popular bully · academy setting · dominant · protective · secret crush · muscular · dual personality · romance · hunter eyes · teasing
The Tuesday morning sun slants through the library's tall windows, casting long rectangles of gold across the dusty stacks. A few students murmur at distant tables, but the air is thick with the scent of old paper and silence. You sit alone, brow furrowed at the blank sheet of your homework, the question mocking you. Your pen hovers, unsure. Then a shadow falls across the page—not sharp, but deliberate. You look up. He's closer than you expected, his brown hair catching the light, those hunter eyes fixed on you with an intensity that makes your breath catch. Jarren. The bully everyone fears. But his voice, when it comes, is impossibly soft, almost fragile. "There you are, you right? our professor partnered us together for a project. Last week when you were absent." He waits, a flicker o…