Chapter 22
Axel was going to kill Ambrose Blackthorn. Slowly. Painfully. With his bare hands.
But first, he had to sit through another hour of physics.
He shifted in the too-small seat, his knees pressing against the back of the chair in front of him.
The lecture hall’s amphitheater design gave him a clear vantage point from the back row—every entrance visible, every student’s head accounted for, and a direct line of sight to Rebecca at the front of the room.
His little witch. Standing at the whiteboard, owning the room. Because she did.
He had already survived her first lecture of the afternoon.
Freshman physics. Basic stuff, from what he could tell—though even most of that had gone over his head.
Something about projectiles and vectors.
She’d been patient with the students, fielding questions without a hint of condescension, her voice calm and steady despite what had happened earlier that morning.
As if that bloody bastard hadn’t torn her office apart. As if there wasn’t a threat scrawled in red across her whiteboard.
You don’t get to have him.
The words replayed over and over in his mind, because there’d been too much truth to them.
His jaw clenched. The wolf in him paced restlessly, clawing at his insides, demanding blood. He’d wanted to hunt Blackthorn down the moment he’d seen the destruction. Corner him, and rip his throat out.
But Rebecca needed him. So he stayed.
Getting her to accept his presence had been a battle of its own.
“I’m not letting Ambrose take anything else from me today,” she’d said, chin lifted in that stubborn way of hers. “I’m teaching my afternoon classes.”
“Then I’m coming with you.”
“Axel, you can’t just—“
“I can. I will. End of discussion.”
She had argued, of course. Used the bunnies—their schedule. As if he gave a damn about puzzle toys and nap times when someone was stalking his mate.
“The little snacks will survive,” he assured her. “They nap all afternoon anyway. We’ll be home by dinner.”
The look she’d given him—half exasperation, half something softer—had made his chest tight.
Now, here he was. Four hours into playing bodyguard in academia. And completely, utterly distracted.
This class was different from the first. Advanced physics. A smaller group. The students were more engaged. And Rebecca?
Fuck.
She was writing on the whiteboard, her arm extended as she drew some kind of wave diagram. Sine curves with Greek letters he didn’t understand. Her handwriting was quick and confident, the marker squeaking against the surface.
“So, when light passes from one medium to another,” she continued, turning to face the class, “the frequency remains constant. What changes?”
“Wavelength,” a student in the front row answered.
“Exactly.” Rebecca’s face lit up with approval. His chest got hot and he resisted the urge to press his hand against his sternum. “The wavelength changes because the speed of light in the medium changes—it slows down compared to its speed in a vacuum. And that relationship is governed by...?”
A few people murmured equations aloud.
She wrote one on the board: c = λf
“Speed of light equals wavelength multiplied by frequency.” She tapped the equation. “Now, when we’re talking about light moving through a medium other than a vacuum, we use the index of refraction.”
More symbols. More equations. Something about angles and sine functions.
He understood absolutely none of it.
But watching her explain it? Watching her pace along the front of the room, gesturing with the marker, her voice taking on a particular cadence when she was passionate about something?
That he understood perfectly.
Today she wore a fitted blouse that did things to her figure—accentuated every curve—and a flowing skirt that swished around her calves as she moved. Professional. Put-together. Sexy as hell without trying to be.
He shifted again, hating his jeans for how painful they were against his swelling cock.
“Let’s talk about Snell’s Law.” Rebecca drew a diagram—a line representing some kind of boundary, with arrows showing light bending as it crossed. “This describes the relationship between the angles of incidence and refraction when light passes between two media with different refractive indices.”
She wrote another equation: n?sinθ? = n?sinθ?
A student raised her hand. “So that’s why a straw looks bent in the glass of water example from the text book?”
“Exactly!” Rebecca’s smile was bright, genuine. “The light bends as it moves from water to air because they have different indices of refraction. Your brain assumes light travels in a straight line, so it interprets the image incorrectly. The straw isn’t actually bent—your perception is.”
Several students scribbled down notes.
Axel just stared.
She was bloody brilliant. He’d known that, abstractly.
Known she had a PhD. That she’d chosen to teach at a community college when she could have done something more prestigious.
But seeing it—seeing her command a room full of students, break down complex concepts like it was nothing, light up when someone grasped what she was teaching—
Mine, his wolf rumbled. Ours.
Aye. She was.
Even if he hadn’t fully claimed her. Even if he was holding back the one thing that would bind them permanently. She was his, and watching her like this only made the possessive ache worse.
“Now,” Rebecca continued, “what happens when light moves from a denser medium to a less dense medium? Say, from water to air?” She drew another diagram, arrows at increasingly steep angles.
“At a certain point, we hit something called the critical angle. Beyond that angle, the light doesn’t refract at all.
It reflects completely back into the denser medium.
This is called total internal reflection. ”
She wrote: θc = sin?1(n?/n?)
“This is how fiber optics work.” Her enthusiasm was evident. “Light bounces along inside the fiber, never escaping, because the angles are always beyond the critical angle. It’s trapped inside, following the path of the cable.”
Trapped inside. Following a path it couldn’t escape.
He knew something about that.
