Chapter 95 – The Weight of Absence
The black limousine stopped in front of the main entrance of Clear Creek Private College.
The chauffeur stepped out first and opened the door with the silent precision of someone accustomed to the routines of powerful families. The vehicle looked like a crouching animal, its engine still purring softly, releasing small waves of warmth into the cold morning air.
Titus stepped out slowly, as if every movement required a different kind of effort than a physical one.
Sofía stepped out after him.
They walked together toward the entrance of the school.
Titus kept his head down. His thoughts were far away. So far away that he barely heard the murmur of the campus waking up for a new day. The sound of conversations, lockers slamming, the usual laughter… everything reached him muffled, as if someone had placed a thick sheet of glass between him and the world.
Sofía glanced at him.
She had noticed his silence since breakfast. During the entire drive to school, Titus had barely spoken. She had respected that silence in the car, but now, watching him walk like an automaton through the stone hallway, something stirred in her chest.
"Titus…" she said softly.
He barely reacted. A slower blink, a slight turn of his head, but no real change in his expression.
Sofía smiled with a mixture of tenderness and possessiveness. She took his arm as they walked down the long stone corridor. The centuries‑old stone of the college reflected the pale morning light, creating long shadows that stretched behind them as if someone else were following.
"Hey… I'm not mad at you about the other day."
Titus raised his eyes slightly, confused. The other day? It felt like she was talking about something that had happened weeks ago, not barely twenty‑four hours earlier.
"I'm mad at them," Sofía continued with a small gesture of annoyance. "Those girls still don't understand something very simple."
She leaned a little closer to him.
"You're mine, alpha… not their alpha."
Titus wasn't really listening. His mind was still trapped in what had happened the day before. In the way Diana had looked at him just before everything broke apart. In the sound of the slap. In the emptiness left behind by her car disappearing into the distance.
Even so, he nodded slightly, as if he had understood.
Sofía squeezed his arm affectionately and they kept walking.
---
As they moved through the school corridors, something curious began to happen.
The looks.
First came the boys.
Some stared openly with jealousy, their arms crossed, their jaws tight. Others whispered among themselves as Titus passed, leaning closer to murmur something in a friend's ear before laughing with that rough tone people only use when talking about someone they envy.
Then the girls.
Their looks were different.
Curious.
Interested.
Even… intrigued.
Some stared at him openly, as if evaluating something they couldn't quite understand. Others lowered their eyes when he passed, only to lift them again when they thought he wasn't looking.
Since Titus had awakened his werewolf nature, something in him had changed. It wasn't just his strength or his gaze. It wasn't only the new confidence that sometimes appeared in his gestures.
It was the pheromones.
His natural scent had become stronger, more dominant, more magnetic. A smell no girl could explain with words, yet all of them perceived somewhere in the primitive part of their brain. A scent that said: there is something different here. Something powerful. Something you would want close to you.
Without realizing it, Titus was attracting the attention of many girls in the school.
Whispers began spreading through the hallway like a slow‑burning fire.
"Is that Titus?"
"The new guy?"
"They say he's with Sofía now…"
"Seriously?"
"Yeah, look at them. They're walking together."
"Lucky guy…"
The boys murmured with annoyance, fists buried in their pockets.
The girls… with a completely different kind of interest. Some smiled. Others bit their lips. One girl even stopped in the middle of the hallway just to watch him pass, and her friend had to pull her arm so she would keep walking.
Sofía noticed.
And she smiled with satisfaction.
Because that attention, that desire, that envy… all of it meant that the man walking beside her was valuable.
And that man was hers.
---
Finally, they reached the classroom.
They pushed the door open and walked in together.
The sound of the door opening was like a small detonation. Several heads turned at once.
Inside, several of the so‑called "Unwanted" were already there.
Melanie lifted her head immediately.
Her eyes locked onto Sofía with cold hatred, so dense it almost seemed to pulse in the air. The look of a predator evaluating another predator who had stepped into her territory.
Cristal did the same.
From her seat, with the natural elegance that characterized her, Cristal stopped reviewing her notes and focused all her attention on the scene. Her golden eyes flashed for an instant, a barely perceptible spark, but enough for anyone who knew her to realize something was stirring beneath that calm surface.
Laura as well.
Laura, sitting beside them, lifted her gaze when she saw Titus enter with Sofía. But her expression was different. Not hatred. Not possessiveness.
Sadness.
A small, quiet sadness that settled somewhere in her chest and stayed there, weighing on her.
The atmosphere tightened in silence.
An uncomfortable silence, dense, as if someone had absorbed all the oxygen from the room.
---
Bruno was sitting a few rows behind them.
But his mind was somewhere else.
Far away.
His eyes were fixed on Walter.
Walter had now become his main concern. The center of a storm of emotions Bruno did not yet fully understand, but could no longer ignore. Every gesture Walter made, every word, every silence… Bruno registered all of it somewhere deep in his chest.
For the first time in a long while, Titus had moved into the background of Bruno's mind.
Walter, meanwhile, was focused on something else.
On Melanie.
He watched her with a mixture of resentment and contempt. His jaw tightened every time she moved a finger, every time she breathed in the same direction as Titus.
He still couldn't understand how Titus had ended up befriending her… or how Melanie had ended up being accepted into the group known as the "Unwanted."
For Walter, it was still incomprehensible.
A silent betrayal gnawing at his insides.
---
Meanwhile, Titus walked to his seat.
His thoughts were still somewhere else.
On Diana.
On the kiss.
On the slaps.
On the way she had fled.
He sat down slowly, dropping his backpack beside the chair with a dull thud.
For a moment he lifted his head, searching for the teacher's desk.
But the teacher wasn't there.
The space was empty.
The wooden desk, always so orderly, so present, now looked like an object without an owner. Just another piece of furniture. Something that was there but meant nothing.
Titus lowered his gaze again.
Maybe…
just maybe…
she would arrive later.
And that thought, small but cruel, made his sadness even heavier.
Because deep down, he knew that even if she did arrive… nothing would be the same.
The classroom fell silent.
But not just any silence.
The silence of eighteen people waiting for something to happen.
The silence of four girls measuring their strength in a war that had barely begun.
The silence of two men who did not yet know how to name what they felt.
And the silence of a boy who had lost something he wasn't even sure he had ever truly possessed.
---
Hook: And that silence hid a danger that would soon come to light…