One Night With My Alpha Professor

Edwin & Audrey

Edwin

I’d had enough.

I was an Alpha; not a child who could be cowed by his parents’ psychological tactics. And I’d be d*d if I **let anyone treat

mate like that.

my

That word-Luna-slipped out before I could stop it, but I knew at that moment that it was true.

I was going to propose to Audrey tonight. I was going to make her my Luna, help her shift, and end all of this nonsense.

But first, I had to put Stella Brooks in her place.

“Luna?” My mother threw her head back, blonde hair bobbing, and laughed abrasively. “Did I miss the wedding, or is this another one of your lies?”

Clenching my hands into fists, I stormed up to her. “It doesn’t matter if she’s the Luna now or tomorrow,” I replied coldly. “I’ll not have you speak to her like that. Being cruel to her, shoving her at a public event, attempting to humiliate her.”

My mother scoffed. “I think I have the right after what she did to my husband. If you’d speak to your father, you’d know what he’s like now. A husk of his former self… Always babbling on about death and ‘the void. You should have just killed him instead.”

“And if I see him again, maybe I will,” I replied quickly. “But all Audrey did was show him the truth—and to call her destructive for that is just downright ignorant.”

To my surprise, my mother remained silent.

“If you want to talk about ‘destructive’, then maybe we should talk about what you did tonight,” I continued, my voice lowering to a dangerous level. “You sought out that little girl—told her to come and talk to us. You thought we wouldn’t be able to handle it. That Audrey’s secret would come out. You used a child for your own satisfaction.”

“And it nearly worked,” my mother sneered, folding her arms across her chest. “The world deserves to know the truth. I mean, honestly, Edwin… You’ve always been a troublemaker, but this? Lying about the Silver Star? It will only backfire.”

“Perhaps. But it was my idea, and thus my own burden to bear.”

“Well… it was a p*** poor idea, wasn’t it, darling?”

My wolf growled in response to my mother’s goading, but I quelled the urge to lash out and instead took one more calculated step toward her.

“Whatever you might think of my decisions, Mother,” I growled, “I am the Alpha of Crescent-not Father, not you, not anyone else. Me.”

“You don’t deserve it. I’ll tell everyone that—”

“Quiet.”

I rarely used it—my Alpha Voice. The intonation that could force anyone in Crescent pack to step back into line, to obey. To

it was an archaic ability, one that was used by ancient Alphas to control their people into borderline slavery.

But I didn’t care at this moment.

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Not when it came to this.

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Instantly, my mother’s mouth snapped shut. I could see the panic behind her eyes, watching amusedly as her right hand came up to touch her suddenly useless throat.

“You know, it’s funny,” I said, taking a step back. “Dad loved to exert physical power over me as a kid, but you… You always preferred verbal manipulation, didn’t you? You were so good at it. But I guess you can’t do that now.”

My mother’s eyes widened even further as it began to hit her.

I wasn’t going to let her speak again. Not for a good long while, at least. Not until she learned her lesson.

Without another word, I turned on my heel and held my hand out to my mate, who was staring at me with mouth agape and eyes glowing the brightest silver in the light of the moon.

“Let’s go home, my love,” I said. “I think I’ve had enough of this party.”

Audrey

The image of Edwin’s mother, mouth working uselessly and hand clutching her throat, would haunt me for some time. Even now, hours later, I still shuddered just at the thought.

“She’ll regain her ability to speak in a week or so,” Edwin said as he dropped his toothbrush back into the holder on the counter. “Don’t worry. I won’t keep her mute forever.”

I swallowed hard, resisting the urge to touch my own throat. “I guess it was a fitting punishment.”

He sighed and ran a hand through his hair. “My mother has always had a viper’s tongue. And she loves to use it. I think it’s about time she learns that she won’t get away with treating everyone in whichever awful way she wants.”

“It must have been hard,” I said, following him from the bathroom. “To have those two in control of Crescent, I mean.”

“My parents…” Edwin shook his head and sank down onto the edge of the bed. “My dad wasn’t a bad Alpha, all things considered. He did well in Crescent, and was respected. My mother was the perfect Luna on the outside, too. But behind closed doors…”

“It was hell,” I finished for him.

He nodded, and there was a brief silence. By now, I had sobered up considerably. I’d calmed a bit since the incident with the little girl, especially now that I knew it was partially staged by Stella, although the guilt was still nagging at the edges of my mind.

