Irina’s POV

The crisp autumn air tasted like absolute freedom.

I stood at the massive wrought-iron gates of the university campus, my heart hammering a frantic, joyful rhythm against my ribs. Golden and red leaves drifted down from the towering oak trees, scattering across the wide brick pathways. The morning sun was bright, cutting through the chill.

I adjusted the straps of my backpack. It was a simple, cheap canvas bag, but it felt like the heaviest, most important thing I had ever carried.

I wasn’t holding a scrub brush. I wasn’t carrying a heavy bucket of dirty mop water down the damp, freezing corridors of the Iron Thorn pack house. I wasn’t bracing myself for a sudden, violent blow to the back of my head.

I was an eighteen-year-old girl. And I was going to college.

"Stop staring at the trees and walk, you nerd," Mia laughed, bumping her shoulder against mine. "If we’re late on the first day, I’m blaming you."

"I can’t help it," I breathed, a massive, uncontainable smile stretching across my face. "It’s beautiful. It’s so normal."

"It’s just a school," Mia teased, adjusting her own heavy tote bag. "Wait until midterms. You’re going to hate these beautiful brick buildings. Come on. The science hall is all the way across the quad."

I nodded and took a step forward, falling into step beside her.

For the first few minutes, I felt like I was floating. I was surrounded by normal, human teenagers. Groups of girls walked by holding iced coffees, laughing loudly about weekend parties and annoying roommates. Boys in oversized sweatshirts tossed a football on the grass. The air was buzzing with a light, effortless energy.

There was no scent of blood here. No heavy, suffocating alpha auras pressing down on my lungs. No underground mafia politics. Just human kids living human lives.

And for a brief, beautiful second, I felt like I was exactly like them.

But I wasn’t.

I reached down and rested my hand on the soft, gray fabric of the baby carrier strapped securely to my chest.

Luka was fast asleep, his tiny cheek pressed warm and flat against my collarbone. He was wearing a tiny knitted beanie, his little chest rising and falling to the steady hum of my heartbeat. He was my entire world. He was the reason I had fought so hard to get here.

But he was also the reason the illusion of normalcy began to crack.

As Mia and I wove through the crowded quad, I started to notice it. The looks.

A group of girls walking past us suddenly stopped talking. Their eyes dropped to my chest. One of them nudged her friend, whispering something behind her hand. A guy on a skateboard swerved to avoid us, doing a double-take as he saw the sleeping infant strapped to my front.

The stares weren’t necessarily cruel. But they were heavy. They were filled with intense curiosity, shock, and a quiet, unavoidable judgment.

*She’s a baby.*

*Why does she have a baby?*

*What is she doing here?*

I didn’t need my heightened wolf hearing to know exactly what they were thinking.

My smile slowly faded. The deep, ingrained instincts of an omega began to flare up in the back of my mind. For a year, my entire survival had depended on being completely invisible. I was trained to lower my eyes, to shrink my shoulders, to blend into the shadows so the predators wouldn’t notice me.

Now, in a sea of carefree eighteen-year-olds, I was a glowing neon sign. I was the most out-of-place person on the entire campus.

I instinctively hunched my shoulders forward, trying to shield Luka from the stares. I dropped my gaze to the brick pathway, my breathing growing shallow.

"Hey." Mia’s hand clamped down hard on my forearm.

I flinched slightly, looking up.

Mia’s dark eyes were fierce. She glared at a passing girl who had lingered a second too long on my baby carrier. The girl immediately looked away and hurried off.

"Stop it," Mia ordered quietly, her voice brooking no argument. "Stop shrinking. You earned your spot here just like everyone else. Actually, you worked ten times harder than any of these spoiled kids to get here. Keep your head up, Irina."

My wolf stirred inside my chest. She pushed back against the omega panic, offering a warm, steady wave of protective strength.

*We belong here,* she hummed.

"Right," I whispered, forcing myself to stand up straight. I took a deep, shaky breath. "You’re right. I’m fine."

We reached the science building. The lecture hall was massive, built like a steep amphitheater with hundreds of wooden desks curving down toward a central podium. It was intimidating.

"We need the back row," I told Mia immediately, scanning the rapidly filling room. "Near the aisle. Just in case."

"Back row it is," Mia agreed, leading the way up the carpeted stairs.

We claimed two seats at the very top edge of the room. I slipped my backpack off and carefully unbuckled the carrier, shifting Luka into my arms. He squirmed slightly but didn’t wake up. I held him close to my chest, pulling out a notebook and a pen with my free hand.

The room was loud, filled with the chaotic chatter of two hundred students settling in. But as the clock struck nine, the heavy wooden doors closed.

A tall, older professor in a gray suit walked down to the podium. He tapped the microphone once.

"Good morning, everyone. Welcome to Introduction to Human Anatomy."

The room instantly went dead silent.

The quiet was absolute. The only sounds were the hum of the projector, the scratching of pens, and the quiet tapping of laptop keyboards.

My heart started to race again. I sat rigidly in my hard plastic chair. My heightened hearing picked up every single breath, every squeak of a shoe, every rustle of paper in the massive room. It was an incredibly intense, suffocating silence.

I looked down at Luka.

He was starting to stir.

*No, no, please no. Not now.*

I started bouncing my leg nervously, rocking him gently against my chest. He frowned in his sleep. His tiny fists clenched.

I held my breath. I tried to focus on the professor’s voice echoing through the speakers, talking about cellular structures. I tried to take notes with one hand. But all of my focus was entirely consumed by the tiny, shifting weight in my arms.

Ten minutes passed. My shoulders ached from the tension.

Luka let out a soft, tiny grunt.

It wasn’t loud to the rest of the room, but to my wolf ears, it sounded like a gunshot. I froze. I quickly shifted him to my shoulder, gently patting his back.

"Shh," I whispered, so quietly my lips barely moved. "Please, baby. Sleep for Mommy. Just a little longer."

Mia glanced over at me, her brow furrowing with concern.

Luka squirmed harder. His face turned a splotchy red. He wasn’t hungry—I had fed him right before we walked onto campus. He wasn’t wet. He was just tired of sitting still. He was a baby.

He let out a short, sharp whine.

The girl sitting two seats down from me turned her head and glared.

Panic flooded my veins. Cold sweat broke out on the back of my neck. I bounced him a little faster, rocking side to side.

"It’s okay, it’s okay," I mouthed silently into his beanie.

It was not okay.

Luka arched his back completely. He took a massive, deep breath, his little chest expanding against mine.

And then, he screamed.

It was a full-blown, ear-piercing wail. The sound shattered the quiet academic atmosphere of the lecture hall like a glass window breaking.

Every single head in the room whipped around. Two hundred pairs of eyes locked directly onto me.

The heat of a thousand stares burned into my skin. I couldn’t breathe. My hands shook violently as I desperately tried to shush him, trying to bury his face against my chest to muffle the sound. But Luka was furious now. He wailed louder, his cries echoing terribly off the high ceilings.

"Oh god," I choked out, tears instantly pricking my eyes. The old humiliation, the absolute terror of drawing negative attention, swallowed me whole.

Down at the front of the room, the professor stopped speaking.

He lowered his laser pointer. The massive lecture hall was dead silent, save for the deafening screams of my son.

The professor looked up the steep rows of desks, his eyes searching until they landed on me in the very back row. His face was tight. Disapproving.

He frowned deeply, his voice echoing loudly through the microphone.

"Miss Irina, I’m afraid I have to ask you to leave."