She hauled me off the floor, my legs shaking beneath me, the fever making the room tilt. I grabbed my wool coat and wrapped it around my shoulders in a futile attempt to contain the heat and mask the scent.
Just a transaction,I told myself as I followed Chloe out into the night, barely registering the Uber pulling to the curb. It doesn't matter who User_AlphaX is. He's not real. Just a band-aid. A biological necessity to stop my core from flatlining.
Get through the heat. Walk away. Go back to being a ghost.
I had no idea how spectacularly wrong I was.
6
HAYES
"You're bleeding on the mat again, Hayes. It's unhygienic."
I ignored Tristan, ducking under a left hook that would have decapitated a lesser wolf. I stepped inside the guard and drove my shoulder into the center of my sparring partner's chest.
The impact sounded like two cars colliding. The massive beta lifted off his feet before hitting the padded floor with a grunt that knocked the air out of him.
I stepped back, chest heaving, swiped the blood from my split lip with the back of my taped hand. The metallic taste of copper grounded me, cutting through the low buzzing of political anxiety that had been humming in my skull since five this morning.
"I'm fine," I said.
The adrenaline was receding, leaving the familiar leaden weight of my daily reality pressing down where it had been an hour ago.
Tristan leaned against the rubber edge of the sparring ring, tossing a water bottle from hand to hand. Sharp jawline, darkhair, designer training gear that probably cost more than most students' tuition — he looked like he was posing for a catalog. But anyone who judged Tristan Hawthorne by his charming smile usually woke up three hours later with a concussion. He was the most lethal fighter in our year, precisely because he never looked like he was trying. Storm-based magic. Ozone and unpredictable pressure drops.
"You're not fine," Tristan said cheerfully. "Your aura feels like a thunderstorm trapped in a pressure cooker. And when you're stressed, you solve your emotional problems by methodically breaking the ribs of the beta population who volunteer to spar with you. Speaking of which — good hold, Marcus. You only look mildly concussed. You might even remember your own name by dinner."
The massive beta on the floor offered a weak thumbs-up toward the ceiling.
"It's the council mandates," I said, catching the water bottle Tristan whipped at my head. I drank half of it in one swallow. "My father called before sunrise again. He wants me to formally register intent for a binding alliance contract by end of semester."
Tristan's smile vanished. "A binding contract? We're twenty-two, Hayes. That's archaic even by Northern standards."
"The political climate is destabilizing." Chris's quiet voice cut through the gym.
I hadn't heard him approach. He never made noise. Chris moved like a shadow — still, self-contained, devoid of posturing. He was sitting cross-legged on the bleachers with an ancient leather-bound book on his knees, looking like a scholar who had wandered into a warzone looking for the library. But the faint golden ring burning around his dark irises gave away the depth of his latent power. Where Tristan and I fought with kinetic forceand elemental violence, Chris fought by rewriting the magical laws of the room. A terrifying opponent.
"The eastern border disputes are escalating," he continued, turning a page without looking up. "If your father secures a binding contract with the right dynasty, it locks in a multi-generational territorial alliance the east won't dare challenge. He's not asking for grandchildren, Hayes. He's fortifying his borders with your bloodline."
"I know why he's doing it," I snapped. I threw the empty bottle into a metal bin across the room. It hit with a sharp crack that made Marcus flinch.
The pressure was immense. An iron collar locked around my throat, tightening every time my phone rang with a Northern area code.
I was the sole heir to one of the oldest, wealthiest, most ruthlessly traditional packs in the country. Every decision I made — where I went to school, who I fought, who I spoke to in the hallways — was calculated by a board of elders to preserve that legacy. My life belonged to the pack.
And now they wanted to dictate who I'd bind my soul to.
A binding contract wasn't a marriage of convenience. It was a magical tether hammered into place by archaic rituals, locking two wolves together for life regardless of compatibility or affection. A corporate merger finalized in blood and soul tissue.
"So what are you going to do?" Tristan asked, crossing his arms.
"Stall him," I said, grabbing a towel. "Told him I need to focus on my final year of tactical coursework before committing the energy to the ritual."
"He won't buy that for long," Chris said calmly. "Not with the eastern packs mobilizing."
"Buys me a few months of silence. Long enough to find a counter-strategy."
It was a lie and we all knew it. There was no counter-strategy to my father's iron will short of open rebellion. And rebellion meant fracturing the pack I had sworn my life to protect. Trapped in a gilded cage of inherited duty.
