THE MATE THE ROGUE ALPHA WAS MEANT TO KILL

Chapter 9—Bitter Sweet

Elara's POV

I noticed it for the first time on Wednesday, and it was the kind of thing you only caught if you were already paying attention, which I told myself I was not, not really.

Ravin had been in class all morning, sitting in his usual spot with that settled unhurried energy he carried everywhere, and I had caught myself glancing over at him twice during second period for no reason I could explain.

But when last class ended and I came out into the corridor he was simply gone, not walking ahead of me, not near the common areas, not anywhere I could see, just completely absent from the school grounds like a switch had been flipped.

I stood in the corridor for a moment and then kept walking and told myself it probably meant nothing.

I mentioned it to Leo on the way to the dining hall, keeping my voice casual like it was something I had only just thought of and not something I had been quietly turning over since the day before.

"He is always gone by evening," I said. "Both days this week. I have never once seen him after last class."

Leo considered this with the serious expression he used when he was about to say something not serious at all. "Maybe he has a condition."

"A condition," I repeated.

"A light sensitivity condition," Leo said, nodding slowly and seriously. "Only comes out during the day. Vanishes completely at night. Very tragic, very mysterious." He paused. "Elara, I think your boyfriend might be a vampire."

"He is not my boyfriend," I said, still walking.

"The vampire part didn't bother you at all?" Leo said.

"Leo."

"Even if he was a vampire it still would not make sense," I said. "Vampires are only out at night, not during the day."

Leo's eyes lit up. "Unless," he said, pointing at me, "he has a daylight ring."

I stared at him.

"It is a very common vampire accessory," Leo said seriously. "Allows full daytime movement. Very convenient, very stylish."

I laughed despite myself and let the conversation drop because laughing about it was easier than admitting that the pattern genuinely unsettled me in a way I could not fully explain, like a question forming at the back of my mind that I had not decided yet whether to ask out loud.

I filed it away and told myself I would think about it properly later.

Lunch was halfway through when Kael appeared at the edge of our table, which was different from his usual approach because this time he was not carrying his easy confidence like armour. He stood there for a moment like he was deciding something, then pulled out the chair across from me and sat down.

"I owe you an apology," he said.

I looked at him. Across the table Freya had gone very still in the way she did when she was paying close attention to something while pretending not to.

"For the corridor," Kael continued, his voice lower than usual and stripped of its usual performance. "I grabbed your arm and I said something I should not have said and I am sorry for both of those things."

I studied his face for a moment, looking for the angle, the version of this that was really about something else. I did not find one. He looked genuinely uncomfortable in the way people looked when an apology actually cost them something.

"Okay," I said carefully.

"I want to make it up to you," he said, and reached into the pocket of his blazer and set something on the table between us.

It was a necklace, a thin silver chain with a small pendant that caught the light when it moved, simple and clean and clearly not something he had picked up in a hurry. I looked at it and then back at him and genuinely did not know what to do with either the gesture or the expression on his face.

"Kael," I said slowly.

"You don't have to wear it," he said. "I just wanted you to have it."

The table was very quiet. I could feel Freya's eyes on the side of my face with the intensity of someone who had many thoughts and was heroically keeping all of them inside her mouth.

I picked up the necklace and held it for a moment, the chain cool against my fingers, and looked at Kael who was watching me with something patient and undemanding in his expression that I had not seen from him before.

"Thank you," I said finally, because it was the only honest thing I had.

He nodded once, stood, and left without making it into anything more than it was, which somehow made it harder to dismiss than if he had.

I set the necklace down on the table and stared at it.

"Do not say anything," I said to Freya.

"I was not going to say a single word," Freya said, in the tone she used when she had approximately forty words ready and was exercising enormous restraint.

Nyx looked at the necklace, then at me, then back at her food. "It is very pretty," she said simply.

I did not know what Kael's apology meant or what the necklace was supposed to mean or whether any of it changed how I felt about what had happened in the corridor, and the feeling it left behind was not bad exactly, just unsettled, like something bittersweet sitting at the back of my throat that I could not quite swallow down or spit out.

I was still turning it over when I glanced at the time and felt everything else fall away.

The garden. Ravin. Twenty minutes.

I gathered my bag faster than was probably dignified and pushed back from the table and Freya looked up with an expression that said she knew exactly where I was going and was choosing, for once, not to comment, which from Freya was practically a gift.

I was halfway down the corridor before I remembered I had left the necklace sitting on the table, and I paused for half a second before deciding it could wait, because Kael's necklace and whatever it meant would still be there tomorrow but Ravin somehow could not wait, and I was not ready to examine what that said about me.