Death isn't an option

Chapter Eleven

By the time the sun drops behind the library, the quad is turning gold and my brain feels like someone left it in the microwave too long.

I’m on a bench outside my dorm with a coffee I don’t remember buying when Ian drops down beside me hard enough to jostle it.

“You look like s**t,” he says.

“Hi, hello, nice to see you too.”

He studies my face, not buying it. His hair is doing that soft curl thing the humidity loves, eyes narrowed in the way that always says don’t bother lying.

“You’re jumpy,” he says. “You flinch every time a door opens. You checked that camera”—he jerks his chin at the new dome in the corner of the building—“three times in the last five minutes. What actually happened in those woods, June?”

My scar gives a small hot twist, like it’s warning me.

“An animal attack,” I answer. “Like the email said. I got lucky. I’m fine.”

The ache under my sternum sharpens. Not enough to double me over, just enough to let me know how the mark feels about half-truths.

Ian glances down as my hand presses over my chest. “You sure?”

“Broken ribs,” I deflect. “Still healing. Hurts if I breathe wrong. Or if people accuse me of being tragic for attention.”

He snorts, but his mouth stays tight. “You almost died. You’re allowed to be tragic.”

“Tragic people don’t pass midterms,” I tell him. “And Caldwell is already circling me like a vulture.”

“She’s not the only one circling,” Talia’s voice calls.

She strolls up with a grin and a paper bag that smells like fries, drops it into my lap, and flops onto my other side.

“Dinner,” she declares. “Because you forgot to eat again. And because I am an excellent friend.” She nudges my shoulder. “And because I’m about to ask you for something.”

“There it is,” I mutter.

“Night out,” she says. “We’re doing it. You got attacked, you went to the fancy mystery clinic, you’re back. We celebrate survival with bad decisions and good alcohol. Full stop.”

“No,” I say automatically.

“Yes,” she counters, already steamrolling. “We are not letting you turn into a haunted dorm goblin. You need to move your body and look at something that isn’t a Canvas page or a ceiling.”

Ian grimaces. “I don’t know if that’s—”

“Healthy?” Talia cuts in. “It’s exactly healthy. We go somewhere public, we stick together, we leave if June twitches wrong. We’re not going dancing in the woods, we’re going to a bar.”

My pulse stutters. “Which bar?”

“The good one downtown,” she says. “The one with the balcony and the lights and the actually decent playlist? We went before classes started, remember?”

Knox’s bar.

My entire body knows the name even if Talia doesn’t say it. I remember the feeling of his gaze from the balcony. The way his hand settled at my lower back when he cleared that first drunk off me. The way he bent physics to get to me in the street, in the woods.

A part of me wants to refuse outright. The rest is tired of feeling like my world shrank to wards and clinic walls and the path between class and dorm.

Ian watches me carefully. “We don’t have to,” he says. “We can just do pizza and a movie.”

Talia groans. “We are twenty, not seventy. Come on, June. One drink. Two hours. Home before midnight. Prove you can exist in the world without it killing you.”

That last line hooks the stubborn part of me.

Avoiding his territory forever is another kind of leash. One he never even had to clip on.

“Fine,” I say. “One drink.”

Talia whoops so loudly people on the next bench stare.

Ian looks like he wants to argue, but in the end he nods. “One drink,” he echoes. “And I’m walking you home.”

A shadow shifts near the dorm entrance. One of Knox’s “students,” hoodie and backpack, pretends to be on his phone. I don’t have to look right at him to feel the wolf-thin stillness.

Of course they’ll know where I go tonight. There’s no such thing as slipping anywhere unnoticed anymore.

I take a fry out of the bag and pop it into my mouth.

“Let’s go prove something,” I say.

***

The bar is louder than I remember.

Music hits us as soon as we push through the door—a low, pulsing beat under layered vocals. Lights move across the crowd, catching hair, glass, sweat. The air smells like alcohol, citrus, and a hint of something wilder that most people will never name.

The first time I came here, I clocked the décor and the crowd and the price of drinks. Tonight, the first thing I notice is the hum.

The Pack. It has it's own vibe, an energy threading thickly through the air.

I see Mara near the entrance, leaning against the wall, eyes flicking over IDs with a half-smile that never reaches the sharpness there. Kade is at the end of the bar, arms folded, watching the floor.

They move the way the candle flame in Elara’s classroom moved—pulled by something unseen. There's a force connecting all of them.

Talia grabs my hand and drags me toward an open section of bar. “First round’s on me,” she yells over the noise.

Ian falls into step on my other side, close enough that his shoulder brushes mine. His tension matches the coil in my own muscles.

I aim my focus at the bottles and taps, trying not to lift my eyes to the balcony.

It doesn’t matter. I still feel him.

That faint awareness snaps into place, like turning toward a heat source. My skin prickles along the back of my neck. My scar warms.

I glance up before I can stop myself.

