"So what do you want from me?" I asked, voice barely above a whisper.
I looked between all three of them — the burdened Heir, the quiet Scholar, the Storm. Staring at me with a combination of raw possessiveness, tactical calculation, and feral protection. "You can't legally claim me. You all have political mandates from your fathers?—"
"Our families are irrelevant to this room," Tristan said, pushing off the wall and dropping onto the mattress with fluid ease. "The only thing that matters right now is keeping that glowing silver target on your chest hidden until we figure out the long-term tactical play."
"There is no long-term play," I said, alarmed. "The tether is temporary. The lines will fade. And then we all walk away from each other."
A low warning growl built in Hayes's throat — involuntary, territorial — at the wordswalk away.He clamped down on it immediately, but the feral gold flared in his eyes.
"We return to Aldridge," Hayes outlined, ignoring my protests. "You return to your roommate. You maintain your history schedule. You keep your head down and your collar buttoned."
"And you?" I asked quietly.
"We establish a protective perimeter," Chris said, stepping fully into the room and closing the heavy door behind him, sealing the four of us inside. "We monitor the artifact's magicaloutput. And we ensure no one from the legacy packs gets within ten feet of you without our knowledge."
Not a suggestion. A military-grade directive from three apex predators who had accidentally discovered a crown they weren't sure how to wear — but were prepared to kill to keep.
I looked at their three uncompromising faces, the reality of my new existence settling into the marrow of my bones.
I had come to Aldridge to be a forgotten ghost.
In the span of one night, I had become the most guarded secret in the shifter world.
11
WREN
Ididn't sneak back onto the Aldridge campus like a disgraced exile. I was escorted through the front gates like a head of state moving through a warzone.
Hayes drove his black SUV to the rear service entrance of the junior dorm, ignoring the campus parking zones. Tristan walked three tactical paces ahead of me. His frat-boy facade was gone, replaced by a cold, scanning intensity that made a passing group of sophomore vampires press flat against the brick walls to get out of our path. Chris brought up the rear, silent, his amber eyes cataloging every scent and heartbeat we passed.
An obvious display of dominance. Suffocating.
When we reached the heavy wooden door of room 314, Hayes stopped.
No goodbye. No empty platitude. He looked down at me in the dim hallway light. The protective gold in his eyes hadn't faded since the basement.
"Go to class," he said quietly. "Go to the cafeteria. Do what you normally do. We'll handle the perimeter."
I swiped my keycard and fled.
Chloe ambushed me the second the door clicked shut, crushing me in a hug that smelled of vanilla body spray and genuine human terror. I survived rapid-fire questions, deflecting with vague lies about a bad reaction to experimental suppressants, and gratefully accepted the enormous iced coffee she'd bought.
Three days later, sitting in the back row of my history lecture, the reality of Hayes's promised perimeter was suffocatingly clear.
I kept my head down, staring at my notes as Professor Hawthorne droned about the formation of the Eastern territories. I wasn't listening. I was listening to the silence in the row behind me.
Normally, the back rows of a junior lecture were chaos — whispering, phones, students openly sleeping. Today, the three rows behind my seat were empty, save for one person.
Chris.
He sat still, an old leather-bound text open on the desk. He hadn't spoken to me in three days, but his aura was a dense amber weight draped over the back half of the room. No student dared sit within twenty feet. They could feel it — a silent, biologicaldo not approachbroadcast on the magical spectrum.
It wasn't just Chris. A coordinated, efficient three-man occupation of my daily life.
When I went to the cafeteria, Tristan was always there. He never sat with me — that would cause a scene — but he lounged at a nearby table, sharp storm-gray eyes tracking every shifter who walked past my chair. The ozone of his scent spiked the second anyone looked at me a beat too long.
And Hayes was the hardest to ignore.
