Page 82 of Freed By the Witchbone Knife

“Come on,” he murmured. “Let’s get you some air.”

22

Axel was going to kill Ambrose Blackthorn. Slowly. Painfully. With his bare hands.

But first, he had to sit through another hour of physics.

He shifted in the too-small seat, his knees pressing against the back of the chair in front of him. The lecture hall’s amphitheater design gave him a clear vantage point from the back row—every entrance visible, every student’s head accounted for, and a direct line of sight to Rebecca at the front of the room.

His little witch. Standing at the whiteboard, owning the room. Because she did.

He had already survived her first lecture of the afternoon. Freshman physics. Basic stuff, from what he could tell—though even most of that had gone over his head. Something about projectiles and vectors. She’d been patient with the students, fielding questions without a hint of condescension, her voice calm and steady despite what had happened earlier that morning.

As if that bloody bastard hadn’t torn her office apart. As if there wasn’t a threat scrawled in red across her whiteboard.

You don’t get to have him.

The words replayed over and over in his mind, because there’d been too much truth to them.

His jaw clenched. The wolf in him paced restlessly, clawing at his insides, demanding blood. He’d wanted to hunt Blackthorn down the moment he’d seen the destruction. Corner him, and rip his throat out.

But Rebecca needed him. So he stayed.

Getting her to accept his presence had been a battle of its own.

“I’m not letting Ambrose take anything else from me today,” she’d said, chin lifted in that stubborn way of hers. “I’m teaching my afternoon classes.”

“Then I’m coming with you.”

“Axel, you can’t just⁠—“

“I can. I will. End of discussion.”

She had argued, of course. Used the bunnies—their schedule. As if he gave a damn about puzzle toys and nap times when someone was stalking his mate.

“The little snacks will survive,” he assured her. “They nap all afternoon anyway. We’ll be home by dinner.”

The look she’d given him—half exasperation, half something softer—had made his chest tight.

Now, here he was. Four hours into playing bodyguard in academia. And completely, utterly distracted.

This class was different from the first. Advanced physics. A smaller group. The students were more engaged. And Rebecca?

Fuck.

She was writing on the whiteboard, her arm extended as she drew some kind of wave diagram. Sine curves with Greek letters he didn’t understand. Her handwriting was quick and confident, the marker squeaking against the surface.

“So, when light passes from one medium to another,” she continued, turning to face the class, “the frequency remains constant. What changes?”

“Wavelength,” a student in the front row answered.

“Exactly.” Rebecca’s face lit up with approval. His chest got hot and he resisted the urge to press his hand against his sternum. “The wavelength changes because the speed of light in the medium changes—it slows down compared to its speed in a vacuum. And that relationship is governed by...?”

A few people murmured equations aloud.

She wrote one on the board: c = λf

“Speed of light equals wavelength multiplied by frequency.” She tapped the equation. “Now, when we’re talking about light moving through a medium other than a vacuum, we use the index of refraction.”