Rejected by the Beta, Claimed by the Alpha

Chapter 147: Paranoia?

Clark POV:

I tried going back to bed.

Keyword: tried.

Lucas was clearly nuts. Or maybe just too high-strung for a place like this. Whatever it was, I shouldn’t have let him get in my head. I shouldn’t have even engaged him.

Monsters?

Right. And maybe next week, I’d be abducted by aliens who wanted to teach me advanced calculus.

It was a prank. Had to be. Some messed-up, long-standing tradition where seniors test how gullible the freshmen are. Maybe they had a whole betting pool about who would crack first. Lucas just happened to be the poor bastard who snapped early.

And if, by some insane chance, he was telling the truth?

Then it was a cult.

Big deal. I wasn’t joining it.

I rolled over in bed, pulling the blanket over my head like Lucas had done last night. Ironic. But even under the covers, the room felt colder. Like whatever panic he brought in had left a residue behind.

My hand instinctively reached for my phone. I hovered over sara’s name.

I missed her voice already. Her joy. The way she always managed to talk me out of my spirals. If anyone could snap me back to reality, it was her.

But 5:13 a.m. was too early. Even for her. I didn’t want to come off as clingy.

I’ll tell her at lunch, I told myself. Maybe laugh about it. "Hey, guess what? My roommate thinks we’re living in a vampire cult."

Yeah. Maybe it’d be funny by then.

I dropped the phone beside me, closed my eyes, and tried to block out the sound of the wind outside. The faint hum of the old radiator. The flickering fluorescent light in the hallway that kept buzzing through the crack under the door.

Tried.

But my mind kept looping back to one thing Lucas had said:

"You saw it, didn’t you?"

Yeah.

I had.

if I didn’t want

despite all my loud thoughts—Lucas’s creepy warning, his strange laughter, and everything else—I still managed to pass out again. My

desk beside my bed. It was Sara calling. I jolted up, groggy, my body stiff like I’d been lying in a casket. Weird

I picked up.

"Hey," I rasped.

okay?" her voice was light, cheery, and painfully normal. A total contrast to the

unpacking yesterday and crashed straight into bed. She didn’t see my text until this morning. Now she was

to be

Not just because I was starving, but because I needed some normalcy. Something to remind me this was just a college, not

was made neatly like he’d never come back. Maybe he didn’t. Maybe he really did leave. His stuff was gone, and the eerie quiet of the room now felt too heavy.

I shook it off.

public restrooms. Thank. God. That would’ve been the worst, especially if bullies were in the picture. The idea of being

dressed, and half-drenched in deodorant. I wasn’t about to let Sara’s first official breakfast memory with me involve me smelling like sweaty

had no idea where the cafeteria was. Sure, there was a campus map on the school app... but I suck at directions. Big time. One of the many failings of my so-called genius brain. Show me a network server or a firewall, and I’ll find twenty back doors in under five minutes. Ask me to follow a GPS path with more than two turns? I’m

outside the dorm, scanning.

looked like other students were making their way out too. Some in small chatty groups,

I followed.

course. Didn’t want to look like a weirdo, but I kept a healthy distance. As I

low over the grass like a breath the land was holding in. The buildings—gothic and majestic—seemed to rise out of the fog like

Too still.

breeze that rustled past

shifted behind me. Not a sound. More like a presence. That same cold prickling at the back

whispered to myself. "Or maybe I’m catching Lucas’s

sped up,

glass, I spotted Sara standing by the entrance, her arms

Normal.

Safe.

tightness in

your sweet time," she grinned

got lost," I admitted.

I was about to come rescue

last night, Lucas’s strange

Just for a moment.

we stepped inside, I noticed

counters was pale. Not just light-skinned—pale. Almost translucent. Their eyes didn’t meet ours. Their smiles were all... wrong. Tight-lipped. Tired. Or forced. One of them,

myself it was

to notice. She was already filling her tray with eggs and toast. I followed suit, trying to act natural, but I couldn’t shake the

Targeted.

glancing toward a dark corner of the cafeteria where students were sitting quietly. Too

eyes flicked toward me

Then turned away.