Chapter 5. The Offer

Lia

“Are you sure?” Katie asked, nudging me. “Because I’m curious. Tall, dark, and mysterious is your brand.”

I rolled my eyes, I didn’t get a good look. And anyway, I don’t even think he goes here.”

Chloe sipped her coffee. “That’s even sketchier.”

Or maybe intriguing.

No. I wasn’t going to spiral.

That night, I tried to focus on homework. I really did. But my mind kept replaying the split-second eye contact with that stranger. It wasn’t just his face. It was the feeling.

Like I’d been seen.

Not in a cute way.

After an hour of trying to read my English textbook and getting nowhere, I gave up. I closed the book and stared at my ceiling instead. My room was quiet except for the hum of the mini fridge and the occasional sound of traffic outside.

I thought of the novel stacked on my shelf, my comfort zone. Safe , predictable, full of drama but always ending with Love.

But right now I wasn’t sure if I wanted that story bleeding into real life.

Because what if the real thing wasn’t safe!

The next day was quiet. The guy didn’t show up again, or maybe I just missed him. I went to my class, forced myself to eat at the cafeteria even though the spaghetti looked suspicious, and kept my head down.

Katie and Chloe noticed I wasn’t as chatty, but they didn’t press.

“Probably on her mouthy book hangover,” Katie muttered as we walked across campus.

“I’m fine,” I said. “Just tired.”

But as we passed the old stone arch near the fine art building, I felt it again, that flicker of something. I turned my head instinctively.

No one.

Just shadows and students.

Later that night, I sat on my bed with my laptop open and my latest romance story halfway read. I was trying to do my assignments. My Lit professor had asked us to write a story. Writing stories was my side hobby, something I did no one knew about. This one was about a girl who worked at a bookstore and discovered she was mated to a cursed werewolf king. It was dramatic, swoony and absolutely unrealistic.

But it made me feel alive. Each time I have an assignment about writing.

I stared at the blinking cursor and typed:

“She felt him before she saw him, not his footsteps,  or his voice, just his presence. The air bent around her differently, as if the world knew he was coming before she did.”

I paused.

Backspace.

Rewrote it.

Then closed the laptop entirely.

I don’t know why but I suddenly did not feel like writing against. I didn’t want to write that kind of story  agains. Not tonight.

At 2 a.m, I woke up from a half-remembered dream.

Fog. A forest. Breathless running.

Someone whispered my name.

My skin was cold, even under the blanket, and the hair on my arms stood up straight.

I sat up slowly, heart pounding for no reason.

It’s just a dream, Lia. A dream. You’re not in a book.

I just have to reduce a little bit of what I read.

But something about the way my name had sounded in that dream, deep, low, almost like a growl, stayed with me long after I laid back down and closed my eyes again.

I woke up to a buzz in the air.

It wasn’t the chirping birds outside my dorm window or the dull hum of traffic below. It was something else. Something palpable. Like that entire town had inhaled and forgotten how to exhale.

At first, I thought it was just me being overly dramatic again. I’d spent the night dreaming about glowing eyes and forest paths, waking up tangled in my sheets like as if I fought something in my sleep. The kind of dream that leaves your chest feeling hollow and your heart way too full.

But then my phone wouldn’t stop vibrating.

Group chats. Class announcements. Even people I hadn’t talked to in months were suddenly sending, “Have you heard?”

I sat up, eyes groggy, and pulled my hoodie over my tank top before grabbing my phone. The first thing I saw was a tweet from our local campus news handle:

“Pine hills officials confirm the town is in emergency meeting with werewolf envoys. More updates soon.”

I blinked.

Cleaned my eyes.

Read it again.

I wasn’t dreaming.

“Lia,” my roommate Emily shrieked as she burst into the room without knocking. “Have you seen— wait, you have to have seen it by now.”

“I just woke up,” I said, my voice still stuck in that sleepy rasp. “What’s going on?”

Emily flung herself onto the edge of my bed, phone In hand, scrolling furiously. “The werewolves. Like, the actual pack from up north? Have made some kind of …demand. Like a peace offering or some treaty crap. I don’t know the full details yet, but words are spreading like wildfire.”

My pulse quickened. “A peace offering?”

She nodded, eyes wide. “One girl. A representative. A mate candidate, maybe? Nobody knows for sure. They haven’t said why they want her yet. Just that the town has to choose someone.”

I stared at her, my mind racing faster than my heart.

One girl.

Chosen.

Offered.

Was this real? Or had my obsession finally crossed over into madness?

The rest of the morning passed in blur. The campus was buzzing louder than a beehive. Even our quiet town, usually slow and sleepy, was alive with fear and curiosity. Some joked about it. Others whispered like death had come knocking. Professors canceled classes “until further notice,” and the library was packed, not with people studying but with people trying to piece together what was happening.

I sat on the steps outside the student union building, watching people walk by in hushed clusters. Emily scrolled endlessly beside me, muttering every time she saw a new update.

“Wait, listen to this,” she said, holding her phone. “Some old lady who works with the council said this isn’t the first time something like this has happened. Decades ago, they offered someone up. Like … an actual sacrifice.”

I frowned. “Sacrifice or… mate?”

“Honestly? No one knows. But Lia, this is like … the fantasy stuff you always talk about, right? Werewolves. Bonds. Fated mates. Do you think this is that?”

My stomach flipped. The rational part of me wanted to laugh it off, say no, say this was just folklore draped in drama. But the other part of me, the one that had devoured hundreds of books under my blanket, whispered, what if it is ?.

I tried to sound casual. Probably just a power play. Politics between species. You know.”

Emily narrowed her eyes. “That tone? That’s your I’m secretly dying Inside but pretending I'm a chill voice.”

I chuckled nervously, she wasn’t wrong. “I don’t know either.”