee on my desk, praising me in meetings.”
Jared’s brow furrows. “That doesn’t sound like Carson.”
I spin the glass between my palms. “It wasn’t meant for me. It was for everyone else.”
Grady nods, reading between the lines. “He stopped cornering you when others were near?”
I nod, shoulders tense. “But the moment we were alone, the rules changed.”
Emily breaks the hush. “How?”
“He started making decisions for me,” I admit, my throat tight. “Which committees I should join, which parents to avoid, which colleagues not to trust.”
My grip on the glass tightens until my knuckles ache. “He rewrote my curriculum without asking and claimed it reflected better on both of us.”
Jared exhales again, moving his empty glass. “And the touching?”
“It escalated.”
The word hangs heavy as rain continues to drum the windows.
“At faculty gatherings, he’d rest his hand on the back of my neck while we spoke to people.” A shudder rolls through me. “In the corridors, he guided me by the elbow as if I was too delicate to move anywhere on my own.”
I flex my bandaged hands. “Once he slipped into my classroom during a lecture and rearranged the desks around me.”
The chandelier above Emily flickers, sending wavering shadows across her tense jaw.
“He said a bonded Omega should reflect his Alpha’s standards.”
The hush that follows is thicker than the humid air.
“That’s when I saw the truth,” I whisper over the rain. “The courtship wasn’t protecting me. It was just legitimizing him.”
Grady’s pen scratches over his notebook. “So you ended it.”
“Yes.” A crack of thunder rumbles through the rafters, punctuating the word.
My attention drifts to a spot on the table as the memory sharpens in my mind. “I told him right after the staff meeting. I said the arrangement wasn’t working, and I wanted to revert to a professional relationship.”
Jared shifts, mumbling something indistinct. Maybe a curse.
“He smiled,” I say. “Calm. Unruffled. Patient, even.”
Emily’s chair creaks as she leans back. “What did he say?”
“That Omegas often panic when stability starts to settle in.” An empty laugh escapes. “He told me I’d ‘adjust.’ I think he was waiting for my Heat, so I wouldn’t be able to walk away.”
I shake my head. “First thing the next morning, I filed the withdrawal with the Registry. Thank God we weren’t living together. Carson hated the idea of sharing a space before bonding.”
Jared’s brow knits as he taps the tabletop. “But you were still teaching there.”
“Yes.”
And that was the mistake.
