LYRA

Invisible.

That's the goal. That's survival.

I navigate the marble halls of Blackwood Elite University with my head down, my worn canvas messenger bag pressed against my hip, my full-sleeved cream sundress swishing around my calves with each step. The fabric is soft, comfortable, safe—everything the people around me aren't.

Blackwood isn't just elite. It's a fucking monument to wealth and privilege, where the children of billionaires and crime lords play at being students while their trust funds do the real work. The entrance hall alone probably costs more than most people make in a lifetime—vaulted ceilings, imported Italian marble, chandeliers that belong in palaces.

I don't belong here.

Scholarship student. Orphan. Nobody.

The words follow me like shadows, whispered behind manicured hands and designer purses. I've learned to tune them out. Learned to make myself small. Learned that the best way to survive in a world built for people like them is to become invisible to people like them.

I'm halfway across the entrance hall, heading toward the library where I can actually breathe, when I feel it.

Attention.

Predatory. Heavy. Suffocating.

The hair on the back of my neck stands up. My instincts—honed by years in foster care and worse—scream at me to run. But I'm frozen, caught in that primal moment between flight and fight where your body hasn't decided which one will keep you alive.

I look up.

Storm-gray eyes lock onto mine from across the hall.

The man is beautiful like a blade—all sharp edges and lethal grace wrapped in expensive black fabric. Dark hair slightly tousled, like he ran his fingers through it and didn't care how it fell. Features so perfectly carved they look almost cruel. Tall, lean, the kind of build that comes from discipline and violence rather than gyms and trainers.

But it's his eyes that stop my heart.

Storm-gray. Cold. Calculating.

And fixed on me with an intensity that makes my skin crawl.

I know who he is. Everyone does.

Rhys Hawthorne.

Tech empire heir. Untouchable royalty. The kind of dangerous that comes with unlimited money and zero consequences. I've seen him around campus—always surrounded by women, always wearing that careless smile that promises pleasure and delivers nothing.

But he's not smiling now.

Now, he looks like a predator who just spotted prey.

He moves.

Fast.

Cutting through the crowd like they don't exist, his eyes never leaving mine. People scatter out of his way—some out of respect, others out of fear. The sea of designer clothes and entitled faces parts for him like he's Moses and they're the fucking Red Sea.

I should run.

Every instinct I have is screaming at me to run.

But my feet won't move. My body has betrayed me, locked in place by those gray eyes that promise violence and something else I can't name.

He's on me before I can process the thought.

One second I'm standing in the middle of the hall, frozen like an idiot. The next, I'm slammed against the marble wall hard enough to steal the breath from my lungs, my bag falling from my shoulder and hitting the floor with a dull thud.

His hand wraps around my throat.

Not choking. Not squeezing. Just... claiming.

His palm is warm against my skin, his fingers spanning my neck like he's measuring how easily he could crush my windpipe. His thumb presses against my racing pulse, and I know he can feel how fast my heart is beating, how terrified I am even as I refuse to show it on my face.

"Hello, sweetheart."

His voice is sin and threat wrapped in velvet. Low. Rough. The kind of voice that probably makes other girls melt.

It makes me want to knee him in the balls.

Up close, he's devastating. Tall enough that I have to tilt my head back to meet his eyes. Broad shoulders that block out the rest of the hall. The scent of expensive cologne and something darker underneath—something that smells like danger and bad decisions.

His thumb presses harder against my pulse point, and I watch something flicker in those storm-gray eyes. Satisfaction. Possession.

Like he's already decided I'm his.

I try to shove him off, my hands pushing against his chest. It's like pushing against a wall. He doesn't budge.

"Get off—"

"No."

One word. Absolute. Final.

He leans in until his lips brush my ear, and I hate that my body responds—a shiver running down my spine that has nothing to do with cold and everything to do with the raw power radiating off him.

"You don't know me, do you?"

His breath is warm against my skin, and I can feel every inch of him pressed against me—his chest, his thighs, the undeniable evidence of his interest pressed against my stomach.

"I've never seen you—"

The lie comes automatically, but we both know it's bullshit. Everyone at Blackwood knows Rhys Hawthorne.

Something violent flashes in his eyes. His jaw clenches, and for a second, I think he's going to call me on the lie. Instead, his free hand comes up—slowly, deliberately—and his fingers brush against my throat.

Against the necklace.

The delicate silver pendant I've worn for as long as I can remember. The one possession from before the accident, before the amnesia, before I woke up in a hospital with no memory of anything before age eleven.

His fingers wrap around it.

Possessively.

Like he recognizes it.

Like it means something to him.

"Where did you get this?"

His voice has changed. Gone is the smooth threat. Now there's something raw underneath. Something desperate and angry and wrong.

"That's none of—"

He yanks the chain.

Not hard enough to break it, but enough to pull me forward, off balance. I gasp, my hands flying up to grab his wrist, but he's already too close, already overwhelming every sense I have.

His storm-gray eyes bore into mine, and I see something flicker there. Recognition? Pain? Rage?

