Varek’s POV
“Ky,” Sabrina moaned into my ear as she came apart beneath me, nails raking down my back hard enough to break skin.
I gave it a beat.
Then I rolled off her with a sigh I didn’t bother to hide.
It hadn’t landed.
Not the way it should have.
And I knew exactly whose fault that was.
Sabrina had the nerve to lay her palm flat on my chest and start tracing lazy circles with one finger.
“That was amazing,” she whispered.
For you.
She tipped her face up to kiss my cheek.
I turned before she could land it and shoved off the mattress.
Whatever we’d come here to do was done, and so was any reason for her to still be in my bed.
“Why can’t you just stay, for once?” Her voice frayed at the edges.
“Like you used to.”
I didn’t answer.
I looked around my own room and barely recognized it.
Her lipstick tubes on my desk.
Her clothes flung over my chair.
Her perfume soaked into everything.
I’d let her get too comfortable in a place she no longer belonged.
At least the room was mine alone.
One of the perks of being heir to the Lycan throne.
Freshman year I’d shared with Declan—Sabrina’s twin, my future Beta, walking his father’s path straight into mine.
It had taken months of complaints to get us separated.
Part of me needed to breathe without him in my shadow.
The other part just didn’t want to sleep with his sister within a ten-mile radius of him.
That had aged well.
“Take your things with you this time,” I said, flat and cold, already moving toward the bathroom.
“All of it.”
The shower ran scalding.
I braced both hands on the tile and let it hammer the back of my neck, and I tried—I tried—not to think about the one thing that wouldn’t leave me.
Four-eyes.
That was what I’d called her.
I didn’t know her name.
Didn’t want it.
All I knew was that she was my mate.
Not the fierce Lycan I’d been promised my whole life.
A puppy.
A soft, squinting, blue-eyed puppy hiding behind a pair of glasses.
The beast had shown me in the restroom, the second she’d stumbled in, and I’d stood there under the water begging the Moon Goddess to let it be a mistake.
When Declan uncorked that bottle, my first instinct had been to wrap a hand around his throat for putting me on that dance floor.
I’d pinned her to that tree.
I’d been half a breath from tearing her apart just for daring to say the word mate.
And then my own body had turned traitor.
I’d had to taste those lips.
And the moment I did, I couldn’t stop.
I hated myself for it.
She was a creep.
A stalker.
Why her?
Heir to the throne.
Future king of Aethelgard, the largest of the three kingdoms.
None of this made sense.
And yet the bond sat in my chest like a second heartbeat, and it made all the sense in the world.
Maybe this was the Moon Goddess collecting a debt.
Payment for the thing I’d done years ago—the thing the king never let me forget, reminding me over and over exactly how little he thought I was worth.
I shut the water off with a throbbing skull and wrapped a towel around my waist.
Walked back out.
Sabrina was still in my bed, tracking me across the room like I hadn’t just told her to leave.
“You’re still here?”
“Well, yes.” She blinked.
“Why wouldn’t I be?”
I dragged a hand through my wet hair and held my temper by a thread.
“You know the arrangement.
What we had is over.
If it isn’t your body, I don’t want to see you.
So.
Leave.”
Her face twisted.
I felt nothing.
We’d agreed to this—both of us, eyes open.
We’d broken up months ago.
For good, this time, after years of on and off.
The king had wanted it.
His Beta’s daughter and his heir, a match sturdy enough that it didn’t need the Moon Goddess’s blessing.
In his mind we were destined regardless of what any bond said.
I’d hated disobeying him, so I’d endured her.
Until I couldn’t.
I’d never loved her.
I wasn’t built to love anyone.
Not after what I’d done to my own brother.
My own blood.
That was all the proof I’d ever needed.
“Leave.” I pointed at the door.
“But Varek,” she whined, “my roommates are so lame.
Except Chloe, I guess—she’s fine, but she tries too hard.
You should see the other two, you’d die laughing—”
I stopped hearing her.
I pulled on my clothes.
Her voice was just weather now, background noise that changed nothing.
She could talk until the sun came up.
It ended the same way: with her gone.
I ripped the covers off the bed, leaving her exposed, and swept her clothes off the chair.
“Up.” I threw them at her.
“I said get dressed, take your things, and go.
Was I unclear?”
She grunted, hauling the dress over her head.
“Who’s the slut you’re screwing now?” she snapped, going on the attack.
“Is that why you don’t want me around?”
Slut.
The word landed wrong.
