The Alpha Prisoners Obsession

Chp 9

Zyra POV

The library swallowed the hours until dawn the only witness to my decision to stay. The marble floor left my legs numb, my spine aching, but pain meant nothing. Not anymore. Pain was familiar, almost comforting in its predictability.

But as the first sliver of pale morning light crept through the tall windows, one truth pressed against my chest like a hand: I had to return to class.

Dael would be there. He would expect me to be gone. He would expect victory.

And I was going to disappoint him.

I stood slowly, wiping the last evidence of tears from my face. My body felt heavy, but my steps were steady as I crossed the library and pushed open the massive doors. The corridor outside buzzed faintly with early morning voices students whispering, laughing, alive in ways I could barely remember feeling.

I moved through them like a ghost.

By the time I reached the classroom door, my heartbeat was a dull thunder in my ears. I rested my hand on the cold metal handle for a moment. Then I pushed it open.

Silence.

Twenty pairs of eyes turned toward me but only one mattered.

Dael’s.

He sat in the back row, one arm draped lazily over the desk, posture relaxed, but every line of his body coiled with lethal potential. His red eyes lifted slowly, like he was savoring the moment he confirmed what he already expected:

I should not be here. And yet…

There I was.

Alive.

Standing.

Breathing the air he thought he’d ripped from my lungs.

Shock flashed across his face so quickly it might’ve been imagined. But I saw it the slight widening of his eyes, the fractional pause in his breathing, the minute twitch in his jaw.

Then it was gone.

Replaced slowly… deliberately… by something far darker.

Rage curved through his features like a shadow stretching at dusk. A rage that didn’t shout. Didn’t flare. Didn’t lose control.

This was the kind of rage that kept score.

His eyes locked with mine ruby and burning. A predator’s stare. A promise. A threat. A question.

Why are you still here?

The room felt smaller. Hotter. Heavier.

Dael’s glare held me like a hand around the throat not choking, but reminding. Dominant. Punishing. A force of nature I foolishly chose to stand against.

My feet moved anyway.

One step.

Then another.

Every inch I walked brought me closer to him, and the tension stretched between us tighter, sharper, until the air felt like a wire ready to snap.

His jaw clenched once a slow grind of his teeth. His fingers tapped the table, steady, controlled, but the muscle in his forearm flexed like he was restraining the urge to grab something. Or someone. My pulse was hammered.

But I didn’t stop.

Couldn’t.

Wouldn’t.

When I reached the back row, for a heartbeat, Dael didn’t move. Didn’t breathe. Didn’t blink.

He merely stared up at me, jaw tight, eyes glowing darker than the night before.

He looked like everything dangerous in this world condensed into one body.

Anger.

Instinct.

Authority.

And something I couldn’t name. Something colder. Older. Crueler.

I slid into the seat beside him.A deliberate choice. A challenge.

I was close enough now to feel the heat rolling off him, the sharpness of his scent, the steady, lethal beat of his anger.

The moment I sat, his head tilted toward me with slow, quiet disbelief like I’d just rewritten the laws of nature in front of him.

“Zyra.”

Just my name.

Spoken low.

Controlled.

Deadly.

Like a blade pressing against my skin.

I kept my eyes forward, even though my body felt like it might fold under the weight of his stare.

“Yes?” My voice didn’t tremble. I was grateful for that small mercy.

His exhale was barely audible, but I heard the irritation laced through it. He leaned closer not enough to touch, but enough that the space between us felt suffocating. His breath brushed the side of my face. Warm. Angry. Alive.

“You think this is bravery?” he murmured. “Or are you simply too stupid to understand what you’re doing?”

My fingers curled beneath the desk.

“I understand perfectly,” I whispered back. “You told me to leave. I didn’t.”

Something sharpened in his eyes. A flicker. A spark.

He looked like he wanted to reach across the space between us and break the desk in half. Or maybe break me.

“You had an hour,” he said, voice dark and calm. “I gave you a chance to survive.”

I swallowed the memory of crying alone in the library.

“I don’t run anymore.”

His body stilled. Entirely.

“Not from you,” I added.

A ripple went through him subtle, but real. His lips pressed together, a line of silent fury. His gaze dropped to my throat, where faint red marks still lingered. His eyes darkened further.

Then he leaned back in his chair, studying me with a terrifying calm.

“You’re either the bravest wolf in this academy,” he said softly, “or the most suicidal.”

My breath hitched.

His gaze snapped back to my eyes.

“I haven’t decided which yet.”

A shiver crawled through me, but I forced myself to hold his stare.

“You don’t get to decide anything about me.”

For a moment, neither of us breathed.

Then slow, deliberate, controlled, Dael’s lips curved into the smallest, coldest smirk I’d ever seen. A smirk that said I had just made something very, very interesting for him.

And infinitely more dangerous for myself.

“You’re wrong, little wolf,” he whispered, leaning forward until his shoulder brushed mine, just barely, just enough to send a shock through my spine. “I decide everything about you now.”

My heart slammed hard.

His voice dropped lower.

“You had your chance to leave.”

A pause.

“Now you live with the consequences.”

The classroom door opened. The professor walked in. Students straightened but Dael didn’t look away.Not until I did first and even then, I felt his gaze burning into the side of my face like a warning. Or a promise. I wasn’t sure which was worse.

