My Forbidden Mate is My Professor

Chapter 3

MAREN’S POV

Sunlight filtered through the heavy velvet curtains, piercing my eyelids and tearing a groan of pure agony from my throat. I opened my eyes slowly, feeling as if a silver hammer were rhythmically pounding against the inside of my skull.

When I saw the impeccable, bone-cold white sheets, fragments of the previous night hit me like shards of broken glass. Kai and Tina together... My desperate flight. The bar. And then... my mate.

I bolted upright and scrambled toward the room's grand mirror. I searched feverishly along my neck with trembling fingers, but my skin was unbearably clean. There was no mark. Not even the faint trace of fangs that had claimed my soul.

I remembered hanging from his neck, shamelessly begging for a mark with a disgraceful surrender, offering myself as if my dignity were worthless. And he... he didn't leave a mark, a phone number, or even a name.

The only thing that remained was the scent of a snowstorm and sandalwood that still lingered faintly in the room like a broken promise.

"He left me," I whispered, as a hollow void expanded in my chest.

The pain of Kai’s rejection had been a blow, but for my own fated mate to abandon me in a hotel room after I pleaded for his claim... that was a cold-blooded execution.

He had felt the bond; I had seen it in his molten gold eyes, in the way his hands seized my waist with an authority that made me shiver. Yet, despite that, he chose to leave me in a hotel bed with an unopened bottle of water and the fading echo of a scent that was already vanishing.

Humiliated and with my wolf wounded, I adjusted my dress and returned to the mansion with the weight of the world upon my shoulders.

***

The next fourteen days were a slow, agonizing descent into hell. Returning to the pack was like walking barefoot over glowing embers, feeling the skin of my dignity consume itself with every step I took through the mansion's corridors.

The worst part, without a doubt, was Kai. He and Tina had become inseparable, flaunting their toxic, cloying romance in every corner of the territory. Kai kissed her with a feigned possessiveness, laced with deliberate cruelty, ensuring I was always in his line of sight before deepening the kiss.

Tina, for her part, missed no opportunity to brush her hair aside, parading her Alpha mark as if it were a crown of bloody diamonds. The mark was still red, fresh, throbbing with Kai’s dominant essence.

On the other hand, Kai threw me looks of absolute triumph. In his dark eyes, there was no trace of guilt, only a sickening satisfaction, as if my solitude and evident withering confirmed he had made the right choice in discarding me like useless trash.

“Well, well, if it isn't the eighteen-year-old pup!” a young Beta shouted in the plaza, causing everyone present to halt their conversations. “Tell me, Maren, are you so defective that even the Moon Goddess couldn't find you a mate? Or is your scent so rancid your partner preferred to rip off his own nose rather than claim you?”

I just gritted my teeth until my jaw ached, enduring the stifled laughter and the gazes of pity that burned worse than pure hatred. But inside, my wolf, Liana, howled in agony at the deafening silence from our mate.

“Look at her,” Tina whispered as she brushed past me, her voice dripping with sweet poison. “She doesn't even have the scent of an Omega on her. Maren, dear, you’ll die alone.”

“At least I’m not a second-hand trophy, Tina,” I spat back, my voice hoarse, even though I was falling to pieces inside.

She let out a low growl, about to retort, but I left her mid-sentence and retreated to the mansion. Under the constant harassment, I chose to isolate myself, locked in my room until finally, the day of the move to the university arrived like an iron lifeline in the middle of a relentless storm.

Crossing the campus gates was like stepping through a portal into another dimension. The place was pulsing with life, filled with wolves from different packs, Alfas of ancient lineages, and Omegas walking with their heads held high. There was an energy of new beginnings that allowed me to breathe fresh air for the first time in weeks.

“Hi! You must be Maren!” a vibrant Beta exclaimed the second I opened my new dorm door. She had electric-blue hair and a contagious laugh that seemed to exorcise my pack's ghosts in seconds. “I’m Naomi! Your new roommate!”

“Hi, Naomi,” I smiled, and for once, it didn't feel like a facade. I felt a genuine relief, a weight lifting from my shoulders.

Naomi’s energy was the balm my wounded and lacerated soul desperately needed. For a moment, as I unpacked my few books, I felt like my new life was truly beginning. I repeated to myself, like a prayer, that my Omega status would not dictate my worth, my future, or my capacity to be loved.

“We’ll get to know each other later, we’re late for our first class!” Naomi suddenly shouted, checking her watch in horror. “And they say this professor doesn't forgive a single second of tardiness!”

She hurriedly grabbed a couple of books and dragged me through the halls filled with students. We rushed toward the grand auditorium, and I sat in the second row, my notebook open and my heart beating with renewed hope, a spark I thought was dead.

“They say the new professor is young, incredibly wealthy, and comes from one of the most powerful packs in the North. A pure-blooded Alpha, the kind that makes you kneel with just a glance,” Naomi whispered beside me, reaching for a mirror to touch up her lipstick.

“Probably just an arrogant old man in an overpriced suit,” I replied, trying to brush it off, though a strange premonition began to crawl up my neck.

“Oh, no, Maren. He’s a divine and dominant specimen that even the senior Alfas clear a path for. And the best part: he’s single. No Luna mark,” Naomi continued, buzzing with excitement.

I was about to say something, to joke about her enthusiasm, when the main door swung open with a sharp thud. The chatter of nearly two hundred students was sliced through as if by a blade.

A man entered with long, rhythmic, and purposeful strides. He wore a charcoal gray suit that hugged his broad shoulders impeccably, revealing a physique that screamed power and discipline.

He carried no books; he didn't need them. His mere presence radiated an authority so ancestral and lethal that the Alfas in the front row instinctively lowered their heads in an involuntary gesture of submission.

My wolf, Liana, who had been apathetic and near-death for two weeks, suddenly stood tall within my mind and let out a howl of recognition so potent it made me dizzy, clawing at my senses.

“This... this can’t be...” I whispered, the air escaping my lungs as if I’d been punched in the gut.

I felt a violent, painful tug in my chest, right where the mate bond tethered to my soul. The scent of an imminent storm, noble wood, and cold sandalwood flooded my nostrils, suffocating me. It was the same scent that had soaked my sheets in that hotel room, the same one that had made me beg for his touch!

“Good morning,” his deep baritone voice rumbled through the wooden walls, sending an electric shock straight to my core, making me slick with heat instantly against my will. “I am Professor Thorne, and this is your course on Pack Management.”

The man set a leather briefcase on the table and turned toward us. His jaw was as sharp as I remembered, and his gray eyes, like the sky before a natural disaster, scanned the room with surgical coldness over the rows of students until, as if guided by an invisible magnet, his gaze locked directly onto mine.

For a fraction of a second, I saw a spark of genuine shock cross his gray pupils, a flash of fire that recognized his little Omega. But with terrifying speed, he regained his composure, masking his gaze with a distant coldness that hurt more than a dagger to the chest.

He rested his hands on the lectern, his long, strong fingers gripping the wood. His eyes were now two shards of ice looking at me as if I were just another stranger, as if he had never breathed against my neck until I trembled.

“Maren?” Naomi whispered, nudging me worriedly. “You’ve gone pale; you look like a ghost. Are you okay?”

“I’m... I’m fine,” I said, quickly dropping my gaze to my notebook, feeling the tears of humiliation fighting to break free.

He was my professor. The man to whom I had offered my pride and my body in a desperate plea was the man who would now grade my future. And by the way he looked at me, it was clear that to him, I wasn't his mate... I was just a mistake he wished to forget.