But there was something else on my mind tonight.

Luna.

Not ‘future Luna’. Not ‘mate’. Not ‘girlfriend’.

Luna.

We hadn’t talked about it yet. I wasn’t even sure how to begin talking about it, or if Edwin would even want to talk about it. Maybe it didn’t even mean anything; maybe it was just a slip of the tongue.

But I couldn’t deny the way that hearing it had made my heart swell to twice its size.

“Edwin-”

•

“Audrey-”

We both began speaking at the same time and both snapped our mouths shut at the same time.

I flushed a deep shade of red and looked at my bare feet on the hardwood floor. “You go

first.”

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Edwin took a deep breath. I heard him shift on the bed, then heard something rustling, followed by his footsteps approaching. When I looked up, he was standing about a foot away from me, his skin almost illuminated by the moonlight spilling in through the open balcony doors.

“I told you that there might be a way for you to shift sooner,” Edwin began slowly, hesitantly. “I don’t know if it’ll work for certain, though. So I want you to be prepared for that.”

I nodded quickly, steg myself. “Whatever it is, I want to know,” I said softly. “I know… I know in the past, I wanted to wait until I was ready. But if you have some training method or some kind of, I don’t know, potion to make it happen faster-”

“Will you marry me?”

His words sent me stumbling back, my throat closing before I could speak. Before I could fall to the floor, his arm shot out and coiled around me, pulling me back against him. At the same time, I felt something small and velvety being pressed into my palm.

The ring.

“I know you snooped,” Edwin said quietly, reaching out to flip the box open in my palm. “It had your scent all over it.”

My face flushed even deeper, if that was even possible at that point.

“Edwin, I…”

“I wanted to marry you the second I knew you were my mate,” he murmured. “I wanted to marry you even more when I saw the way your eyes turned to saucers when you saw that ring in the shop window. And after tonight… I don’t think I can wait any longer, Audrey.”

I was too stunned to utter a word, too frozen as I stared down at the ring in my palm. Gently, Edwin reached down and plucked the little ruby ring out of the box, holding it up. It caught the moonlight, sending little fractals of red glimmering throughout the stone.

“I… But what does this have to do with…” I stammered s***ly.

My mate’s face fell somewhat. “I found out recently that an official mating ceremony-giving you a marking bite-might help you shift for the first time,” he explained. “But… I know how much you’ve struggled with your identity as the Silver Star. How you want to be loved for you, not for your title.”

“So you were afraid to propose,” I finished for him.

He nodded. “I didn’t want you to feel like I was only proposing to make you shift sooner. So I thought, ‘Maybe we can wait and see if she shifts anyway. And then I figured that lying about you shifting might buy us some time, and look how that backfired. And all the while, I was just kicking myself, wanting to marry you because I love you and I want you to be my

Luna.”

I felt my heart swell even more at that. All this time… this was what he was keeping from me.

Slowly, reverently, I reached out to touch the ring. The ruby felt so smooth and cool beneath my fingertips, so… right.

“I know it’s not the most romantic proposal,” Edwin said quietly, his eyes fixed on me. “But I promised I would tell I was keeping from you tonight, and…”

you

what

His voice trailed off, but he didn’t need to finish; I’d already made my decision, romanticism be d*d. I** extended my left

hand and tilted my head back to meet his gaze.

“Yes, Edwin. I’ll marry you.”

As if the greatest weight in the world had been lifted from Edwin’ ever seen. He didn’t hesitate for a moment before taking my hand

It fit perfectly-like it was always meant to be there.

I didn’t have time to gawk at it, though, before he was suddenly Our shared laughter floated into the air above us as we fell back o the closest thing there was to Heaven.

Luna.

I was going to be his Luna.

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DWW.

hand and tilted my head back to meet his gaze.

“Yes, Edwin. I’ll marry you.”

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As if the greatest weight in the world had been lifted from Edwin’s shoulders, his face broke out into the widest smile I’d ever seen. He didn’t hesitate for a moment before taking my hand and slipping the ring onto my finger.

It fit perfectly-like it was always meant to be there.

I didn’t have time to gawk at it, though, before he was suddenly lifting me off my feet and spinning me around the room. Our shared laughter floated into the air above us as we fell back onto the bed, and in those moments, I knew that this was

the closest thing there was to Heaven.

Luna.

I was going to be his Luna.

ww.