THE OFF-CAMPUS DEAL

PROLOGUE

Kael's POV:

"You're late."

I didn't glance at my mother as I pushed open the heavy doors and stepped into the council room. The air felt thick with tension. Six elders sat around the massive stone table, their eyes locked on me the moment I entered. Watching. Judging.

"As the future Alpha," Elder Marcus said calmly, "you have ignored three alliance meetings now. Three, Kael. What do you have to say for yourself?"

I shrugged and dropped into the chair at the head of the table. "I've been busy."

"Busy with hockey?" Elder Marcus pressed, raising an eyebrow. "This pack needs strong alliances, not games on ice."

A low growl rumbled in my chest. My wolf, pacing restlessly just beneath my skin. He hated these meetings as much as I did.

My mother folded her arms, lips pressed tight. "Selena Voss is an excellent match. Strong bloodline, powerful family ties. She would make a fine Luna. You should at least consider it."

"I don't care," I said flatly.

"You will," she shot back. "This isn't about what you want. It's about what the pack needs. You have responsibilities, Kael."

"I won't," I replied, voice steady. "I'm not tying myself to someone I feel nothing for just because it looks good for the pack."

Silence filled the room. The elders exchanged looks. Finally, Elder Thorne sighed and leaned forward.

"The Blood Moon is approaching in a few weeks. You cannot keep refusing every she-wolf we choose. The pack is growing restless, and so is your wolf."

My jaw tightened. "I can refuse them. And I will. If my true mate never appears, I'll remain unmated. Simple as that."

The room erupted in arguments.

"This is reckless!"

"You're putting the entire pack at risk!"

Mother slammed her hand on the table. "You are an Alpha before you are a man, Kael! The pack must come first. Always."

"No." I stood up, looking every one of them in the eye. "I am a man before I am your Alpha. I won't live chained to someone I don't love. If that makes me a bad leader in your eyes, so be it. But I won't apologize for wanting something real."

I turned and walked out without waiting for permission. The heavy doors slammed shut behind me.

My wolf stayed restless as I headed outside. Uneasy. Like he could smell someone just beyond reach. Someone who didn't belong to our world yet... but felt close. Important.

I shook my head, pushing the feeling away. Whatever it was, it would have to wait.

Lila's POV:

"Babe, can you grab me another drink?"

I already had two in my hands. I looked down at them, then back up at Tyler, who was leaning against the kitchen island like he owned it, laughing at something one of his teammates said.

"I literally have your drink," I said, holding it up.

"That one's warm."

"It's been thirty seconds."

"Lila." He said my name like I was being difficult on purpose. "It's a party. Relax."

I relaxed. I always relaxed. I handed him the fresh one, kept the warm one for myself, and told myself this was fine, this was normal, boyfriends acted like this at parties and it didn't mean anything.

He wandered off toward his teammates after that, and I lost track of him for a while — twenty minutes, maybe half an hour, long enough that the warm drink in my hand went from warm to room temperature to something I didn't want to hold anymore. I finally set it down and went looking for the bathroom, since the downstairs one had a line snaking out the door and someone said there was a second one upstairs.

I didn't find the bathroom. I found something else instead.

The upstairs hallway was dark except for a strip of light under one door, and I might have kept walking if I hadn't heard my own name.

"—no, Lila's fine with it, she doesn't even notice half the time—"

I stopped.

"—I mean she's sweet, she's just, like, a lot of work, you know? She wants to talk about feelings constantly—"

That was Tyler's voice.

I pushed the door open.

He was sitting on the edge of someone's bed with his hand halfway up a girl's shirt, and the girl — pretty, blond, definitely a hockey booster's daughter, I'd seen her around — froze with her mouth open like she'd been caught mid-sentence instead of mid-everything-else.

Nobody said anything for a second. The music from downstairs thumped through the floor like it didn't know what just happened.

"Lila." Tyler stood up too fast, tucking his shirt in like that would fix it. "This isn't — okay, it's exactly what it looks like, but let me explain—"

"Explain what?" My voice came out steadier than I felt. "The part where your hand was under her shirt, or the part where I'm apparently 'a lot of work'?"

"Baby, come on—"

"Don't call me that."

The blond girl had the decency to at least look uncomfortable, pulling her shirt down and inching toward the door. I didn't move to let her past. Let her be uncomfortable. Let her sit in it for one second the way I was about to sit in it for the rest of the semester.

"How long?" I asked.

"Lila, it's not—"

"How long, Tyler?"