The lecture begins, but the room feels wrong.

Not because of the professor’s droning voice. Not because of the bright lights or the scratching of pens around me.

Because of him. Dael hasn’t looked away from me once. Not for a second.

I feel his stare like a hot brand pressed against my skin a silent claim, a warning, a punishment for refusing to leave. Every instinct in me screams to look down, look anywhere else, but I can’t. My body is frozen in a posture of forced composure while my mind burns.

I’m being watched.

Not lightly.

Not idly.

Not curiously.

He’s studying me.

Assessing. Calculating.

Hunting.

I shift slightly in my seat, trying to put an inch of space between us, but it changes nothing. His attention follows the movement like a shadow that doesn’t obey physics. The professor’s words fade to a blur. All I hear is my heartbeat.

All I feel is Dael. On the surface, he looks calm, bored even. Leaned back in his chair, one arm crossed over his chest, the other holding a pencil he twirls lazily between his fingers.

But that pencil…

It scratches across his notebook.

Not writing.

Drawing.

And every time I catch the faint curve of a line, my stomach drops a little more.

Because it’s always the same shape.

A wolf.

Teeth bared.

Eyes red.

Staring directly at me.

He’s not even hiding it.

He finishes another jagged sketch with a faint smirk, then tilts the page toward me just enough that I see the dark strokes, the violent shading. The message isn’t written, but I feel it bleed off the paper:

I see you.

I know you.

I could tear you apart.

My throat tightens.

I look away.

He doesn’t.

In fact, he leans closer.

Barely an inch, but I feel it like a hand sliding around my spine.

My shoulders stiffen; my breath stutters.

Sirens go off in my head.

Too close.

He’s too close.

I inch to the left.

But Dael shifts too, calmly, subtly, closing the distance again until the warmth of his body radiates into mine. The proximity forces my thigh to brush the edge of his. Not intentionally. Not willingly. Simply because there wasn’t enough space to escape him. He doesn’t move. He doesn’t flinch.

He stays exactly there, thigh solid, steady, unyielding against mine as if testing how long I can pretend not to feel him. My heartbeat stumbles hard.

I try to sit straighter, but it only presses me closer.

The air thickens around us, suffocating.

His eyes drag down my hair first, tracing the strands like he’s peeling back layers only he can see. They flicker over the spot where one silver piece escapes the dye the strand that gave me away.

His jaw flexes. There’s no hiding now.

He knows.

My palms grow damp.

His gaze lowers to my neck lingering, heavy, slow, like he’s imagining the shape of his hand there again. I swallow involuntarily, and he notices. Of course he does. His eyes darken even more, a slow burn that makes goosebumps rise along my skin.

Then his stare drops further.

Over the line of my collar.

Down to the curve of my shirt.

Lower, hovering with an intensity that makes the back of my neck prickle with heat and shame.

I shift again, turning slightly away from him.

But the tiny movement sends my knee brushing harder against his thigh. My breath catches. His thigh doesn’t move not even an inch as if he’s rooted there just to corner me further.

My pulse kicks painfully.

I force my gaze to the front.

Focus. Focus.

Ignore him.

But he isn’t letting me.

Dael leans closer again so close his shoulder brushes mine, so close I can feel the whisper of his breath against my temple. Heat floods beneath my skin. Panic and something else, something unsettling churns in my stomach.

I stare straight ahead, trying to steady my breathing. Then I feel it.

His eyes on me again.

Dragging down.

Slow.

Deliberate.

Consuming.

A shiver races through me despite myself.

When his gaze reaches the hem of my skirt, he stops.

Doesn’t look away.

Doesn’t pretend to be subtle.

He lets me feel it, the weight of his focus, the silent judgment, the threat wrapped inside the attention. My legs clamp harder together, but it doesn’t hide anything. His thigh is still pressed firmly against mine, unmoving, controlling the tiny space between us.

The professor’s voice evaporates entirely.

All I hear is my own unsteady breathing.

All I feel is Dael.

Watching.

Waiting.

Tense in a way that feels volcanic, like he’s one breath away from snapping.

I curl my fingers into fists, trying to anchor myself, but my hands tremble. I can’t stop them. Dael notices that too. Of course he does.

He lowers his gaze to my shaking hands.

A slow, wicked curve forms at the corner of his mouth not amusement. Not satisfaction.

Recognition.

He sees the fear.

He sees that I feel cornered.

And he likes it.

The pencil taps lightly on his sketchbook, a rhythm too calm for the violence simmering beneath his skin.

“You’re trembling again,” he murmurs under his breath, so quietly the professor doesn’t even pause.

I freeze.

He doesn’t look away. “You really shouldn’t have stayed, little wolf.” A chill crawls down my spine.

I stare straight ahead, afraid if I move or speak, I’ll fall apart. But then I feel it, his thigh pressing a fraction closer to mine.

Deliberate.

Punishing.

Possessive.

My breath fractures.

And Dael leans in just enough for his next words to sink into my bones:

“Now I can’t decide if I want to push you away…”

A dangerous pause.

“…or break you open just to see what you’re hiding.” My heart slams once, painfully hard and the worst part?

I think he heard that too.