Isabella

“I’m better in bed.”

“Well, I have a bigger ass, and he’s an ass guy, so—”

“Well, have you ever given hea—”

I took a deep breath and closed my eyes. Someone save me, please. 

I couldn’t deal with another catfight from Bitch One and Bitch Two behind me about who had a better chance with Alpha Roman. Neither of them really had a chance with him; they were both annoying as hell, and I doubted he wanted something like that in his pack house.

“Quiet down,” Dr. Jakkobs said from the front of my Anatomy class. “I know you’re all excited because it’s the last week of senior year, but we need to get through this review material.” He looked at the class through his thick bifocals and then raised a brow, deepening the creases in his forehead. “After grading your latest exams, most of you need the extra review.”

I gazed down at the exam on my desk and sighed. On the top of it in red ink, Dr. Jakkobs had scribbled another big, fat one hundred percent with a smiley face.

Bitch One—the nickname my best friend and I had given Vanessa, one of the popular girls, after she made fun of us in middle school for obsessing over wanting to become warrior wolves in Roman’s pack—leaned forward in her seat until she was nearly breathing down my neck. “What are we learning about today?” she asked, her overwhelming strawberry perfume making me choke. “If it’s the female reproductive system, I can definitely volunteer myself as a model.”

What the he—

Derek turned his pen between his fingers and rolled his brown eyes. “Nobody wants to see you naked, Vanessa.”

The class broke out in a fit of laughter, and I pressed my lips together, trying to stifle a chuckle. Derek leaned back in his seat and flashed me his infamous smirk. 

Dr. Jakkobs walked around his desk, arms crossed, staring pointedly at Derek and Vanessa. “Enough,” he said. “I doubt you two really want to end up in the principal’s office this time of the year.”

Vanessa huffed and sat back. Thank the Moon Goddess I could finally breathe again.

“Now”—with pink marker, Dr. Jakkobs wrote Anatomy Review in large letters on the whiteboard—“let’s begin.”

I sank down in my seat and gazed at my notebook, which didn’t have a single anatomy note in it. Instead, it was filled with the names of wrestling takedowns and reversals, different boxing combinations, and a list of judo throws that Derek and I had been studying relentlessly.

High school ended this week, which meant that Alpha Roman was going to assign us positions in his pack based on our academic and physical performances. And no matter the number of perfect grades I’d received this year, I was determined to become a warrior.

Since I had been four years old, I had been training almost every day with Derek. I had memorized the Lunar Battle Manual that all outstanding warriors read, and I’d even had the opportunity to train with the warriors in our pack last year when Roman was out of town.

Well, Roman never officially told me I could. I just snuck into practice and hoped that nobody would say a word to him about me being there. Derek’s neighbor and retired warrior, Mr. Beck, urged me to practice with them; he’d told me that when he was training to be a warrior, he would sneak out to fight rogues during the night and that slipping into practice wouldn’t hurt me.

Someone knocked on the door, and Principal Hackle popped his head into the room. “I hope I’m not interrupting.”

Dr. Jakkobs raised a brow at Derek and Vanessa and then turned to Principal Hackle. “No, not at all.”

The door opened wider, and that was when I saw him.

Alpha Roman stood right behind Hackle. Tall, tan, and terrifyingly tense. His muscles flexed through his white V-neck shirt, and I sucked in a breath. When he stepped into the room, nobody said a word.

His gaze was fixed on me and only me.

I glanced down at my notes. Trying to look busy. Trying not to think about last night.

“Hi, Alpha!” Vanessa squealed, her nasally voice in my ear again. 

I could feel her toying with the ends of my brown hair. She was so … damn … desperate. But, hell, so had I been yesterday.

Hackle said a few words and then disappeared back into the hall. Roman walked farther into the room and stopped when he reached my desk. 

Was it getting hot in here? My body felt like it was on fire, like everyone knew what had happened.

He cleared his throat.

Please leave. Please leave.

The more I tried to push away my dirty thoughts of Roman, the more my cheeks flushed. He needed to leave now, so I could learn more about the now-very-interesting topic of the female reproductive system. Vanessa could be the demonstration for all I cared. It’d be so much more comfortable than being stared down by—

“Isabella,” Alpha Roman said.

