The arrogant boredom vanished. Confusion. Then dark, predatory calculation.
He didn't smell a broken, hollow omega.
He smelled the residual magic of three apex legacy alphas tangled with my soul.
A slow smile spread across his face.
"Well, well, Wren," he said. "Isn't this an interesting development."
12
WREN
The breath seized in my lungs.
Trent stepped closer, violating the distance required even between bonded mates in public. His aura slammed into me — a wave of purebred Northern dominance engineered by a lifetime of brutal training to extract submission from anyone beneath his rank.
The same aura that had brought me sobbing to my knees on a Persian rug three and a half weeks ago.
My body reacted before my brain could stop it. I flinched backward, chin dropping toward my chest — the involuntary, humiliating reflex of a conditioned omega.
Trent laughed. Short. Sharp. Cruel.
"Still the perfect little submissive," he drawled, his cold eyes dropping to my buttoned collar. He didn't need to see the scar. He knew the depth of what he'd carved. "I was surprised when my father told me you'd enrolled here. I assumed your mother would lock you in the country estate until the Solstice scandal died down. Aldridge is a bold choice for a defective. The mortality rate for unattached broken omegas in mixed territory is significantly higher than in the civilized North."
"I'm a student," I managed. My voice was trembling. Thin. what he expected. "I'm going to my next class, Trent."
"Are you?"
He reached out. Long fingers locked onto my chin and jerked my head up. His grip was tight enough to bruise.
I gasped, hands flying to his wrist, but I didn't have a fraction of the strength to break an alpha's hold. The panic was immediate and overwhelming. He had severed the tether in front of half the Northern elite. He had thrown me away. And now he was touching me like I still belonged to him.
"Your baseline scent is a disaster," Trent murmured, his thumb tracing the line of my jaw in a grotesque parody of tenderness. His nostrils flared as he pulled the air against my cheek. "Chaotic. Thick. Like you spent the weekend rolling around in a feral pack den. Have you been using the neutral zone safehouses? Taking whatever random alpha dominance you can scrounge up on a hookup app just to keep the severance fever from cooking your brain?"
The accusation hit like a slap.
He thought I was begging for scraps in dark alleys. Prostituting my biology to survive the damage he'd inflicted without a second thought.
"Let me go," I choked. A spark of hot anger finally caught in the hollow he'd left behind in my chest.
"You smell expensive, though," Trent continued, ignoring me. He leaned in, inhaling against my neck, over the pulse hammering in my throat. "Pine. Sharp ozone. Deep amber. Legacy signatures, Wren. Concentrated ones. Who did you find down here? Which second-tier heir are you leeching off of?"
"Take your hand off her. Now."
The command didn't come from me. It didn't come from a passing student.
It came from ten feet behind Trent's shoulders, cutting through the courtyard like a blade through wheat.
Hayes.
The low, chest-deep growl was stripped of every polished diplomatic cadence. Raw. Unrestrained. The voice of a predator defending its territory from a direct threat.
Trent froze. His hand tightened on my jaw for one second — then he let go, correctly calculating the shift in the environment's threat level.
He turned, smoothing his lapel with practiced arrogance. His expression shifted seamlessly into a cautious aristocratic mask.
Hayes stood on the stone path. Flanked by Tristan and Chris.