Knox is on the balcony, one hand on the railing, head bent toward a man in a suit who screams “some kind of manager” from this distance. Knox wears a black shirt, sleeves rolled, throat bare. Even from here, he looks composed, dangerous, cold.

His gaze flicks down. Meets mine.

The hit is physical. My breath catches. The clarity in his eyes cuts through the dim.

His expression doesn’t change much. A fraction more focus, maybe. A flicker at the corner of his mouth, too small for anyone else to see.

He goes back to his conversation. I force my attention to the bartender.

“What do you want?” Talia asks, shouting a little.

“Something with vodka,” I answer. “And sugar. Surprise me.”

“Same,” she tells the bartender, then points at Ian. “Beer for him. Something boring and manly.”

Ian rolls his eyes, but he takes the pint when it arrives. We clink glasses. I take a long sip that burns and numbs at the same time.

We find a high-top table on the edge of the dance floor. Talia starts moving almost immediately, hips swaying, hair swinging. Ian watches her with fond exasperation, then lets himself be dragged onto the floor when she insists.

I stay by the table for a minute, sipping my drink, letting the crowd flow around me.

It would be easy to pretend nothing’s changed. Just let the music take over, pretend the hum under my skin is bass, not pack magic.

Then a flare of tension ripples through the room.

Near the opposite end of the bar, voices spike. A guy in a striped shirt slams his glass down too hard. Liquid splashes. Another patron grabs his wrist. Something in the air goes sharp.

My gaze moves almost on its own, up to the balcony.

Knox feels it before I finish turning. His head lifts, eyes cutting toward the brewing fight. His jaw tightens.

For a heartbeat, I see it.

Thin, silver-fine threads stretch from him through the air, connecting to Mara by the door, to Kade at the bar, to another wolf-waiter weaving through the crowd. They’re barely there, ghost lines at the edge of my sight. Those threads are what let off the energy of the pack--they connect all the individual members.

He doesn’t lift a hand, doesn’t shout. His focus narrows, and those threads tug.

Mara pushes off the wall. Kade’s posture shifts. They move before the humans below have registered that anything is wrong.

By the time Talia spins near our table again, laughing, the situation is already defused—one of the wolves has stepped between the angry drunk and his target, guiding him away with a quiet word and a hand on his shoulder, another has cleared space as if nothing unusual happened.

The threads fade from my vision.

I swallow.

“Hey.” Talia leans into me, hair damp at her temples. “You okay? You’re making your freaked-out squirrel face.”

“I don’t have a freaked-out squirrel face,” I protest.

“You do.” She pokes my cheek. “It’s happening now. Drink. Dance. Pick one.”

Dancing means not thinking. Not thinking sounds nice.

I finish the last of my drink and let her drag me onto the floor.

The music is a low, insistent pulse I can climb into if I let it. Bodies move around us, a little too close, the rush of heat and sweat and perfume overwhelming. For a few minutes, I let myself blur, focus on the rhythm, the way my muscles loosen as I move.

Ian keeps orbiting us, never far, always watching. Part of me is grateful. Another part resents that he doesn’t know what he should really be looking for.

Song shifts. The crowd surges. A stranger slides into the space behind me.

He’s tall, smelling like beer and some too-strong cologne. An arm drops around my shoulders.

“Hey, gorgeous,” he slurs near my ear. “You looked lonely.”

I stiffen. “I’m good, thanks.”

He squeezes. “Come on, dance with me. One dance.”

I try to duck out from under his arm. He follows, turning it into a clumsy half-embrace.

“I said I’m good,” I repeat, sharper.

The music swallows my tone. Talia has been twisted away by the tide of bodies, laughing at something someone shouted. Ian is boxed out across the group, scanning, but his line of sight to me is blocked.

I could shove. Make a scene. That’s what the old June would do. The new June calculates threats and distances and the presence of wolves in the room.

The drunk’s hand slides lower. My temper snaps. I open my mouth to tell him exactly where to shove his drink when heat appears at my back.

Not alcohol-induced heat. Not body heat.

Knox heat.

He’s close enough that his chest brushes my shoulder blades when I breathe. Close enough that his scent cuts through everything else—pine, smoke, something darker.

The drunk freezes.

Knox’s mouth is near my ear, his voice a low, intimate murmur that slides straight down my spine.

“Say the word,” he tells me, “and he’s gone.”

The promise in it is quiet and absolute. He doesn’t sound angry, he sounds certain. The kind of certainty that comes from knowing you can break a man in half and barely mess up your shirt.

My heart slams. My scar flares, feeding off the surge of adrenaline and something hotter knotted underneath.

I know all he needs is the slightest excuse. One word from me and Mara will appear at my other side, Kade will materialize from the bar, the entire pack will move like a closing fist.

I should shove the drunk away myself. Prove I don’t need an Alpha looming over my shoulder, prove that I am not the fragile thing everyone seems to think I am.

