Chapter 7 Patrick
Patrick
I stand there for a long moment after she’s gone, rooted to the floor as if the soles of my shoes have melted into the tile.
The door swings shut with a soft click. The sound echoes, and then the room is silent.
Too silent. Like someone cut the audio mid-scene and left the visuals running.
My breathing is uneven — shallow pulls that don’t quite fill my lungs. My pulse pounds in my ears, heavy and arrhythmic, loud enough that it nearly drowns out my thoughts.
My pheromones are still spiking.
I can feel them — a pressure under my skin, a hum in my bloodstream, like a current I can’t switch off. It radiates outward from my chest and throat, heat crawling along my collarbones, settling behind my sternum.
I don’t know what that was.
But I know one thing with bone-deep certainty:
It cannot happen again.
Not with her.
Not with a student.
I drag a hand down my face, pressing my palm hard over my mouth as if I can physically contain whatever is trying to break loose. My bag still sits on the desk where I left it — papers aligned, pen capped, laptop closed. Everything orderly. Controlled.
Everything except me.
My mind replays it without permission.
The brush of her fingers against mine.
The instant contact — skin to skin — and the sharp, electric jolt that shot up my arm like I’d grabbed a live wire.
And then her scent. God.
It hit me like a storm front breaking open inside my ribs.
Fresh pine after snowfall. Cold mountain air. Something crisp and wild and impossibly clean. It cut straight through the chemical fog of my suppressants and lodged itself somewhere deep in my lungs.
Grounding. Inviting. Dangerous.
Tomorrow, I’m supposed to meet with her again. Alone. To go over the TA materials.
The thought makes my stomach tighten.
I don’t know how I’m going to sit across from her and discuss grading rubrics when my body reacted like that from a single accidental touch.
My pheromones shouldn’t have spiked so easily.
Not with suppressants in my system. Not with years of discipline and training behind me.
I’ve spent most of my adult life mastering control — posture, tone, distance, breathing. I know how to regulate my body down to the smallest physiological cue. I’ve handled high-stress research presentations. Competitive faculty interviews. Provocations from colleagues who wanted to see me slip.
One touch should not have undone all of that.
And yet.
I pack my bag slowly, mechanically, as if muscle memory can compensate for mental disarray. When I leave the classroom, the hallway is filling with students — overlapping voices, laughter, the echo of footsteps on tile.
It all feels distant. Like I’m observing through glass.
My thoughts circle with questions relentlessly.
What did it mean?
What could it mean?
Static electricity?
A chemical anomaly?
Or something rarer. Something I’ve only ever read about in clinical studies and dismissed as statistical outliers.
I run through names in my head. A pheromone biologist I collaborated with two years ago. A neurologist who studies bond anomalies and imprint responses. A behavioral scientist who’s seen enough strange cases not to laugh at hypotheticals.
I hope one of them has something useful. Because right now, I’m flying blind.
Outside, winter slams into me. The cold hits like a physical wall, wind slicing through wool and cotton as if they’re decorative suggestions rather than insulation. It stings my cheeks, makes my eyes water, forces a sharp inhale that burns all the way down.
Winter came in fast this year. No gentle transition.
Just a sudden drop in temperature — like the season lost patience.
The cold helps. A little. It cuts through the haze in my head, sharpens the edges of my thoughts.
But it doesn’t erase her scent.
It lingers — vivid, stubborn — like the ghost of a breath I can’t quite exhale.
I cross the parking lot, boots crunching over thin ice. My car is dusted with frost, windows opaque with cold. I unlock it and slide inside, gripping the steering wheel harder than necessary.
Think about something else. Anything else.
Grant proposals. Curriculum revisions. Budget meetings.
But my mind drifts.
Back to that classroom.
Back to her.
Back to the moment everything shifted.
The drive home passes in fragments. Red light. Turn signal. Pedestrian crossing.
The winter sun hangs low and pale over the city, drained of warmth.
My hands stay tight on the wheel the entire time, knuckles whitening, jaw clenched hard enough that it aches. Every time my focus slips, it returns to the same point.
Her voice.
Her smile.
The brush of her fingers.
The shock.
By the time I pull into my driveway, my heart is still beating too fast.
