Chapter 3 Matilda's POV

The mistake I made was thinking that Cedric still considered me his teacher when I dragged him out of the hall to discuss what had just happened.

He waited for me to bring him into a room before he pulled away the hand I was using to hold him. After closing the door behind us, he took my hand and turned me to face him, but facing him wasn't for a conversation. It was his lips that got slammed onto mine.

"I have always wondered what it would feel like to taste those rosy lips of yours, Lady Matilda, and…"

This man pressed his lips against mine, tangled his tongue with mine even without my response, and hugged me tightly.

"...it is a dream come true, my lady. I have to have you," he completed his statement, but believe me, I was still stunned.

Did he just say that he had been fantasizing?

But did you know that the moment he embraced me, kissed me, and spoke to me that way, I forgot about the age gap and the impossibility of us being together?

He tasted fine, I mustn't lie to myself.

He smelled so good. It felt like I was in the right place, in his arms.

My lips.

He wasn't my first kiss even though I had always waited for my mate.

When I started my job as a teacher, I accidentally connected too deeply with an alpha prince. He invited me to his chamber and kissed me that evening. I was taken aback just as I was right now.

That was my first-ever kiss, and it was a lesson for me not to be so close to a student. If only I had taken that lesson seriously.

"Do you know what you smell like, Lady Matilda?" he asked while I took my time to accept what was happening at the moment.

"What?" I was curious.

"Sweet," he answered, biting my neck hungrily.

I couldn't believe I was doing all this with my student. A man whose weakness I had seen.

He was just twenty-one, and I was thirty-one. Why did the Moon Goddess have to punish me this much? I bit my bottom lip.

"Are you not aware that I am older than you, my lord?" I asked softly.

My plan was for us to enter here and break the bond, but he was pushing me to want something I shouldn't even think of.

"I do not care about that. You belong to me now, Matilda," he groaned.

I had to push him off me to get my mind back. The bond, the string, our wolves—they were messing with my head. I couldn't think straight.

While every part of me wanted him, a part of me seemed to know better.

"I advise we break the bond," I said without confidence, and he could feel it.

I was embarrassed. He was my student, for heaven's sake.

"Why?" he asked that night.

"That is just the way it is. Break the bond, and I promise you will find a good she-wolf," I concluded and left the room.

But the feeling of his lips touching mine, his bite on my neck, the taste of his mouth lingered, but not as much as the words he said to me.

He had flirted, he had winked, he had bought me gifts several times, but I never thought he would be this grown-up when he found out that I was his mate.

Who would have thought that I would be this flushed by his words?

Every night after the banquet, I regretted my decision because of the cravings and heat. My wolf and everything in me craved his presence every time. I was starved, dying, and weak. My wolf was weak.

A month later.

I was reading a book when my sister rushed in like a criminal to inform me that the prince was here to see me.