Fuck.

I glanced up at him through my lashes and fiddled with my pen. “Yes, Alpha Roman?”

“Outside. Now.”

Without another word, he walked to the door and held it open for me. 

Damn it. I stuffed my exam inside my textbook and closed it, so Jakkobs wouldn’t see that I hadn’t been paying attention.

Derek eyed me, brow raised, but I shrugged my shoulders and sent him a look that said, Last night, when you called me thirteen times and I didn’t answer once, I really wasn’t doing anything bad, I promise.

After taking a deep breath, I walked out of the room. The wooden door closed behind me, but I didn’t dare turn around. This was not how I’d expected my Monday afternoon to go. Not at all.

Roman stepped closer to me, and I could feel his body heat behind me. Warming me in places that it shouldn’t have.

A kid walked down the hall, opposite of us, and then disappeared into a classroom. 

As soon as that door closed, he shoved me against the lockers, snatched my chin in his callous hand from behind, and ran his nose up the side of my neck. “What am I going to do with you?” he whispered in my ear. “This whole fucking week, you’ve been teasing me.”

I shook my head. But I had been. I’d touched myself too many times to count, thinking about him pounding me against my headboard, about his cock inside of me, about his lips on every inch of my body.

It was wrong to think these sinful thoughts about my alpha.

“Don’t deny it,” he growled in my ear, his canines grazing against my soft spot. 

He pressed himself against my backside, and I clenched. He had never been this close to me before—at least, not like this.

His fingers trailed up my leg and slipped under my skirt. “I know you keep your curtains open at night for me. You want me to watch as you rub your sensitive little clit.”

“No …” I said breathlessly. “I-I don’t.”

“Don’t lie to your alpha,” he said, the scent of mint overwhelmingly powerful. Just like him.

I gulped and shifted from foot to foot. His fingers hovered mere millimeters over my clit, and my whole body was just aching for his touch.

With one of his hands softly wrapped around the front of my neck, he pulled me to him. “Don’t lie to me,” he said against my ear.

My core clenched; I was just waiting for him to slip his fingers into my panties and feel how wet I was for him. I didn’t care that there were only minutes left before the bell rang and everyone flooded into the hallway. I didn’t care that he was my alpha and that toying with him was wrong. I needed him so fucking badly.

“I’m not,” I said.

Lie.

He chuckled lowly in my ear. “I bet you think about me as you do it, don’t you?”

“No.”

“No?” He pushed some hair behind my ear and ground his hips into mine. “You don’t think about my face between your legs, eating you until you’re trembling?” 

No. 

“You don’t think about my cock in your mouth?” His thumb brushed against my lips. 

No. 

“You don’t think about my hand wrapped around your throat as I thrust into you over and over and over again?”

I closed my eyes and inched my legs closer together. Oh Goddess. Oh Goddess. Touch me, damn it. I needed it.

“Please be quiet,” I said breathlessly. The walls were thin, and I didn’t want anyone hearing us, especially Vanessa. She’d make my life a living hell by telling everyone in our small town that I was the new pack slut. “People will hear.”

“This is my pack, Isabella. I don’t care who hears you moaning my name.” He pulled his fingers away, taking a deep breath, and pushed himself off of me. “Close your blinds next time.”

“Or what?” I asked, turning around to face him.

That was my first mistake of the day.

He roughly grabbed my chin and shoved me against the locker again. “Or you won’t like the consequences.” He gazed at my lips when he spoke, his thumb harshly brushing against it, and my heart warmed.

The way he touched me told me one thing—that he wanted to devour my body. But his eyes, shifting between a soft green and a piercing gold, told me that wasn’t all he wanted. He wanted more.

He took a deep breath, his chest rising and falling against mine. Tingles erupted on my lips, and I closed my eyes for the briefest moment. Not sure why him being so close excited me, but it did.

When the bell rang, he shook his head, shoved me away, and walked down the hall and out the double doors. I stood there, inhaling his scent and staring down the hall in complete shock.

I didn’t know what kind of threat that was from him … but he had said that I wouldn’t like the consequences if I didn’t close the curtains the next time I touched myself for him. So, being the good girl that I was, I knew the one thing I was going to do when I got home.

Open the curtains as far as they could go.