A bolt of pure, burning agony ripped through your gut. The world seemed to tilt. The ground slid from under you. You felt sick, your stomach heaving, as Dorian sank his teeth into Leonie’s neck. Into her scent gland. Claiming her.
Not you. Dorian. Your mate. Marking someone else.
Your knees buckled and hit the floor of the campus hall. Your stomach heaved. And for the first time you heard your wolf in your mind, and she was howling in agony as the mate bond twisted, as sharp as a knife in your gut.
“Mate! Our mate! They betrayed us! It HURTS!”
Tears filled your eyes at her voice and you squeezed them shut, chest heaving as you gasped for air that wouldn’t come.
Leonie was leaning into Dorian, preening, purring, as if your mate had always belonged to her. And maybe, maybe he always had.
Images whipped through your mind, a lightning strike of things you had excused but that now made all too much sense. Late nights working. Short texts. How he only showed affection when you were alone. And the number one: he had never marked you. Never claimed you.
Then a mind-bending heat coiled in your gut. A thick, sweet scent began to waft around you as your wolf finally awakened, rising out of the pain of your shared betrayal. You clutched a hand to your chest. Your head spun. The pain competed and swirled with the new, intense heat of your first awakening. Your presentation.
And it was pure omega. Pure as a night wind, and strong enough to send a weak male stark, salivating, mad with want.
And your mate was gone.
Then something else cut through the rising haze of your heat. A sharp, cold, spicy scent. Two scents. Your wolf, still writhing in pain and heat and heartbreak, paused for just a breath to sniff.
ALPHA. Strong. Heady. And getting closer.
Two heavy, large hands descended, one landing on each of your shoulders, as you felt the hot breath and heady presence of not one but two alphas on your neck. Their noses brushed your throat, teeth nicking the skin — and then a palm clamped flat over the unmarked side of your neck, and a jacket went round your shoulders.
“Not in a hallway,”
the silver-haired one says.
“And not like this.”
The dark-haired one stares at Dorian.
“Say one word and we take you out the east door.”