His gaze tracked her as she moved to the other side of the whiteboard, adding more notes. The way her hips swayed. The curve of her waist. The way she tucked a strand of hair behind her ear when she was concentrating.
He’d had his mouth on her multiple times over the weekend. His fingers inside her. He’d made her come apart again and again, learning exactly what sounds she made when she shattered. And still, it wasn’t enough.
Would never be enough.
A hand shot up near the front. Male. Young. Barely more than a pup. “Professor Miller? I’m still confused about the difference between reflection and refraction. Could you maybe...go over it again?”
It was a valid enough request. But he didn’t miss the way the boy’s eyes lingered on Rebecca. The slight flush on his cheeks. The eager way he leaned forward.
A low growl built in his chest before he could stop it.
The student two seats over shot him a nervous glance. He forced himself to relax, unclenching his fists.
Rebecca, oblivious, launched into a patient explanation. She drew new diagrams, used her hands to demonstrate angles, even pulled out a small prism from somewhere and held it up to show how white light separated into colors.
“Dispersion,” she said, tilting the prism so a rainbow scattered across the whiteboard. “Different wavelengths refract at slightly different angles. That’s why we see the spectrum.”
The students oohed like children at a magic show. And fuck if he didn’t understand the impulse. There was something magical about the way she made it all seem so simple. So beautiful.
Light bending. Colors separating. The invisible made visible.
A light witch, teaching about light. The irony wasn’t lost on him.
She’d lost so much of her magic. Piece by piece, stripped away by a curse she hadn’t earned. And yet here she was, still finding ways to illuminate the world. Still shining, even when her power had been dimmed.
His chest ached with the need to fix it. To find that bloody knife and break her curse and give her back everything she’d lost.
Soon. They’d go back to the cave soon. And this time, he would fight even harder. He would not let his demons stop them.
“All right,” Rebecca said, capping her marker and checking the clock. “That’s all we have time for today. Don’t forget—problem set due Friday. And start reviewing chapters twelve and thirteen. We’ll be moving into interference and diffraction next week.”
Students began gathering their things, the rustle of bags and murmured conversations filling the hall. Axel stayed in his seat, watching as a few lingered near the front.
The boy who’d asked about reflection was among them.
“Professor Miller?” The pup approached her with a shy smile that made Axel want to bare his teeth. “I was wondering if you had office hours this week? I could really use some extra help.”
Rebecca’s expression remained friendly, professional. “My office is actually unavailable this week—maintenance issue. But you can email me questions, and I’ll be holding a review session before the exam.”
“Oh.” The boy’s face fell. “Well, maybe we could meet somewhere else? Like the coffee shop on Main Street?”
This time, the growl that escaped Axel’s chest was loud enough to echo.
Every remaining head in the room turned toward him.
Rebecca’s eyes went wide. The boy paled, finally seeming to notice the massive, scarred man in the back row who looked ready to commit murder.
“That won’t be necessary,” Axel said, rising to his full height. He descended the stairs slowly, deliberately, never breaking eye contact with the pup. “Professor Miller has other commitments.”
“I—yes—of course.” The boy grabbed his bag and practically fled.
The remaining students scattered like startled deer, rushing for the exits.
Rebecca watched them go, then turned to him with her arms crossed. “Was that really necessary?”
“Aye.” He stopped in front of her, close enough to catch her scent. One he’d grown to adore. Chamomile and honey, slightly sharpened with exasperation. “It was.”
“He’s a student, Axel. He was asking about office hours.”
“He was asking you on a date.”
“He was not—“ She stopped, brow furrowing. “Was he?”
“Aye. Pretty sure he was.”
She blinked, then let out a startled laugh. “Oh. I didn’t... I thought he was just struggling with the material.”
“The only thing he’s struggling with is keeping his eyes above your neckline.”
The flush that crept up her cheeks was deeply satisfying. She swatted his arm. “You can’t just growl at my students.”
“I can if they’re sniffing around what’s mine.”
The words came out before he could stop them. Raw. Possessive. Absolutely true.
Rebecca’s breath caught. Then her eyes narrowed, that stubborn tilt returning to her chin. “Yours? I thought there were conditions on this. On us.”
Bollocks. She had him there.
He scrambled for something to say. Some way to walk it back without it being a complete lie. “Yours for as long as you’re under my protection,” he said carefully. The words tasted like ash in his mouth. “Until Blackthorn is dealt with. Until your curse is broken.”
Something flickered in her expression. Hurt? Disappointment? It was gone before he could name it, replaced by a careful neutrality that made his chest ache.
“Right,” she said quietly. “Day by day.”
“Day by day.”
She held his gaze for a long moment, and he had the uncomfortable sense that she saw right through him. That she knew he was holding something back. But she didn’t push. Just nodded once and turned to gather her things from the lectern.
He’d done the right thing. Reminded them both of the boundaries. Kept her from getting too attached to a wolf who was one bad day away from losing his mind.
So, why did it feel like he’d just made a terrible mistake?
“Come on,” he said, his voice rougher than intended. “Let’s go home.”
She didn’t correct him. Didn’t point out that it was his home, not hers. Just shouldered her bag and walked past him toward the door.
He followed, the wolf inside him howling in protest.
She was safe. She was here. She was his—for now.
It would have to be enough.