Their Clueless Alpha Princess Chapter 06

Their Clueless Alpha Princess Chapter 06

Soren’s POV

“What scent?”

Her voice cut through the hallway noise, sharp and suspicious. Her hand came up between us. Five small fingers and a lot of nerve.

I didn’t answer her.

Last night, I’d tracked the unknown wolf’s scent from the party to the women’s restroom. By the time I reached the door, the room was empty. Nothing left but a faint trace clinging to the tile like smoke after a blown-out candle.

I’d searched the hallways for an hour. Found nothing but drunk humans and spilled beer. The trail had scattered into fragments too thin to follow.

But I’d found the necklace on the restroom floor. A wolf fang on a leather cord, abandoned next to the sink. And this morning, when I returned it, the girl who grabbed for it was the same one who’d crashed into me at the party. The same one with the crescent-shaped mark at the base of her neck.

Thea Voss. The necklace. The restroom. The mark. Every thread pointed to her.

Now I had my confirmation. My nose was close enough to read her skin, and her pulse was hammering so hard I could count the beats through her throat.

She smelled like soap. Cheap shampoo. The faded sweetness of detergent that had been washed too many times. And underneath all of it — nothing. No wolf. Not even a whisper of one.

Human. Completely, unremarkably human.

Scent doesn’t lie. Whatever I’d tracked last night, it wasn’t her.

I let go before she could struggle. Tossed the necklace back.

She caught it against her chest with both hands, stumbling two steps away from me. Her face flushed dark. Her jaw locked.

Wrong lead. The girl was irrelevant.

I turned and walked away.

That was rude, Nox said.

I didn’t answer him either.

She slapped you yesterday. His voice stretched lazily through my skull. I liked that. Can we keep her?

I shut him out and kept walking.

Thea’s POV

I took a step after him. “Hey — what was that about?”

Soren didn’t stop. Didn’t turn. He rounded the corner and was gone, like I hadn’t said a word.

My hand closed around the wolf tooth until the edges bit into my palm.

He’d pressed his nose to my neck, sniffed me, decided I wasn’t what he was looking for, and walked away without a single explanation.

Arrogant. Dismissive. Completely insufferable.

I wanted to chase him down the hallway and demand he tell me what the hell “I caught your scent” was supposed to mean. But Soren Solvane didn’t come with explanations. He came with silence and golden eyes that looked through people instead of at them.

The clasp fastened behind my neck with a small click. The familiar weight of the tooth dropped against my collarbone, and something tight in my chest finally loosened. My thumb pressed it flat against my skin for a second.

I never wanted to deal with the Solvane twins again. Not the cold one who smelled strangers, and not the smooth one who touched their hair without asking.

The late bell was going to ring in three minutes. I didn’t have time to stand in a hallway thinking about boys with gold eyes. I had French class.

I ran.

I was still wearing yesterday’s jeans, Darcy’s hand-me-downs with the frayed hem that hit too high on my ankles, and the gray hoodie I’d bought with my own money from a thrift store last winter. My bag slapped against my hip as I rounded the corner, skidded past two freshmen, and made it through the classroom door with thirty seconds to spare.

Juno was already in her seat. She took one look at me and raised her eyebrows.

“You’re sweating.”

“Ran from the other building.” I dropped into the chair next to her. It was mostly true.

Madame Arnaud walked in a minute later, reading glasses balanced on the tip of her nose. She clapped her hands once, and the room went quiet.

“This semester,” she said, “your primary assessment will be a group performance. Each group will adapt and stage a French dramatic work. The top-performing groups will earn a place in our academic exchange in Paris.”

Paris.

The word hit me like a struck bell. Around the room, the chatter rose, but I barely heard it. An international academic exchange on my transcript. The kind of line that made admissions officers pause. Proof that a girl from a public school in a dead-end town could compete with anyone.

I needed that trip the way I needed Veritas. Not as a dream. As a rope ladder out of Margot’s basement.

Madame Arnaud pulled out her clipboard and started reading group assignments. I straightened up and snuck a look across the room, half-hoping my name would land next to his.

Vesper sat three rows to my left, his dark hair brushing the collar of his shirt. He was reading something on his desk and hadn’t looked up once. That straight-backed calm, the quiet focus. Three years of watching him and I still couldn’t look away.

And sitting right beside him, close enough that their elbows nearly touched, was Darcy.

She’d known about my crush since sophomore year. She’d caught me staring at the back of Vesper’s head during a school assembly and never stopped using it. After that, she made it her personal mission to sit beside him in every class they shared, touch his arm when she spoke, and glance at me to make sure I was watching.

Today she was wearing a new sage-green blouse, something silky that Aunt Margot had bought her over the weekend. My thrift-store hoodie weighed ten pounds.

“Group Four,” Madame Arnaud read. “Vesper Aldric. Darcy Vaughn.”

Darcy turned in her chair and looked straight at me. Her smile was slow. Satisfied.

I dropped my eyes to my notebook and bit down on the inside of my cheek.

It doesn’t matter. Veritas matters. Paris matters. He doesn’t.

“Group Five.” Madame Arnaud adjusted her glasses. “Thea Voss. Juniper Rhodes. Soren Solvane. Ash Solvane.”

My pen stopped.

Juno’s elbow drove into my ribs. “Did she just—”

“Yes.”

I looked at the two empty seats in the back of the classroom. The same seats that had been vacant since the first day of the semester. The seats that belonged to two transfer students who had more important things to do than show up to the classes they were enrolled in.

One of them had just sniffed my neck and left without a word. The other had tried to charm me at a party by lifting a strand of my hair off my face.

And they were supposed to help me get to Paris.

My grip tightened on my pen until my knuckles went white.

If they wouldn’t come to class, I’d go find them myself.