My mind went white.
“I’ll find her.” Her voice climbed.
“I’ll find her, and I swear I’ll ki—”
I had her against the wall before she finished the word.
The beast took the wheel.
My hand closed around her throat—not to crush, just enough to be understood.
My claws pushed through my fingertips.
My teeth sharpened behind my lips.
A growl rolled up out of my chest, low and inhuman.
“Careful, Sabrina.” My claws grazed the soft skin of her neck.
Her eyes blew wide, fear flooding them.
In all our years I’d never once turned on her like this.
She didn’t fight back.
She had no idea what she was looking at.
Neither did I.
The realization jolted me.
I reined the beast in and stepped away, disgusted—at her, at the room, at how easily I’d slipped.
This had never happened to me.
Not once.
“Just… go,” I muttered, and turned my back so I wouldn’t have to see her afraid of me.
Silence.
Then the rustle of her gathering her things, a string of words under her breath, each one designed to cut.
The door slammed.
And I finally let go of the breath I’d been holding since she came.
I looked at my hand—the fingers that had been claws a moment ago—and curled it into a fist.
I hadn’t wanted to hurt her.
But the instant she’d said slut, the beast had pictured four-eyes and lunged to protect her.
Possessive.
Out of control.
Over a girl I’d chosen nothing about.
It was going to drive me insane.
I paced.
How could I—heir to the throne—come this unglued over that thing?
The king’s voice, worn into me by years of repetition: ‘If the Moon Goddess curses you with an unworthy mate, it means she still hasn’t forgiven you for what you did to your brother.’
Years of that.
Forced to sit with it.
Forced to think of everything I had to become to keep my place as heir.
And now, the sentence handed down.
The mate bond.
I roared and swept my desk clean in one motion, everything crashing to the floor.
She was unraveling me and I couldn’t stand another second of it.
I stormed into the closet and tore through it in a fury, jackets hitting the floor one after another, hunting the one thing I knew would calm the beast.
The leather jacket.
The one I’d worn that night.
I brought it to my face and breathed in—and there she was, still clinging to the collar.
Candy.
Vanilla and sugar.
‘Mate,’ the beast rumbled from somewhere deep.
“Shut up.”
‘Mate.’
“No.” I fisted the leather.
So the beast could think of nothing but four-eyes?
Fine.
Good.
Noted.
I only had to reject her—the thing I should have done in those woods—and the bond would snap and everything would slide back to normal.
I walked out with the jacket in my hand and the trail already in my nose.
The pull, the bond, that suffocating hook behind my sternum—I needed it to stop.
Anything to make it stop.
“Hey, Ky—” Declan caught my shoulder in the corridor.
“Not now.” I shrugged him off and left him standing there.
I couldn’t deal with a single living soul.
There was room in my head for exactly one thing: four-eyes, and cutting her loose.
I lifted the jacket, breathed her in one more time, and followed the scent all the way to Lunar Hall.
Her dorm wasn’t hard to find—the smell led me straight to it.
I stopped just short of the corner and waited.
So this was where she lived.
Four-eyes.
I took one step—and jerked back as the door opened and Sabrina walked out.
“Shit.” Under my breath.
Of every door in this academy, of course.
Which meant both of my stalkers shared a room.
The Moon Goddess really had it out for me.
Sabrina turned the other way.
I waited, was about to move again—when the door opened a second time.
Her.
Four-eyes.
She stepped out in jeans that hugged her hips and a plain top, and my eyes went straight to her mouth.
Those same lips I’d had beneath mine an hour ago.
Soft.
Warm.
Perfect.
I shook it off.
Those weren’t my thoughts.
They were the beast’s.
I’d come here for one thing only.
She stood frozen at her door, chest rising and falling, scanning the corridor for something—someone.
Then she looked right at me.
I could only stare into those sad blue eyes.
They didn’t move me.
I knew the real damage was still coming.
She’d hurt so much more once I finally severed the bond.
Her sadness flipped to anger.
She pushed off the wall and marched toward me, and I didn’t so much as flinch.
‘Your fault,’ the beast growled.
That was when it clicked.
Those furious eyes.
She was coming to reject me first.
I didn’t like the shape of that at all.
So I turned and walked, unhurried, before she could reach me—leaving her stranded in front of a scatter of students who’d only just noticed the prince in their hall.
A smile tugged at my mouth.
So.
Four-eyes thought she could reject me.
Maybe she was more entertaining than I’d given her credit for.