Luca dragged her by the arm to the nearest empty classroom and bundled her inside roughly. None of the student body noticed her kidnapping as far as she could tell, all too busy marching to their first lessons of the day. Luca shut the door behind them.

“I don’t know anything!” Darcy blurted immediately. She retreated away from him, further into the room, until her butt hit the teacher’s desk.

Luca stalked towards her, very much the predator he is in every movement. “I didn’t ask you anything yet,” he reminded her.

“It doesn’t matter what you ask! I won’t know the answer!”

“What’s your name?” he asked sarcastically.

Darcy turned her face away and huffed. “That information is on a need-to-know basis.”

“Darcy.” Her name on his tongue was delicious. She hated her heart’s erratic behaviour as soon as her name slid from his mouth.

“Who is that?”

“My mate, apparently.”

Darcy stayed silent.

He continued, but Darcy couldn’t fit his tone or body language into a category. He was either annoyed, patronising her or perhaps feeling awkward. Maybe a mixture of the three. “According to MYSTIKA, Darcy J Cove is the full name of my soul-mate.” He plucked the piece of card embossed with MYSTIKA’s logo from his phone case and flipped it to show her name scrawled on the other side.

“I don’t believe in psychics,” Darcy mumbled feebly.

“You don’t believe you’re my mate?”

A splash of realisation hit her brain at his words. He didn’t know she had turned eighteen. She had never thought about it before but why would he know? She didn’t have to deny knowing they were mates, she could deny even being old enough to feel the connection between them.

“No, I don’t,” she said, pushing her voice to be stronger. If she poke with conviction, maybe he’d believe her.

“When is your birthday?”

“August,” she lied. Her birthday was January 8^th.

“Okay, so I’m up first. I’m June 15^th.”

Darcy was well aware of his far too fast approaching birthday.

“Perfect.” She pushed away from the desk. “So until then, we don’t need to worry about this. Or talk about it.” She swung under his elbow and darted for the door. “Or be within ten feet of each other.”

Luca snagged her back by the backpack, hooking his fingers through the loop and pulling her to him roughly. Her feet skidded on the smooth wood floor. His body heat was permeating both their clothes.

“Hold up,” he snapped. “We’re probably soul-mates and you’re fine to stay apart for two months and pretend like we don’t know any better?”

She wanted to tell him she would be fine to stay apart for the rest of their lives. “I’m so glad you understand my feelings on this matter,” she said instead, business-like in tone. She made another attempt to pull away but he did not release her bag.

Without any room for question, he dismissed her words. “That’s not happening.” He spun her by the loop on her backpack, forcing her to face him and his stern gaze.

Darcy took a mini step back, attempting to put any space between them she could. Anything to avoid his intoxicating scent. She wanted to roll in it like a dog in a flower field.

“But you could be wasting your time,” she countered, a tiny tremble finding its way into her voice. “Time you could spend meeting the real deal. What if she’s out there and she sees you sniffing around someone else?”

“What if I see someone else sniffing around you?” he growled.

“The only people that bother me are not looking for a hug, Luca.” Her voice cracked on his name and she wanted to die. It was her first time using it to his face. She covered herself by continuing, “and the ones that do are just you and your goons anyway.”

“My goons?” He repeated with an impish smirk. That word seemingly tickling him.

“You know who I mean,” she grumbled, cheeks warming. “Your little group of henchmen that follow you around. They have bad intentions but not… those kind.”

He crept in closer. “The hug kind?” he repeated her earlier words with a laugh, it was bordering on his cruel one. The one that made his teeth look particularly sharp.

“You know what I meant.”

He bent his head down to her. His nose pressed against her cheek. She twisted away, tilting her face downwards. Long fingers curled around her arms and kept her still as he spoke huskily into her skin. “Hugs are not my intention with my mate.” His scent was suffocating, she could sink into it and never leave.

It took every ounce of willpower within her not to submit to him completely. To turn into a helpless goo in his arms. “How lucky for me that I’m not your mate then,” she said. Where she found the strength to say those words was beyond her.

“I don’t like your tone.” His own tone was growing impatient and frustrated. It made her nervous. She knew what he could be like when he was angry.

She responded quietly and carefully. “I… I don’t like how close your… face is.”

He connected their foreheads, his body hooked over hers. “Maybe you’ll get used to it.” There was a flirtatious edge to his words. That made her even more nervous. She knew what she was dealing with when he was mad, but this version of Luca was unchartered.

Darcy’s voice became a reed-thin whisper. “I don’t think so.”

She ducked under his arm and dashed. This time, she made it.

She threw the door back into his face and hurtled down the corridor like a flailing bird that just couldn’t get up into the air. His scent was following her. His breaths huffing out behind her, tinged with anger.

She reached the ladies’ toilets and burst inside as Luca’s fingers grazed her back over her sweater. But he didn’t follow her over the threshold. With her back pressed against the door she listened to him growl quietly on the other side.

Luca’s refusal to cross the holy boundary line of the girl’s bathroom gave Darcy time to catch her breath, text her friends, and compose herself. When the bustle of second period class changes could be heard through the door, she peeled it open. Either Luca had blended his body and scent amongst the student body pushing through the corridor, or he had given up.

Darcy didn’t have time to wait any longer, she needed to get to her next class, it was the only place she knew she would be safe. She ran into the crowd clumsily.

Less than a hundred yards from the toilets an enormous figure stepped out into her path too suddenly for her to halt. A crack of pain across her forehead brought her eyes to a pinch. She stumbled backwards, bringing a hand to her face in both mortification and pain.

“Hey, you okay?” The giant asked. The voice was deep and unfamiliar.

Darcy wanted the ground to eat her up, but she managed to garble out, “Yeah, I’m fine. Sorry.” She squinted up at him through the pain in her forehead. “Are you okay? I shouldn’t have been… I’m sorry.” She was rambling, but at least he didn’t seem offended.

“It’s fine, this took the full force of your face,” he laughed while waving the hard-back book he was carrying.

Darcy flushed. She was about to apologise again when a husky, all too familiar, voice spoke firmly behind her. “I’ve got her from here.”

The tall boy started at the sight of the person at her back and nodded respectfully to them both. He mingled back into the crowds as they disappeared into the classrooms.

Luca began to ask her if she was okay, but Darcy had taken off again.