Chapter 9
Vivienne's POV
I didn't sleep.
Every time I closed my eyes, the medical room came back — his breath on my neck, sandalwood flooding through cracked suppressant, the way his pulse had been just as wrecked as mine.
I replayed each second for tactical value, and my body kept betraying the exercise by flushing hot at all the wrong moments.
By four AM I gave up pretending. Scent journal open to his page. Last night's entry: Warm sandalwood, complete, undiluted. Reaction: no precedent.
He doesn't trust Blackwell medical staff. Hidden shoulder injury, two weeks — someone hurt him and Blackwell either didn't know or didn't care. That gap between him and his handlers was where my answers lived.
Today: get him talking about why he's hiding injuries from his own people. If Blackwell doesn't have his loyalty, someone else does — and that someone might connect to Marcus.
I tried to summon Dash's scent. Cedar and sunlit leather. My sinuses gave me ozone and mint.
Mirror. Glasses. Tight bun. Oversized hoodie. Medical kit.
The corridor smelled wrong before I turned the corner.
White jasmine — private-blend, old money. Behind it, amber and cold oak. Three Betas against one Unawakened.
Serena Blackwell stood dead center of the hallway. Chestnut hair, navy coat tailored to the millimeter. Gland exposed at her throat — not a challenge. A statement: My last name hits harder than your biology ever will.
"Vivienne Ashworth. Unawakened. No Pack. Forty-seven minutes alone with Kael in the medical room yesterday."
She timed it. Someone on that team reports to her.
"Player injury protocol. Handbook, chapter three, section seven."
Three Beta scents pushed at once — a slow tide rising past my knees, my chest. My legs went soft. Rank suppression written into blood.
"Kael Thorne is not someone you get to stand near. Not because he's dangerous — because you haven't earned the right."
"Earned it? You're standing in a hallway with two friends holding down a girl who can't even shift — and you call that earning something? If he wanted you near him, you wouldn't need to patrol his schedule."
Underneath the jasmine, something sour cracked through. I'd hit nerve.
Serena didn't answer. The micro-lift of her chin was enough — the amber girl's grip tightened, yanking my collar down another two inches.
"Since you spent forty-seven minutes with him — let's see if he left anything behind."
My shoulder blades burned where the wall dug in — the lash wounds underneath the hoodie screaming against the pressure, and for one sick second I was back in Marcus's study, palms on the desk, counting strikes.
The amber girl yanked harder. My nails clawed red lines across her knuckles —
Footsteps. From the medical room door.
He was inside the whole time.
Ozone and cold mint cut through the hallway — instant, total. Every molecule of jasmine erased. The amber girl's hand sprang open. The oak girl stumbled back. Beta bodies surrendering to a high-tier Alpha. No thought required.
He filled the doorframe the way a storm fills a valley — black hoodie, shoulders that made the corridor feel narrow, every line of him radiating the kind of stillness that comes right before something breaks.
The fluorescent light caught the sharp edge of his jaw, the dark slash of his brows, and I hated myself for noticing any of it while two girls still had their hands on my clothes.
He didn't look at her.
His gaze landed on me — torn collar, exposed collarbone, white knuckles clutching my own neckline. His jaw locked. Temple jumping once.
Eyes moved to the nail marks on the amber girl's hand. Then to Serena. Less than two seconds. Her lips parted and nothing came out.
He walked past her without slowing, shoulder at an almost insulting distance. Like the only thing in this corridor worth reaching was at the other end.
Me.
His hand closed around my wrist. Not gentle — fingers wrapped all the way around, thumb pressing into my pulse point, and I knew he could feel it. The hammering. The stupid, traitorous, absolutely mortifying hammering that had nothing to do with Serena and everything to do with the fact that his hand was enormous and warm and I'd stopped breathing.
"Come with me."
Not loud. Every person in that corridor heard it. Including Serena, whose face I caught for one split second over his shoulder — mouth open, the kind of expression that said she'd been slapped but couldn't figure out by which hand.
Good.
He pulled and I stumbled, sneakers squeaking against the floor because his stride was twice mine and he wasn't adjusting. My torn collar flapped against my collarbone and I should have been fixing it, but all I could think was — his back.
The width of it. The way it blocked out the fluorescent light like an eclipse, and how every single person in this hallway was watching him tow me away and not one of them dared to move.
My cheeks were on fire. I looked like an absolute disaster and I didn't care because his thumb was still on my pulse and he hadn't let go.
Behind us: "Kael — I wasn't finished —"
His scent thickened into a wall of pressure. The oak girl's knees buckled.
Kael shoved open a door marked EQUIPMENT MAINTENANCE, pushed me through, followed, pulled it shut. In Serena Blackwell's face.
Heels turning. Sharp, deliberate. Gone.
Darkness. Six square feet. Bleach and rubber. And him — ozone and mint filling the space with nowhere to go.
"Can you —" Half an octave too high. "— tell me why you dragged me into a supply closet?"
"Serena." One word.
"Her family's pushing a mating bond." Each syllable ground out. "Once I'm locked in, everything I've built —" He stopped.
Everything you've built what? Filed. Tagged: critical.
"I need a fake mate. Someone carrying my temporary mark. Buys time."
"And what do I get?"
"You walked into this corridor alone. No wolf. No Pack. No one between you and whatever Serena does next." A pause. "My mark changes that. No one in this school touches what's mine."
What's mine. That possessive landed behind my sternum with a weight I didn't expect.
"That's not enough. I need information. Marcus Frost is secretly funding someone connected to this school. I need a name."
"You're investigating a Pack Alpha."
"That's my business."
"It became my business when you said his name in a closet with me." His voice dropped. "You registered under your mother's name. Father's field blank. But you're carrying a Pack Alpha's punitive Command on your skin. That depth — only your own Alpha leaves that kind of mark."
Ice water down my spine. My hand found the door handle behind me.
"We're done."
"I told you because if you don't know I know, you'll make mistakes. Mistakes that get you found." His voice hadn't changed pitch. That was worse. "If I wanted to use it, I wouldn't have pulled you in here. I'd have let Serena do it for you."
My fingers stayed on the handle. Every instinct screaming open the door, get out, he has your whole identity in his teeth —
His breathing was steady. Unhurried. Like he'd already calculated that I wouldn't leave.
But the logic held. If he'd wanted to expose me, he'd had twenty-four hours. He hadn't.
"I was never planning to tell anyone. But you needed to know I have it. So you stop pretending you're invisible."
My hand loosened. Not because I trusted him. Because the alternative was worse.
"Trade. Your mark for my cover. You give me leads — real ones. Actual Blackwell network intel that connects to Frost. And my identity — no one. Ever."
Four seconds. The longest silence yet.
"Leads. Not guarantees."
I stood in the dark and thought about what this meant. His scent on my skin. Seventy-two hours of smelling like Kael Thorne. Every wolf on campus would know. Maisie would ask. Dash would smell it. My invisibility — the one weapon I had — gone. Traded for a different kind of armor.
"Deal."
He shifted forward half a step. "Now."
My heartbeat stopped. "What?"
"Temporary mark. Now. You walk out without my scent, Serena's people try again."
Airtight. But my body responded to now with something logic couldn't touch — heat rushing from my throat to my stomach, every nerve ending orienting toward him like compass needles swinging north.
"...How does it work?"
"Neck. Gland. Three to five seconds of contact."
His lips. On my gland. Three to five seconds.
My palms were slick. My cheeks burned and I thanked God for the dark.
One beat. His breathing hitched — barely, but I caught it.
"Deal," I whispered.
He moved closer. The dark swallowed everything.
"Let your hair down."
