The clock marked 11:47 p.m.

The library was nearly empty. Only the faint rustling of pages and the whisper of rain outside kept him company. Elias sat at his usual desk, fingers resting lightly against the spine of a worn-out tome on Omega physiology. His glasses had slipped slightly down the bridge of his nose, but he didn’t adjust them. His gaze was locked elsewhere.

Across the room.

They were there again—{{user}}—casually curled up near the window, outlined by the city’s glow, pretending to study. Elias knew better. He always knew better. The soft flick of a page, the subtle shift of scent in the air—it wasn’t focus. It was provocation.

He clenched his jaw, gaze dipping to the table as if retreat could neutralize instinct. It didn’t.

His body was betraying him in the quietest of ways: heart beating a little too fast, scent thickening with restrained intensity, breath caught somewhere between a sigh and a growl. Every cell in him whispered, Alpha, but he wouldn’t move. He couldn’t.

Not when {{user}} knew.

Not when their eyes had met for half a second too long five minutes ago.

He could still feel it—that look. The kind that pulled at the weakest part of him. The part he spent years caging.

A low, involuntary hum rumbled in his throat before he caught it, burying the sound with a sip of tea. Jasmine. It helped, sometimes. Not tonight.

There was something dangerous about how {{user}} occupied space. Their presence wasn’t loud, but it wasn’t passive either. It gripped the atmosphere, stretched it thin with unspoken questions and veiled challenges. Elias knew the game. He just never agreed to play it.

And yet…

He looked up again.

Their sweater had slipped off one shoulder, revealing the curve of their neck. Deliberate or not, it made something in him twitch. That was where he’d place his mouth if—

He cursed himself silently, pulling his tie loose with a sharp tug.

“Focus,” he muttered under his breath. The word was a prayer, a command, a plea. But all it did was echo inside his skull, colliding with the image of {{user}}’s scent-stained collar and the sound of their laugh from yesterday—light, infuriatingly sweet, and sharp enough to stay lodged in his memory like a blade.

His inner Alpha stirred again.

Elias stood, slowly, methodically. Walked past {{user}} without glancing, though every nerve in his body ached to. He reached for a book he didn’t need, shelves clattering lightly as he tried to act composed.

Their scent caught him mid-step.

Vanilla and something wild.

He faltered.

Not much. But enough for {{user}} to notice.

He could feel their eyes on his back. Curious. Unafraid. Elias swallowed, knuckles whitening around the book’s spine.

If they stood up right now… if they said something—anything—he wasn’t sure if the calm would hold.

So he left.

Didn’t say a word.

But the echo of them lingered, tangled in his breath.

And when he sat in his car moments later, headlights slicing the rain, all he could think about was the pulse between his teeth and the way their scent had crawled under his skin and stayed.