Instead I hesitate.

For one ugly, honest second, I like it. The power humming in the air between us. The way the drunk goes still, sensing danger without understanding it. The way Knox is waiting—not to command, but to act on my cue.

The man stammers an apology. “Didn’t realize she was with anyone.”

I almost say I’m not. That I’m not his, not theirs, not anyone’s.

The words stick.

“I’ve got it,” I say finally. I duck out from under the drunk’s arm and take one step forward, into the little pocket of space Knox’s presence has carved in the crowd. “We’re done here.”

The guy blinks, looks from me to Knox, weighs his options in a fog of alcohol and instinct. He backs away with his hands up and disappears into the press of bodies.

The music swells around us again.

I turn to face Knox.

His eyes are darker than usual, pupils huge, that ring of gold around the iris burning. His jaw is tight. There’s a faint flush along his throat, like it took effort not to simply remove the problem himself.

“You took too long,” he says quietly.

“I handled it,” I answer.

“That’s not the point.”

“What is the point, then? That I’m not allowed to talk to anyone now? That I’m supposed to walk around in a bubble while your wolves body-check anyone who looks at me for too long?”

He studies my face. Underneath the irritation in his eyes there’s something sharper—fear, banked and hidden.

“You enjoyed it,” he says.

The accusation shocks me. “What?”

“Knowing what I’d do if you asked,” he says. “You enjoyed that.”

Heat floods my face. “You enjoyed offering.”

His mouth curves, humorless. “I enjoy protecting what’s mine.”

“I’m not—”

“Don’t,” he warns. “Not here.”

The music crashes into a chorus. Bodies shove past. For a second we stand in the eye of it, the world narrowed to the space between his hands and my arms.

If he touches me right now, I’m going to either punch him or pull him closer. I’m not entirely sure which.

I step back first.

“I’m going home soon,” I say. “I'm only here for one drink?”

His gaze flicks over my face, cataloguing every thread of emotion. “Kade will escort you,” he says. “Stay on the main streets.”

“I’m walking with Ian and Talia,” I counter. “We’re fine.”

His jaw flexes. “You get one unaccompanied exit from this building. Don’t make me regret it.”

“You regret everything,” I mutter. “It’s your favorite hobby.”

His eyes spark, but he doesn’t rise to it. He steps aside, giving me a clear path to the table where Ian and Talia are reassembling.

“Go,” he says. “Before I decide the safest place for you is a locked room instead of a campus you insist on treating like a playground.”

“You’d hate that,” I throw over my shoulder. “You’d have no one to stalk through windows.”

I don’t look back to see his reaction. My pulse is already too loud in my ears.

***

The air outside is cold enough to bite. It helps clear my head.

We walk back toward campus, the three of us in a loose line. Talia chatters about a guy she met on the dance floor. Ian listens with half an ear, the rest of his attention on our surroundings.

Streetlights make puddles of yellow on the pavement. Farther out, the dark between them feels thicker than it should.

The bar’s lights fade behind us. The campus looms ahead—brick and glass and the faint, reassuring hum of wards I can now feel at the edge of my mind.

Between those two lies the strip of city that doesn’t quite belong to either world.

My scar throbs in time with my footsteps.

We turn onto the path that cuts across the field near the edge of the woods. The trees are just a black mass beyond the last row of lamps. On the other side, the dorms glow warm.

I feel it before I see anything.

Weight in the air. A prickle along my arms, raising goosebumps. The same sense I had in the forest that night, but muted, like a memory.

My feet slow.

“June?” Ian glances over. “You good?”

“Yeah.” My voice comes out thin. “Just… tired.”

The wards on campus land are a low hum. The woods are a different kind of silence. Something in that darkness watches, measuring.

At the edge of my vision, near the treeline, a shape moves. Big. Four-legged. Too smooth for a drunk student, too large for a dog.

I blink, and it’s gone. Or it was never there, and my brain is filling in shadows with teeth.

My scar pulses once, hard enough to make my breath catch. The feeling is clear and uncomfortable: boundary.

Human campus ahead. Wolf territory behind. Magic in the middle, seperating the two.

We step onto the sidewalk that marks the start of university land. The hum of wards around the dorms climbs a little, like the building is exhaling in welcome.

I risk one more glance over my shoulder.

For a heartbeat, I swear I see eyes in the dark. Not glowing, not obvious. Just a hint of reflected light at the exact height that says wolf, not raccoon.

Protection or threat? Pack or rogue? I can’t tell yet.

“June.” Talia bumps my hip. “Come on. My feet are going to fall off.”

“Yeah.” I tear my gaze away and force my legs to keep moving. “I’m coming.”

We head toward the dorm doors, the buzz of wards in my bones and the weight of the woods at my back.

My life used to be a straight line: home, campus, future, done. Now it’s a fault line—human on one side, wolves on the other, magic running right down the middle.

I’m walking it whether I want to or not.