Irina’s POV

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

The professor’s words echoed through the microphone. They hung in the dead-silent lecture hall, heavy, sharp, and completely suffocating.

I didn’t argue. I didn’t explain.

I grabbed my cheap canvas backpack with a violently trembling hand. I didn’t look at the professor. I didn’t look at the two hundred pairs of judging eyes burning into my skin. I couldn’t even look at Mia, who was already half out of her seat, her face flushed with anger, ready to defend me.

I just ducked my head, clutched my screaming baby to my chest, and ran.

I pushed through the heavy wooden doors. They slammed shut behind me with a loud, finalized thud.

I practically sprinted down the empty corridor. My breath came in short, jagged gasps. My vision blurred heavily with hot, humiliating tears. The walls of the science building felt like they were closing in on me. The old, primal terror of being a targeted omega—of being the unwanted, broken thing in the room—crashed over me like a brutal tidal wave.

I burst out through the main exit and into the crisp autumn air.

I didn’t stop running until I was far away from the crowded pathways. I found a quiet, secluded wooden bench tucked beneath a massive, shedding oak tree at the very edge of the quad. I collapsed onto the cold wood.

Luka was still wailing. His tiny face was a splotchy, angry red. His little fists beat frantically against the soft fabric of my shirt.

"I’m sorry," I choked out, my voice cracking entirely. "I’m so sorry, baby. Mommy’s here. I’ve got you."

I unbuckled the carrier and pulled him fully into my arms. I stood up and started to pace behind the bench. I rocked him gently. I bounced on my heels. I swayed my body and hummed the soft, wordless lullaby that Mia’s mother had taught me.

My wolf whined in my chest. She pushed a wave of calming, warm energy through my veins, trying desperately to soothe both of us.

It took twenty agonizing minutes.

Slowly, the piercing screams faded into wet, exhausted hiccups. Luka’s rigid little body finally relaxed against my collarbone. He let out a long, shuddering sigh and went completely limp in my arms.

I sat back down on the bench. My legs felt like absolute jelly.

I wiped my wet cheeks with the back of my hand. I looked down at my son.

His eyelids fluttered open. He looked up at me with those deep, piercing forest-green eyes. They were still bright with unshed tears, but they were calm now. He reached up and wrapped his tiny, strong fingers around a loose strand of my blonde hair.

A massive, suffocating wave of guilt crashed into me.

It physically hurt. It twisted in my gut like a jagged knife.

*What was I thinking?*

I stared at his perfect, innocent face. I had dragged him out of a warm, safe apartment. I had strapped him to my chest and carried him into a crowded, stuffy lecture hall filled with strangers. And for what? Because I was selfish. Because I wanted to pretend I was a normal eighteen-year-old girl. Because I wanted to sit in a classroom and learn, just like everyone else.

But I wasn’t like everyone else.

I was a mother. I was a traumatized survivor of a brutal mafia underground. I had absolutely no business being here.

I looked down at my cheap, worn-out canvas backpack resting on the bricks. I looked at the colorful fall leaves blowing across the manicured university lawns. This beautiful, normal human world... maybe I didn’t belong in it after all.

Maybe the girls staring at me in the hall were right. I was a spectacle. A nuisance.

I buried my face in Luka’s soft, sweet-smelling neck. I closed my eyes and let a fresh wave of quiet, defeated tears slip down my face.

"I’m so sorry, Luka," I whispered brokenly into his beanie. "I’m failing you. I’m trying so hard, but I don’t know if I can do this."

A loud, obnoxious ringing sound shattered the quiet air.

The campus bell tower. Class was over.

A minute later, the heavy double doors of the science building swung open. A massive tide of students poured out onto the brick pathways. The quiet quad instantly erupted into a chaotic sea of chatter, laughter, and heavy footsteps.

I shrank back against the wooden bench. My omega instincts flared instantly to life.

*Make yourself small. Be invisible. Don’t let the predators see you.*

I pulled Luka tighter against my chest. I stared down at my scuffed sneakers, praying the crowd would just pass by.

But my heightened hearing caught a familiar, sharp voice.

"I mean, seriously. Who does that?"

I flinched.

It was the blonde girl from the lecture hall. The one who had glared at me when Luka first started fussing. She was walking down the brick path directly toward my bench, flanked by three of her friends.

They all had expensive leather tote bags. They all held iced coffees. They all looked perfect and completely carefree.

"I know, right?" one of her friends sneered loudly. "Bringing a screaming infant to a college lecture. It’s so incredibly trashy."

My face burned. The hot, humiliating flush spread down my neck and into my chest.

They saw me. They saw me sitting alone on the bench, and they deliberately didn’t lower their voices. They wanted me to hear them.

"Like, get a babysitter or drop out," the blonde girl continued, her voice dripping with cruel, unfiltered condescension. "This is a university, not a free daycare for teen moms. She completely ruined the lecture for the rest of us."

I bit the inside of my cheek so hard I tasted copper.

*Don’t cry. Don’t let them see you cry again.*

I kept my head down. I refused to make eye contact. I just wanted them to walk past. I wanted the public humiliation to end.

The group of girls walked by my bench.

But the blonde leader deliberately swerved. She took a step off the center of the path, bringing her right next to my legs.

She didn’t just walk by. She swung her heavy, designer leather boot outward.

She kicked my canvas backpack.

She kicked it *hard*.

The bag tipped violently over on the brick pathway. The zipper, which I had hastily shoved shut when I fled the room, burst open.

My entire life spilled out onto the dirty ground.

My carefully highlighted notebooks scattered across the autumn leaves. My cheap plastic pens rolled away. A spare pacifier bounced off a brick. Two clean diapers and a half-empty pack of baby wipes slid across the dirt.

"Oops," the blonde girl sneered.

She didn’t sound sorry at all. She sounded thrilled.

Her friends burst into a chorus of cruel, mocking giggles. They didn’t stop. They didn’t offer to help. They just kept walking down the path, laughing loudly at the pathetic girl on the bench.

I stopped breathing.

The humiliation was absolute. It was a physical weight pressing me straight into the dirt.

My wolf snarled in the back of my mind. A flash of pure, protective rage spiked hot in my blood. For a split second, I wanted to drop Luka safely on the bench, lunge forward, and show that spoiled human exactly what a werewolf could do.

But I choked the rage down. I killed it instantly.

I couldn’t cause a scene. I couldn’t risk my son. I was just a human here.

I dropped to my knees on the cold, hard bricks.

I held Luka securely against my chest with my left arm. I leaned forward, my vision completely blurred with hot, stinging tears, and frantically started grabbing at my scattered belongings with my right hand.

My fingers were shaking so violently I could barely grip the thin plastic packaging of the baby wipes.

"It’s okay," I whispered to myself, a frantic, broken mantra. "It’s okay. Just pick it up. Just pick it up."

I grabbed my notebooks. I snatched the clean diapers before the damp earth could ruin them. I felt so incredibly small. So utterly, fundamentally pathetic. I was on my knees in the dirt, exactly where everyone in my past had told me I belonged.

A bright yellow highlighter rolled away from me, stopping a few feet away on the brick path.

I let out a shaky, pathetic sob and stretched my trembling right hand forward to grab it.

But suddenly, a large hand reached out from beside me.