I sit in the car after killing the engine, listening to the faint ticking as it cools. The silence inside feels thick, insulated. My reflection in the darkened windshield looks unfamiliar — eyes too bright, expression too tight.
Be rational. Be composed. Be the adult in the room.
It doesn’t take.
Inside, the house greets me with its usual quiet. No television. No music. Just the low hum of the heater and the faint creak of settling wood.
Normally, I appreciate the silence.
Today, it presses in on me.
I drop my bag by the door instead of placing it in its usual spot. My coat ends up draped over the couch instead of hung on the hook.
Small deviations.
But I notice.
My routines are precise. Predictable. Structured.
They’re already slipping.
That alone tells me how rattled I am.
I pace the living room, dragging a hand through my hair until it stands unevenly.
“What the hell was that?” I mutter.
The spark.
The scent.
The way my suppressants failed like they weren’t even there.
My pheromones responding before I consciously registered what was happening.
That’s never happened before.
Not once. Not during stress peaks. Not around other omegas.
Not around alphas deliberately pushing boundaries. I’ve always held the line.
But with her?
One touch. One breath. One second.
I scrub my hands over my face and exhale harshly.
She’s my student. She’s young.
She’s brilliant, ambitious, bright-eyed — the kind of mind I should mentor, not react to.
The kind I should protect.
Her scent invades my thoughts again.
Fresh pine. Winter air.
Something steady and wild and entirely her.
It feels like it’s still in my lungs.
I walk into the kitchen and pour a glass of water. The glass is cool against my palm. The water slides down my throat without registering.
I need answers.
I need to know what that shock means. What it means when suppressants fail so completely. What it means when instinct overrides discipline in under a second.
I need science. Data.
Not superstition. Not fate.
Names flicker through my mind again — colleagues who have published on pheromone anomalies, bond theory, and neurological imprinting.
But even as I consider reaching out, I hesitate.
Because saying it out loud makes it real.
And I’m not ready for real.
Not when I’m supposed to sit across from her tomorrow and calmly review TA responsibilities.
Not when I’m supposed to pretend my body didn’t react like that.
Upstairs, I turn the shower on as hot as it will go. Steam fills the bathroom quickly, fogging the mirror until my reflection disappears.
I step under the spray.
Water pounds against the back of my neck and shoulders, heat sinking into muscle. It loosens some tension — but not the knot in my chest. Not the buzzing under my skin.
Even with my eyes closed. Even with water roaring in my ears.
I can still feel it.
That spark.
That scent.
Her.
For the first time in years, I’m afraid of what my body is trying to tell me.
I step out overheated — not from the water, but from the thoughts that refuse to quiet. I towel off automatically, movements efficient and practiced.
My phone sits on the counter.
My fingers hover over it for a beat.
Am I sure?
I start typing anyway.
I send a message to the only people I trust with something even remotely like this.
\[What does it mean when you feel an electric shock the moment you touch someone?\]
Intentionally vague.
I stare at the screen after hitting send, stomach twisting.
I pray no one responds with immediate follow-ups.
Who? When? What kind of shock?
Because I don’t know how to answer honestly.
I don’t know how to say it happened with my student.
A woman I’m almost certain is an alpha. A woman so much younger than me.
A woman whose scent cut through my suppressants like paper and whose touch dismantled years of control in a single second.
I don’t know how to say I reacted more strongly in that moment than I ever have with anyone.
And I definitely don’t know how to say I’m terrified of what that implies.
Fraternizing between faculty and students is strictly prohibited.
For good reason. Power dynamics. Ethics. Safety. It’s a minefield.
I’ve never even been tempted to approach that boundary.
Until today.
I sit on the edge of my bed, phone still in hand, the screen casting a faint glow across the dark room.
My heart beats unevenly.
Searching for a rhythm it doesn’t recognize yet.
I can’t break that rule.
Not for someone I barely know. Not for a moment I don’t understand.
Not for a spark that might mean nothing. Or might mean everything.
I drag a hand through my damp hair and let out a slow, shaky breath.
I need logic. I need this to be explainable.
Because if it isn’t—I’m afraid of where my mind will go.
And even more afraid of where it already has.