"Tell you what, I have a better idea," Stan muttered, entirely unfiltered. He reached over, pressed the button on his desk intercom, and spoke into the microphone. "Kaelen Cross. Report to the administrative wing. Right now."
The silence in the office stretched, heavy and awkward. The power dynamic in this elite academy already seemed like a complete joke.
The principal wasn’t an authority figure; he was just a wealthy, handsome player running a playground for monsters.
A moment later, the heavy door clicked open.
A young male stepped into the room. He carried a cold aura that immediately made the hair on Lena’s arms stand up.
Kaelen Cross adjusted his collar, his dark eyes instantly darting between the principal and the girl sitting in the chair.
"We have a new student. Miss Nora," Stan announced, gesturing lazily toward Lena.
Did he just call her Nora?
"It’s Lena," Lena corrected.
"What I said. Scarlett."
Lena wasn’t sure if he was intentionally doing this or just not listening. Or maybe he was just mentioning the names of the asses that have been on this desk.
Gross.
Clearly, remembering a simple name required too much moral effort for a complete hedonist.
Entirely unbothered, Principal Stan looked at Kaelen, completely dismissing any professional protocol. "Go ahead and give Miss Hale the standard introduction to the school. You know what to do."
Kaelen shifted his weight, his expression darkening with clear discomfort. He looked at the desk; the lingering scent in the room, obviously reading the exact same scandalous situation Lena had walked into.
Without a word to the principal, Kaelen turned and motioned for Lena to follow him out.
Lena stood up immediately, more than happy to leave Stan Erect’s suffocating office behind, and followed her new guide out into the corridor.
Once they were outside the office, Kaelen muttered as the door clicked shut behind them. "Look, I apologize for that. The Academy isn’t usually this... undisciplined. Our actual Principal is currently out on a mandatory suspension, and Stan is just a temporary replacement."
Lena let out a dry breath, adjusting the oversized hood of the brown sweatshirt. "Oh. No wonder he seemed..."
"Unprofessional?" Kaelen completed, a trace of dark humor cutting through his cold voice.
"Yeah," she nodded.
As they turned the corner into the main hallway, the familiar, rich scent of the stolen sweatshirt wrapped around her again.
The night-class students were still lingering by the lockers, their eyes tracking Lena’s every move, whispering furiously behind their hands.
Kaelen noticed the shifting tension. He frowned, picking up his pace. "We should head straight to the Head Student’s office. Your official uniforms, communication devices, and welcome basket are waiting there. It’s safer to get you changed out of that–"
He froze.
The words died in his throat as a sudden shift resonated through the entire corridor.
"Oh my god, look," a she-wolf squealed, her history textbook clattering to the floor.
"Wait, he’s here?"
"Down in this wing? He never comes down here!"
"Shut up, how’s my hair? Do I look okay? I hope he looks this way!"
Girls were frantically smoothing down their hair, elbows jostling as everyone tried to get closer to the front.
"Move! I want him to notice me!"
Lena narrowed her eyes under her hood, turning toward the sudden fuss. The students were crowding the center of the hallway so tightly that she couldn’t see who they were frantically fanning over.
Moreover, she didn’t care about their fangirling. She wanted to look away and keep moving.
However, just as she was about to turn her back on the crowd, the sea of students suddenly started parting. They backed away in instinctual fear, clearing a wide path down the center of the floor.
A lone wolf was walking through them. His steps were slow, deliberate, and intense–as if he were hunting for someone specific.
"Holy mother of–" Lena’s breath caught in her throat.
A chorus of hushed whispers immediately filled the corridor around her. "Alpha Christopher."
Alpha Christopher, Lena tasted the name in her mind.
This was, without a doubt, the most staggeringly attractive specimen she had ever seen in her entire life.
Her mind went completely blank and she froze right where she stood. She was entirely sure her jaw had dropped.
He had messy espresso-brown hair, a razor-sharp jawline, and an intensity that made the air around him hum with raw danger.
He looked eagerly, desperately searching for someone. Lena found herself thinking that whoever he was hunting, they were incredibly lucky.
"We should go. Right now," Kaelen’s sharp, tense voice snapped her back to reality.
She felt a flash of irritation at her own reaction, especially after telling Kourtney she was indifferent to the Academy’s elite. But Christopher represented a danger she hadn’t anticipated.
Just as Lena was about to wrench her eyes away from this literal god, his gaze snapped across the crowded corridor.
His dark, piercing eyes locked directly onto hers.
And they stayed there.
The heavy, unblinking intensity of his stare said a single, undeniable thing: You have been found.
Lena didn’t know exactly what he had found her for, but before she could even blink, a sudden, suffocating pressure exploded from his posture.
The way her body reacted told her he wasn’t a generic Alpha.
His atmospheric aura made the corridor feel like a physical shockwave, dropping the temperature and freezing the lungs of every student in the room.
Under the weight of his dominant command, Lena felt gravity slamming into her chest, physically forcing her backward through the air until her spine pressed violently against the cold marble wall.
Alpha Christopher stepped into her personal space, his gaze hardening into a deep, volatile frown as he stared at her face.
His nostrils flared as he took in the scent of his own sweatshirt wrapping her body.