I don't know.

I don't want to know.

"I'm going to make your life a living hell."

The words are soft. Almost gentle.

Which makes them a thousand times more terrifying.

The entire hall has stopped. Everyone is watching. Dozens of students frozen in place, phones out, recording what's probably going to be all over social media in the next ten minutes.

Scholarship girl gets pinned by Rhys Hawthorne.

Great. Fucking perfect.

His thumb strokes my pulse one more time, and then he leans in even closer, his lips barely brushing the shell of my ear.

"Everything about you is my business now, sweetheart."

Then he's gone.

Just like that.

He releases my throat, steps back, and walks away like nothing happened. Like he didn't just assault me in front of half the student body. Like he didn't just turn my world upside down with a few words and a possessive touch.

I stand there, gasping, my back pressed against the cold marble wall, my hand instinctively going to my necklace.

The hall erupts in whispers.

I don't hear them.

All I can hear is my heartbeat pounding in my ears and his voice echoing in my head.

Everything about you is my business now, sweetheart.

I make it to my dorm room somehow.

Muscle memory, maybe. Or survival instinct. I don't remember the walk, don't remember climbing the stairs, don't remember unlocking my door.

I just remember slamming it shut behind me and leaning against it, my hands shaking, my breath coming in short gasps that sound dangerously close to panic.

What the fuck was that?

Who the fuck does he think he is?

My hand goes to my throat, touching the spot where his fingers wrapped around my neck. My skin still tingles from his touch, and I hate it. Hate that my body responded. Hate that for a split second, when his thumb pressed against my pulse, I felt something other than fear.

I shake my head, trying to clear it.

He's just another entitled rich boy who thinks he can do whatever he wants. Touch whoever he wants. Take whatever he wants.

And I'm just the scholarship girl who was stupid enough to look him in the eye.

I push away from the door and drop my bag on my bed—a narrow twin with a faded comforter that's seen better days. My room is tiny, barely big enough for the bed, a desk, and a small dresser. No private bathroom. No sitting area. Just four walls and a window that overlooks the parking lot.

It's nothing like the luxury suites the paying students get.

But it's mine.

Safe.

Private.

Or at least it was.

I change into sleep shorts and an oversized t-shirt, then curl up on my bed with the sociology textbook I should have been reading hours ago. But the words blur together, meaningless strings of letters that my brain refuses to process.

All I can think about is storm-gray eyes and a hand around my throat and the way he looked at my necklace like it belonged to him.

Where did you get this?

I touch the pendant, running my fingers over the smooth silver surface. I don't know where I got it. I've had it since I woke up in the hospital at age eleven with no memory of anything before. The doctors said it was found in my belongings, that I'd been wearing it when I was hit by the car.

It's the only connection I have to a past I can't remember.

And Rhys Hawthorne looked at it like he knew exactly where it came from.

I'm still staring at the ceiling, trying to make sense of everything, when I hear it.

A soft sound.

Like paper sliding under my door.

I freeze.

It's nearly midnight. No one should be in this hallway. No one should be at my door.

I sit up slowly, my heart starting to race again.

The sound stops.

Footsteps retreat down the hallway—confident, unhurried, like whoever it was didn't care if I heard them leave.

I wait.

Count to sixty.

Then I get up and cross to the door, my bare feet silent on the worn carpet.

There's a photo on the floor.

Face down.

I pick it up with shaking hands and turn it over.

My stomach drops.

It's me.

Asleep in this bed, in this room, wearing the same oversized t-shirt I'm wearing right now.

The angle is from above, like someone was standing over me, looking down while I slept completely unaware.

There's a note on the back, written in sharp, masculine handwriting.

Day one. You're already mine. You just don't know it yet. -RH

I drop the photo like it burned me.

My hands are shaking.

My whole body is shaking.

He was in my room.

Rhys Hawthorne was in my room while I was sleeping, and I didn't even know it.

I back away from the photo, my mind racing through impossible explanations. How did he get in? When? How long was he here? What else did he do while I was unconscious and vulnerable?

I should call security.

I should report this.

I should do something other than stand here staring at evidence that a man I don't know broke into my room and watched me sleep.

But I don't.

Because I already know how this goes.

He's Rhys Hawthorne. Heir to a tech empire. Untouchable.

And I'm nobody.

A scholarship student with no family, no connections, no power.

Who the fuck is going to believe me?

Who the fuck is going to care?

I pick up the photo with numb fingers and carry it to my desk, shoving it in the bottom drawer under a stack of old notebooks where I don't have to look at it.

Then I lock my door.

Check the window.

Check the closet.

Check under the bed.

Nothing.

He's not here.

But he was.

And according to his note, this is only day one.

I climb back into bed, pulling the comforter up to my chin even though I'm not cold.

I don't sleep.

How can I?

Not when I know that somewhere out there, Rhys Hawthorne is watching.

Waiting.

Planning whatever fresh hell day two is going to bring.

I'm going to make your life a living hell.

He wasn't lying.

And I have a terrible feeling this is just the beginning.