Chapter3

The bloodied hand snatched the edge of the curtain. My breath hitched in my throat as I braced myself for a brutal fight.

"Professor, the sedative dosage isn't high enough."

An abrupt, young male voice cut through the silence. It was an assistant in a lab coat, rushing over with a metal tray in hand. The Dean's fingers froze on the fabric.

Visibly irritated, he turned back toward the dissection table. "Bring me the backup syringes."

That was our only window.

The iron-hard arm clamped around my waist surged with explosive power. The man behind me locked me tight against his chest with a single arm and launched us backward—straight into the floor-to-ceiling window!

Crash.

As the glass shattered, the sharp sting of shards grazing my cheek mixed with the stomach-dropping weightlessness of our free fall. In mid-air, he brutally twisted his body, forcing himself beneath me.

With a heavy, sickening thud, his back slammed into the muddy lawn.

I lay sprawled against his chest, feeling his erratic, unnaturally heavy breaths hitting my ear.

"Get up." His voice was tight. His fingers locked around my wrist, hauling me up from the dirt.

Behind us, a blinding flash of white light erupted from the classroom, followed instantly by the blare of an alarm. Someone shouted, "East window!" The frantic thud of footsteps intermingled with the clatter of metal instruments, closing in on our position.

My mind went completely blank for a split second. We couldn't get caught!

I had scouted this route from the back wall of the lab building to the dorms thoroughly over the past week.

"This way!" I grabbed his wrist and yanked him to the left. "Over that wall. There's a flowerbed behind it. The patrol flashlights never sweep there."

He vaulted over in the direction I pulled him. At almost the exact same moment, the sound of approaching footsteps echoed behind us, and a flashlight beam sliced through the night, barely missing the ledge where we had just stood.

"Keep going to that maintenance alley ahead. It loops around to the back of the dorms," I panted as we ran. "I'm on the third floor, single room—but you can't go through the main lobby. The front entrance has cameras."

"Where are the blind spots?" he asked in a low voice, his strides never faltering.

"The rear fire escape. The blind spot is against the wall." I paused for a quick breath. "The cameras here only cover the main entrances. That old staircase in the corner was left over from a renovation a few years ago, and no one ever checks it. During my first week here, I couldn't sneak into the main building, so I figured out this route."

He rounded the corner following my directions, utilizing the shadows to scale the rusted iron fire escape. He didn't stop until he shoved me into my single dorm room at the very end of the corridor.

Click.

The second the deadbolt slid into place, I slumped against the door and slid down to the floor, gasping for air, my knees still trembling.

The man didn't turn on the light. He stood in the corner, his back to the faint sliver of moonlight, his chest heaving. His heavy cedar scent rolled through the room, now laced with a faint, metallic trace of blood—likely from tearing his skin when he took the fall for me.

Just as I managed to get some air into my lungs, his gaze locked with terrifying precision onto my collar.

"A high-tier wolf fang." His voice dropped a fraction lower. His eyes lingered on the tooth pendant for a moment before rising to meet mine. "It can suppress your scent and fool most people's senses. But those silver veins right here... they can't fool me. The parchment scrolls of our pack recorded these very things."

He didn't say anything else, merely giving me another calculated look.

"I'm Kai, an exiled pureblood Alpha." He took a half-step back, leaning against the wall. "I infiltrated this hellhole to find out what happened to our kind who went missing."

My fingertips gave an uncontrollable twitch.

"The bloodline running through your veins isn't ordinary." Kai's tone was flat. "You saw clearly tonight what this academy is hiding. They aren't just killing; they're performing live vivisections. If you stay here, you could die at any second."

I bit down hard on the soft flesh inside my cheek, refusing to make a single sound. From the moment I stepped onto that second-floor corridor, I had clearly sensed this damned bond—but in a cannibalistic enemy camp like this, handing over my vulnerabilities and absolute control to a rogue Alpha who could lose his mind at any second was no different from a death wish.

I would rather die than admit it.

Kai's breathing grew ragged as well. He took a step forward, raising his hand to touch my jaw, but the second his fingertips brushed my skin, he froze.

I watched him squeeze his eyes shut, his Adam's apple bobbing with a difficult swallow.

When he opened them again, the feral, frantic look in those golden, slitted pupils had been mostly suppressed.

"You're burning up." His voice grew a shade hoarser. "Your bloodline... it's pulling at my wolf."

He dropped his hand and took a large step back.

"But now isn't the time." He averted his gaze. "This is no place for romance. It's a damn meat-grinder of a cage."

He turned and strode toward the door.

"Move."

I shifted to the side, giving him clearance. The moment his hand gripped the doorknob, he didn't look back; he merely cast a slight glance over his shoulder.

"I'll be transferring into your class tomorrow to keep investigating the secrets of this school."

"Keep your distance from me. I don't want to lose control."