Page 122 of The Drama King

I stepped back, watching her clean herself up with mechanical precision. She straightened her uniform, pulled down her skirt, like she could erase what had happened between us.

"That proved nothing," she said finally. "Except that you'll always choose force when you don't get your way."

She was right. I'd snapped, lost control, proved I was exactly the controlling bastard she'd accused me of being. All my careful attempts to show her I'd changed, thrown away in five minutes of desperate claiming.

"You're still mine," I said, because I didn't know what else to say.

"No," she replied, fixing her hair with steady hands. "I'm still leaving."

"That proved nothing," she said finally, her voice steadier than I'd expected given what had happened. "Except that biology is a traitor. That my body responds to programming I didn't choose and can't control."

"It proved everything," I countered, though the victory felt hollow in the face of her continued resistance. "You're mine. My fated mate. My perfect match. Fighting that reality only causes unnecessary suffering."

"Maybe suffering is necessary sometimes," she said, straightening her clothes with careful precision. "Maybe some prices are worth paying for autonomy, for self-determination, for the right to choose my own future rather than having it dictated by coincidence."

The quiet certainty in her voice made something cold settle in my chest. This wasn't negotiation or a play for concessions. This wasn't even about what had happened between us. This was genuine rejection, calculated and determined despite the impossibility of what she was attempting.

And I was beginning to realize that all my strategies, all my attempts to maintain the bond through force or manipulation or claiming, had only pushed her further away. Every time I'd tried to assert control, she'd withdrawn deeper into herself. Every time I'd reminded her of the realities binding us, she'd researched ways to break free.

I'd been approaching this like every other challenge in my life. As something to be conquered, controlled, manipulated into the shape I wanted. But Vespera wasn't a role to be mastered or a situation to be managed. She was a person, with her own agency and desires and the stubborn will to fight for them even when biology said surrender was inevitable.

The thought was terrifying in ways I wasn't prepared to confront. Because if manipulation wouldn't work, if force only made things worse, if biology itself wasn't enough to secure her acceptance, then what did I have left?

"Your ten minutes are up," she said, glancing at her watch with pointed emphasis, as if we hadn't fucked on a desk in an unlocked classroom. "I need to get to my next final."

I wanted to stop her, to continue the argument, to find some combination of words or actions that would make her understand the magnitude of what she was threatening to destroy. But she was already moving toward the door, herposture rigid with the effort of maintaining distance despite the bond's pull.

"Vespera," I called, her name emerging more vulnerable than I'd intended. "Please. Give us a chance to prove ourselves. To show you that things can be different now."

She paused at the door, her hand resting on the frame as she looked back at me with those green eyes that had haunted me since the first day she'd walked into my world.

"It's not about second chances," she said quietly. "It's about first choices. And this is mine."

The door closed behind her with a soft click that somehow felt more final than a slam would have. I stood in the empty classroom, breathing in the combined scent of our claiming, feeling the bond stretch painfully as the distance between us increased.

For the first time in my life, I faced the possibility of losing something I desperately wanted and having no strategy, no plan, no calculated approach to ensure I got it. The careful control that had defined me since childhood, the strategic thinking that had made me successful in every other area of life. None of it worked with her.

She was slipping away. Fighting what should have been impossible to resist. Planning to reject the very connection that nature itself had forged between us.

And I was beginning to understand that maybe biology wasn't enough. Maybe rare and precious didn't guarantee acceptance. Maybe even perfect genetic compatibility couldn't overcome months of systematic cruelty, couldn't erase the fundamental truth that she'd never chosen this bond in the first place.

My fated mate. My perfect match, the one person designed specifically for me. Might actually find the strength to reject me despite everything biology demanded.

And for the first time since I'd recognized what she was to me, I was genuinely terrified that I deserved exactly what she was planning to give me.

Nothing.

forty-three

Vespera

Itouchedtheclaimingbites at my throat, feeling the raised edges that had yet to fully heal. The marks throbbed under my fingers, a constant reminder of what had happened, what had changed, what might never be truly undone.

My dorm room was nearly empty, everything I owned either packed in suitcases or abandoned as too risky to take. Tomorrow was move-out day, but I wouldn't be here to see it.

I was leaving tonight.

The research had taken weeks to compile. Cases of rejected mate bonds, documented with clinical precision in obscure medical journals and Alpha-controlled research facilities. The physical consequences were severe. Fever, pain, debilitating weakness. But not necessarily fatal. And with proper management, the symptoms could be controlled, the bond gradually weakened over time.