When We Were Mates (Demetra and Emris) novel Chapter 177

Chapter 177

Luna Demetra.

I look over at my side, and it’s Travis that takes the empty seat.

He smiles. I smile back.

“Heard you were almost expelled.”

Your sister definitely wanted that to be my ending!” I tap my notebook twice.

She’s usually like that.” Travis sets his bag down. “Doesn’t enjoy rule–breaking regardless of the reason. But I heard you had knight come in and save the day-

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His name is Alpha Emris!” Wren says, from my other side as if she has been waiting for a chance to say it since she vár down.

Travis turns to look at me with those moonstone eyes doing their reading thing. “You know Alpha Emris? Of the Covenant Pack?”

Um. His parents found me on the road when I was small!” I say it with a straight face, buying into the lie Emris told Laura yesterday.

Even if Travis doesn’t understand, he doesn’t have time to ask again because Emris walks into the fully seated class.

I hear the whoa from everybody like someone sucked all the air out of the lecture hall.

Phones come up in the front rows…I watch three girls raise theirs simultaneously, angling for the best shot, and I feel something move through my chest that is hot and immediate and deeply unreasonable.

My wolf goes unhappy.

Not mildly. Fully, completely, vocally unhappy in the way she has apparently decided is her right now that she’s unlocked. I can feel the Alpha blood and the White Omega both awake and both having opinions about the thirty phones currently pointed at my husband and the sounds being made in this classroom.

I can literally hear my wolf growling low in my chest. Pacing behind my ribs. Plus, Emris and I just had contact with each other in the Rockville house. Multiple times. So this reaction is completely unwarranted.

Is this how he feels with his Alpha wolf when he hears another guy on the other end of the phone? When I’m wearing a short little skirt?

I look at Emris

Blue jeans. Baggy, low, the kind that sit on the hips. Black shirt…fitted, snug, and I know he owns loose shirts, I have folded his loose shirts before. Emris has many loose shirts that would have covered the tattoos running up both arms that are now completely visible because of this specific shirt that he chose this specific morning.

His hair.

He has pulled it into a rough bun… the messy kind, the kind that looks like it took ten seconds and somehow also looks like a decision with pieces falling loose around his face.

He is doing this to get attention from the girls.

I look left and right cause it’s the same thing everyone is saying.

Mon, Jun T

Chapter 177

“He’s so hot-

“Look at his biceps-”

From somewhere in the back a she–wolf actually makes a sound that suggests tears are involved and her friends are hitting each other’s shoulders!

Cassie!? I watch her threaten a girl in the front adjacent row with nothing but eye contact until the girl relocates, and then Cassie slides into the vacated seat and runs her fingers through her hair and adjusts her cleavage toward the podium.

I feel my ears itch.

Emris hasn’t even said anything yet some dude…already has a large handmade sign and is holding it up over their head. can’t read it from here but whatever it says makes Emris smile and the entire room makes that “awwwn/ sound like this is a television programme.

“Who does he think he is!?”

Right.” Travis leans toward me. “He’s one of those Alphas who think they’ve got big dick energy.”

“Trust me.” I smile before I can stop myself. “He has it.”

Pause.

I forget Travis was on my side a second ago. Now I’m thinking about the last mate session between Emris and me. I also realize that I am smiling, which is worse-

“Are you serious right now?” Travis says.

“No. I mean, he has it but he’s also a complete jerk!”

Cassie, from two rows over, turns and looks directly at me.

“White Omega.” She says it like a category rather than a name. “Be serious. You could never win a wolf like him even if you whore yourself.”

I look at her.

“Says the red lipstick bully bitch who can’t even win an arts competition, can’t win a fair fight, and has to send masked people to a bathroom to feel powerful.” I tilt my head slightly. “You could train every day for the rest of your life and you still wouldn’t reach my level. What do you know about winning when you are a loser.”

The he–wolves in the row behind us burst out laughing and Cassie’s face goes very still.

I look away from her and Laura Hale walks in, moving to a seat near the front. I’m sorry but do professors attend classes too?

“Morning, everyone.”

Emris’s voice hits the microphone on the podium and fills the room from every speaker simultaneously… that bass, that specific bottom–register quality that I know from dark hallways and early mornings in the particular way he says my name.

Everyone shuts up so quick!

The projector light comes on and the lecture hall becomes dark.

The spotlight finds Emris though like some greek angel.

“I should do an introduction, shouldn’t I?” He says it conversationally and people chuckle.

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20:27 Mon, Jun 1 MP

Chapter 177

Three hundred wolves. Completely in his palm. Thirty seconds in.

Tim Emris Convenant. Alpha of the Black Covenant Pack. The elders of my pack decided I do a territory tour and show the world that I’m not just a Trybrid with slits in my eyes. But that I actually do something useful occasionally. Your Dean hard a suggestion for where to start…and it was right here in Wolf Arts.”

The room laughs again.

Emris paces the stage and the spotlight follows him.

“I was a student here myself a while back but I was the worst kind of kid. I was battling these slits.” He taps the corner of his eye. “But I’m proud to have come back without them today. I’m gonna teach you how to be a better wolf. Not a perfect wolf. there’s no such thing as that.”

He looks around the room slowly. “In the time I have here at Wolf Arts, I’ll teach you the art of being a wolf.”

Everyone starts clapping and some even stand in rows!

Lolly pulls my sleeve and leans close to my ear. “Laura is quite smiley.”

“What?” I try to see past the heads in front of me, but I can’t find her in the dark.

Emris taps the remote and the projector changes. In big letters, the word SCENT burns across the screen in dark font.

“Who can tell me what a scent is?”

A lot of wolves raise their hands. Oh, and Cassie. Her hand is up too.

Emris has something in his hand like a pointer, red light at the tip. It dances across the raised hands but then lands on Wren.

She quickly gets up!

“Scent is… it’s the chemical signature every wolf leaves behind. It’s like a fingerprint, but invisible. It tells other wolves who you are, what pack you’re from, how you’re feeling, and… and whether you’re a threat or not.”

“Correct.” Emris nods. “First student to answer my question.”

The red light clicks off and Wren starts to sit down.

“You get to become my VP.”

The room explodes with noise when Emris says that. Heads swivel toward Wren like they’d like to kill her.

Emris is getting off the staircase now and coming into where the students are all seated. Everyone is turning their head as he moves. I see one she–wolf in pink sweater literally sniffing the air as he passes.

“Scent is your first weapon as a wolf.” He moves through the rows with his hands in his pockets.

“It is the weapon that only wolves have. The wolf in you could be one percent and you will still have your scent. It doesn’t sleep. It doesn’t turn off. It is running at full capacity every moment of your existence whether you know it or not. Which means you are either using it or you are leaving your most powerful weapon on the floor.”

He stops and faces a row of students on the left.

“It’s your power. It’s your claws…before the battle even begins.”

“Most wolves think scent is about the nose. Scent is in your fingertips. Scent crawls up your neck when something dangerous enters a room. It sits in the back of your throat. If you’ve been treating it like a nose function you’ve been wasting ninety percent of what it does.”

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