Pack. The word settles around us.
Carson wanted Leif alone and afraid.
Instead, he drove him straight into the arms of the people who will fight beside him.
Chapter Thirty-Six
Leif
By the time I step through the front doors of Pinecrest Academy, the morning rush is already over.
Quiet fills the lobby in that strange way schools only become once the first bell has rung. Lockers stand closed along the walls, fluorescent lights humming overhead while the distant murmur of a classroom lecture drifts down the hall.
As promised, Emily picked Quinn and Sprinkles up at the dock and dropped them off so the little girl wouldn’t have to see my attempt to cover the bruises.
Which is why I waited until the building was full before coming in.
Fewer witnesses.
Fewer questions.
When the doors close behind me, Ms. Heinrich looks up. Her eyes linger for half a heartbeat too long before her attention returns to her computer screen.
What rumors has Carson already seeded for her not to ask questions? She’s a gossipy woman most days, but now she doesn’t even greet me.
I stop in front of her desk. “Is the dean in his office?”
She hesitates long enough to confirm my suspicion. “He’s making his morning rounds.”
Of course, he is.
“If you’d prefer to wait,” she adds, gesturing toward the open door behind her desk, “you can sit in his office.”
Every instinct I have warns me that stepping into Carson Whitaker’s private space is a mistake.
But avoiding him isn’t why I came today.
“Thank you.”
Ms. Heinrich doesn’t respond as I pass her desk.
The faint trace of leather and cedar polish fills Carson’s office, and his pheromones linger in the air, a territorial marker. Sunlight filters through the tall windows behind his desk, casting neat lines across the framed diplomas arranged on the wall.
I stop a few steps inside the room, my pulse ticking faster in the quiet.
Then I pull my phone from my pocket and flip open the camera.
The concealer softened the worst of the bruising, but the swelling still spreads dark beneath the skin. When I tilt my head, the yellowing edges of the bruise catch the light.
Not subtle enough.
I lean closer, studying the damage with a tight jaw.
“Well,” Carson purrs from the doorway behind me. “At least you had the decency to try and hide your shame.”
A jolt races down my spine, and I lower the phone, setting it on the corner of his desk before turning.
Carson stands with one shoulder propped on the frame.