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“Bayla Adams. She came to us because her mother could no longer hide her from the Quatura,” Alarik explained without even looking at her. Instead, he laid his searching gaze on me, concern shimmering in his candlelight-bathed eyes.

“Oh...” the woman replied, her voice heavy with pity.

Without asking any further questions, she eventually smiled warmly at me.

“Nice to meet you, Bayla.” She took a sip of her wine and wiped her mouth with the dark green napkin. “I'm Tania Rolanow.”

I choked so hard on the hot potato that the stinging sensation in my throat made me cough, and it sounded like I was about to die.

Everyone looked at me as if I had just spat out my food, and I quickly grabbed the glass of water in front of me.

“Excuse me.”

I cleared my throat with tears in my eyes, sounding like a chicken being strangled, while trying not to look at the Alpha for too long.

“Don’t you like the food?” Alarik asked with a smirk and a gleam in his eyes, but was immediately interrupted by the Russian.

“Or did you get better food at the witches’?”

The Alpha and the Russian laughed, and the young man I always saw on campus near Emely with another horde of muscle-bound men also had to chuckle.

I couldn't concentrate on them, instead looking at Tania. The very woman Graham had talked about shortly before his death.

Julian's alleged mother.

Of course, it had taken me by surprise that evening that Julian's father had kept something like that from his son all these years.

I studied Tania, trying to find similarities between her and Julian. There were the freckles that had completely vanished from him over the winter, the full lips... But that was it.

This woman could be his mother. She had to be, if Graham's words were to be believed. However, I didn't want to believe it without further proof.

Why had she brought Julian to Graham back then?

She seemed to be part of the pack. Or was I mistaken?

“You and Emely, you seem to know each other,” said the blond young man next to the old Russian.

Some weeks ago, he had suddenly appeared on campus with a bouquet of roses and given them to Emely.

I tore my gaze away from the woman, who fortunately hadn't noticed me staring, and took a closer look at him. Unlike Julian, he looked very similar to her. The same hair color, the ice-blue eyes...

“We know each other from campus,” I replied curtly, and he just nodded.

He probably hadn't ever noticed me before.

“It's bad enough that everyone can just walk around there as if they own the place,” the Russian snorted morosely. “You should ban the other species!”

“That's not an option, Dimitrio.”

Alarik pronounced his name as if it were a nasty disease, which did not escape the grim-looking man's notice.

“There are laws in this country that even we have to obey. We may own the buildings and the land, but the university is subject to the state education system,” Alarik emphasized, and I realized that the two of them would probably like to throw a few punches at each other.

“Excuses, excuses,” the Russian waved him off. “You have money, Nickolas. Why don't you take what's yours?” He took a big gulp from a wine glass – or to be more precise, he downed the wine in one go. “It's a shame the Ruisangors are roaming around your territory and threatening your women, and even more so that they have the chance to get close to them at all.”

He glanced at Emely, who was noticeably quiet.

The usually dominant girl stared at the yellow potato on her plate as if it were a rock she was trying to hold on to.