He rubbed the back of his neck. That was answer enough.

I don't remember deciding to go back downstairs. I just remember being there, in the middle of the kitchen, with my ex-boyfriend trailing after me going baby, baby, just let me talk, and my hand closing around the cup I'd been holding for him thirty seconds ago.

"You want this drink so bad?" I said.

"Lila, don't—"

I threw it in his face.

The kitchen went dead silent except for someone's phone, already up, already recording, because of course it was, because this was a college party and there was always a phone up.

"Enjoy the drink, Tyler." My hands were shaking. My voice wasn't, which felt like the only victory I was going to get tonight. "It's not even warm anymore."

Someone near the fridge actually laughed. Somebody else went "oh my god" in the specific tone that meant this is going on my story in the next five minutes. I didn't care. I grabbed my jacket off the back of a chair and walked out through the crowd that had gathered like they'd been waiting for a show, and it wasn't until I hit the front porch that I let myself start shaking properly.

That was when I noticed him.

Kael Ryder was leaning against the porch railing with a beer he wasn't drinking, watching the whole thing through the window like it was the best thing that had happened at this party all night. He didn't look away when I caught him staring.

"Nice throw," he said.

"Do you mind?"

"Not even a little." He tilted his head, studying me the way he studied everything — like he was deciding whether it was worth his attention. "You want a ride home or you want to keep standing out here shaking?"

"I'm not shaking."

"Okay." He didn't argue. He just watched me not-shake for another few seconds, then pushed off the railing. "I'll get my keys."

"I didn't say yes."

"You didn't say no either." He was already walking. "Come on, Hart. Long night."

By the time I got home, three people had already sent me the video.

I sat on the porch steps of my building with my phone lighting up my face in the dark, watching myself throw a drink in Tyler's face from four different angles, in four different Instagram stories, with captions like LMAOOOO, she really did that 💀 and, worse, okay but who's the guy on the porch watching lol.

That last one had thirty thousand views already.

"There you are." Ivy's voice cut through the dark, and I looked up to find her hurrying down the steps in a going-out dress and heels, keys already in her hand. "I was literally about to leave to come find you, what happened, are you okay, why does my phone say your name eleven times—"

"Tyler cheated on me."

Ivy stopped walking. "What?"

"Upstairs. With Selena. The one from the boosters' thing." I heard my own voice crack on the last word and hated it. "It's on video. Throwing the drink, I mean. Not the — not the cheating part. Just me looking unhinged."

"You're not unhinged, you're—" Ivy sat down hard next to me on the steps, heels and all. "Okay. Wait. Back up. He cheated on you at the party? Tonight?"

"With his hand up her shirt, yeah."

"I'm going to kill him."

"Get in line."

She pulled me into her side, and I let myself finally do the thing I'd been holding off since the hallway, which was cry, ugly and loud, into my best friend's shoulder on the porch steps while my phone kept buzzing with notifications I refused to look at.

"Who drove you home?" Ivy asked eventually, when I'd calmed down enough to breathe normal again. "You didn't drive yourself in this state, please tell me."

"Kael Ryder."

Ivy went very still. "The Kael Ryder?"

"I don't know how many there are."

"Lila." She pulled back to look at me, mascara-smudged eyes wide. "Kael Ryder drove you home."

"He was outside. He offered. I was too tired to say no."

"Okay, but why was he outside, he doesn't leave parties before two a.m., I've literally never once seen that man leave anything early—"

"I don't know, Ivy, I didn't ask for his whole schedule."

She narrowed her eyes at me like she was trying to solve a math problem, then apparently decided it wasn't solvable tonight, because she shook her head and pulled me back against her shoulder. "We'll deal with the hockey mystery later. Right now we're doing pizza rolls and you're going to mute Tyler on everything, and tomorrow I'm keying his car."

"You don't know which one's his."

"I'll find out."

I almost laughed. Almost. "I just want to disappear for like a week or something."

"You can't disappear, you have that journalism seminar Tuesday."

"Ivy."

"I'm serious, you missed it twice already—"

"IVY."

"Okay, okay. Pizza rolls first. Disappearing later." She stood up, tugging me with her by both hands. "Come on. Up. We are not doing any more crying on concrete steps, my knees can't take it in these heels."

I let her pull me up. My phone buzzed again in my pocket, an

d against every instinct I had, I looked.

'@kael.ryder started following you.'

I stood there on the steps with Ivy already halfway to the door, staring at my screen, really looking surprised.