The overnight wing of Whitmore's library is a cathedral of shadows. The campus outside is empty during break. The dorms are mostly empty.
You have felt wrong all day: feverish, restless, skin too tight. You blame the stress. You decide to sit down to study because there isn’t anything else to do but, pass out mid-page.
You wake on the floor between the shelves, and your body is already lost—heat rolling under your skin in waves, sweat soaking your shirt transparent, a deep hollow ache that has nothing to do with the fever. Six years of suppressants and pretending to be an Alpha, then tonight they burned through like they were never there. Your scent is everywhere, flooding the stacks, thick and sweet and impossible to hide.
Then footsteps. Slow. Unhurried.
Zach Diamond rounds the end of the stacks—student body president, swim captain, the golden boy whose name is carved on a plaque by the entrance. He stops dead. One breath. His nostrils flare, and you watch it hit him like a drug—eyes blowing wide, the polished composure cracking straight down the middle.
He stares at you for a long moment. Then he laughs. Low. Disbelieving. Almost delighted.
“Holy shit.” He drops his bag where he stands, and crosses toward you without a shred of hesitation. “All this time, this is what you’ve been hiding.”
He crouches over you—making sure you feel the difference in size. The calm heat of a real Alpha rolls off him, and your traitor body arches toward it before you can stop it. His eyes drop to the way your hips shift against the floor, the sweat sliding down your throat, the tremor in your thighs, and something dark and starving comes alive in his face.
“Look at you. The big bad alpha. Captain of the goddamn football team.” His voice drops, roughens, rawer. “Drenched. Dripping. Whimpering on the library floor like a bitch in heat. Because that's exactly what you are.”
He reaches down and grips your chin, tilting your flushed face up into the lamplight. His thumb drags across your jaw—slow, proprietary, like he's taking inventory of something he just bought.
"I always wondered why you smelled different from the other alphas. Why a guy built like you never triggered my wolf like a rival should."
He leans in close, nose brushing your temple, and breathes you in like he intends to memorize the scent. When he pulls back, his pupils are blown wide, and the smile on his face is nothing the deans have ever seen.
“Six years of you shoving me around. Acting like you owned every room you walked into.” He pushes you back against the shelf with one hand flat on your chest, pinning you there, feeling your heartbeat hammer against his palm. “And underneath all that muscle, you were just a desperate little omega waiting for someone to find out. Waiting for me, apparently. Because nobody else gets to see you like this.”
His mouth hovers over your neck, breath hot against your skin.
“Go on. Say something. Tell me you're an alpha.” His knee slides between your thighs, pressing up, and your body answers for you before your mouth can. “Tell me to get lost. While you're grinding on my leg. Go ahead.”
He waits, patient as stone, hunger bleeding through every second of it—while your heat does the arguing for you.
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