I never asked to feel other people's pain. It just happens — a brush of fingers, a crowded hallway, and suddenly I'm drowning in emotions that don't belong to me. I've spent my entire life hiding it, masking it, shrinking myself down to nothing so no one would ever notice what I am. Then he noticed. Caelum Voss. Elite Alpha. The most feared student at Ashveil University — a campus that runs on wolf hierarchy, old blood, and rules carved into stone before my grandmother was born. He's cold, ruthless, magnetic in the way that dangerous things always are. And for reasons he won't fully explain, he's decided I need his protection. His solution? Tell every wolf on campus that I'm his. It's fake. A performance. A cage dressed up as a shield. Except Caelum feels everything I project and I feel everything he buries. The rage. The loneliness. The want he refuses to name. Every accidental touch unravels us both a little more, and the line between pretend and real starts bleeding in ways neither of us can take back. The tribal elders have one law above all others: an Alpha cannot true-mate a human. Ever. But the bond forming between us doesn't care about laws. And the people closest to us — the ones we trusted most — are the very ones sharpening the knives.