The Campus Alpha’s Broken Mate

Three

~Callum~

I should have gone after her the second she slammed the door.

Instead, I stood there for five more seconds, jaw tight, hands at my sides, listening to the silence she left behind.

My wolf did not share my restraint.

“Go get her.”

“She can barely look at me without wanting blood.”

“Make her want us.”

“That’s not how this works.”

I grabbed my keys and left before I could waste another second pretending I was going to sit in my room and let Jace Ryder keep breathing like the night had gone his way.

His frat house was still lit up when I got there. Music low now. Party dead. Just the leftovers. Boys in expensive sweatpants who thought being part of something made them harder to kill.

One of them spotted me through the open door and went still.

Another one leaned against the wall and tried to smile through it. “You lost, Voss?”

I walked straight in.

“Get Jace.”

The smile slipped. “He’s busy.”

I kept going.

A third i***t blocked my path. “I said he’s busy.”

I shot daggers at him then he moved.

Smartest thing anyone in that house did all night.

Somebody behind me muttered, “Damn. He really came over a girl.”

It got a few snorts.

Then another voice, louder this time because cowards love an audience, said, “Guess Jace was done with her, so now she’s your problem.”

I turned.

He was one of Jace’s boys. Tall. Loud. Drunk enough to be stupid. His grin died the second I started walking toward him.

“You got something else to say?” I asked.

He puffed his chest anyway. “You heard me.”

I punched him hard. He dropped against the wall and slid halfway down it with blood already running from his nose.

Nobody laughed after that.

“Get. Jace.”

This time, someone went.

The rest stayed quiet, which suited me better. Fear looked right on them.

Jace came down the stairs like he was walking into a stage light. Chin up. Mouth twisted. Boys like him never knew when to stop performing.

“You really are obsessed,”

I didn’t answer.

He smirked. “What, she ran to you after she left here? Needed your chest to cry on?”

“She didn’t need to.” I took a step closer. “I’m here anyway.”

“Why?” he asked. “You barely know her. Unless the hallway was that good.”

“She made me wait for two years,” he continued, looking around like he needed his boys to appreciate the joke. “Whole virgin act with the sweet innocent girlfriend routine. Then one night with you and suddenly she’s got horny. Kind of embarrassing for her, honestly.”

My wolf fought so hard it almost broke through my ribs.

Jace saw it and smiled wider, because he thought he had me figured out now. “Damn. You want her that bad?”

I knocked him down before he could say another word.

His head snapped sideways. He staggered into the banister hard enough to rattle it. Blood bloomed under one eye almost immediately.

Jace touched his face, stared at the blood on his fingers, then back at me with murder in his eyes.

“Careful,” he warned.

“Take the video down.”

He laughed once. Wrong move.

“You came here for that?”

“I came here to remind you your mouth can get you hurt.”

His expression changed. “You think you can walk into my house and threaten me over a girl who was in my bed crying tonight?”

I stepped in close enough that he had to tilt his head back a little to keep eye contact.

“You and I both know she wasn’t crying for you.”

Behind me, one of his boys tried to recover some nerve. “Why do you care this much?”

I didn’t look away from Jace. “I don’t owe you a f*****g explanation.”

Another one muttered, “Crazy.”

I smiled without humor. “Try me.”

Jace straightened. “Let me save you the trouble. The video already did what it needed to do.”

My hand curled.

“You post her again,” I threatened, “and I make this house regret knowing her name.”

He tried to sneer through the swelling. “You’re acting like you own her.”

Oh, I did but I swallowed that answer whole.

Instead, I ordered, “Take it down now.”

He opened his mouth to protest.

One of his boys beat him to it.

“It’s down.”

Every head turned.

The guy by the doorway looked like he wanted to die for speaking. “The hallway clip. The breakup one too. We pulled them.”

Jace snapped, “Shut the f**k up.”

I shifted my gaze to the boy. “Every copy?”

He nodded too fast. “The main posts. The backups too.”

Jace wiped at his lip with the back of his hand. “Happy?”

“No.”

He laughed bitterly. “Then what else do you want?”

“You keep her out of this house. Your boys keep their phones out of her face. And if I hear one more joke about what happened in that hallway, I come back and you are going to hate the day you came to this campus.”

“Now I’m going to ask this once. Who posted that video in the first place? And you better not lie to my face.”

One of the boys at the back, the same one I’d bloodied earlier, muttered, “Sienna set that whole thing up anyway.”

Jace turned so fast he almost lost his balance. “I thought I told you to shut the hell up.”

But the i***t had already started talking.

“She kept giving Nora drinks. And that brownie. Said if Nora loosened up enough, she’d do something stupid. Then when she ended up with you, Sienna told us not to waste the chance.”

My wolf went cold.

Jace tried to cut in. “You don’t know what you’re saying.”

The boy looked terrified now, but he kept going. “She said Nora would never make a fool of herself sober.”

Now I knew Nora had not walked into a bad night. She had been pushed.

“You should pray she never finds out exactly how much of this was planned,”

Jace’s bravado slipped for real that time.

I turned and walked out while the room was still choking on itself.

Outside, the air was colder. My temper wasn’t.

I got in my car, pulled out my phone, and sent one message to the dorm desk contact I trusted.

Water. Pain relief. Something light to eat. Deliver it quietly to Nora Whitfield’s room.

Then I drove straight to her dorm.

Because the second I tried to turn the car the other way, my wolf went rabid.

By the time I parked near the dorm, the bond had gotten tighter again. I got out and followed it, jaw tight, steps quick.

Up the back stairwell and past the second floor, I noticed a certain door was cracked open.

The one to the rooftop and the dark vanilla and amber drifting through it made my chest lock.

I instantly pushed through and saw her.

Barefoot. Hair loose. Standing too close to the edge.

For one sick second, my body forgot how to work.

Then I crossed the roof fast. “Nora.”

She didn’t answer or even turn.

She took another small step forward like the night was calling her somewhere I could not let her go.

I reached her just as her foot slipped on the damp concrete.

My hand locked around her waist.

I dragged her back hard enough that she gasped and crashed against my chest.

“What the f**k are you doing?” I asked.

Her head tipped slightly, eyes half-open but not fully awake.

“Bathroom,” she murmured.

“You’re sleepwalking.”

She frowned like I’d said something irritating. “No.”

Her body sagged against mine.

The brownie, the alcohol, the bond, the stress, something had pushed her past exhaustion and into this.

I held her tighter.

Nora shifted in my arms, face turning into my chest like she was finding something familiar there even half-conscious.

Her fingers curled weakly into my shirt.

“Mine,” my wolf said.

This time, I didn’t argue.

I looked down at the girl in my arms, at the rooftop edge a few feet away, at the disaster she didn’t even remember walking toward, and something inside me settled into place.

She could hate me in the morning.

She probably would.

Didn’t matter.

I was done letting her out of my sight.