Page 15 of Breaking Ophelia

I don’t answer. My throat is a locked box.

He takes a breath, and the nostrils flare, the jaw flicks with a barely-suppressed tension. “Kneel,” he says.

The word is not loud, but it carries. It lands on me and sticks.

I look at him, really look, and try to decide what would happen if I refused.

The part of me that survives, that catalogues threat and cost, weighs the variables. In front of everyone. First night. If I don’t comply, it doesn’t just end here—it will be open season every hour of every day, and not just from him. It’ll be the pack.

But if I do, I give up something I can never get back.

My muscles don’t want to obey. I force myself to move in stages, mechanical, as if lowering a machine to the floor rather than myself. I keep my eyes up as I do it, because that’s all I have left.

He steps closer, standing so my vision is filled with nothing but the line of his body, the wolf-grin that never fully forms, the black in his eyes widening as he looks down at me. His pupils are blown, hungry, a storm sucking in everything in its path.

Only I can see his chest rising and falling, more rapidly with each breath.

Only I can see his pants start to tent as he stares down at me.

The entire hall is silent, but not empty—every face in the place turned toward us, even the portraits seem to lean from the walls.

He leans in, drops his voice to something only I can hear. “You may be here because your father’s a fuck-up, but while you’re here, you’re mine. Understand?”

I clench my jaw, which is the only part of me that can still move.

He lets the moment stretch, longer than comfort allows. Then, louder, “Say it. Say you’re mine.”

I meet his eyes, and this time I don’t blink.

“Not yours,” I say. It comes out soft, but clear.

There is a collective intake of breath, the entire hall in sync for a split second.

He laughs, but it’s not amusement. It’s fascination, bitterness and anger. He touches my chin with one gloved finger, gentle, then not, tilting my face up until I’m forced to look only at him.

“You will be.”

He straightens, gives the rest of the room a look of bored ownership, and returns to his seat.

The rest of the dinner passes in fragments, the noise slowly leaking back as people realize the main event is over. Some students pretend not to glance at me, others stare openly. No one dares approach. The bench feels colder than before, but my mind is heated, a million thoughts racing through my head.

But through it all, I can feel his eyes, pulling threads through me, weaving them tight.

And for the first time, I understand the rules of this place. You don’t win by hiding or running. You win by surviving.

Maybe that’s all I can do.

But I’ll do it with my eyes open.

Chapter 4: Caius

Sleepwasajokelast night.

The way she looked up at me from her knees… I’m not ashamed to admit she gave me a boner that didn’t go away until I found her social media and busted a nut onto her face on my screen.

Little fucking vixen. What the fuck is it about this plump little debt pig that makes me go wild?

And now, this wretched creature is back in the library, probably because she can’t find her Goddamn classes since I decided not to show her where Psychology is today.