Enthralled - 19. Chapter 19

19

The reference section of the Oak Creek High School library—a dusty, forgotten labyrinth of obsolete encyclopedias and Dewey Decimal casualties—was the absolute last place Lucas Cooper expected to be ambushed.

He was currently sitting cross-legged on the threadbare carpet, flipping through a highly questionable 1970s book on 1001 Magic Tricks, which he was trying to learn to impress Ronan when a sharp, imposing shadow fell over his page.

Lucas looked up.

Declan Draven stood at the end of the aisle. The heir to the Draven pack was wearing his immaculate navy blazer, his tie perfectly knotted, his posture rigid enough to snap. He looked entirely out of place among the dusty shelves, radiating the kind of intense, coiled anxiety usually reserved for defusing unexploded ordnance.

"Cooper," Declan said, his voice a low, clipped murmur.

Lucas slammed the book shut, scrambling to his feet. "Jeez, Draven, put a bell on. What do you want? If this is about Ronan, I swear we were just studying in his room yesterday. Aggressively studying. We didn't even break the lamp this time."

"This is not about my brother, though you did shake the whole house and screamed out for him to ‘take it’!" Declan replied, his jaw ticking. He took a step closer, checking the perimeter of the aisle with paranoid precision before turning his golden eyes back to Lucas. "This is... a tactical consultation."

Lucas blinked, clutching the book to his chest. "A what?"

"A consultation," Declan repeated, the words looking as though they were physically burning his throat on the way up. He swallowed hard, his Adam's apple bobbing above his perfect Windsor knot. "Regarding Andrew. Or, Andy, as you prefer to call him."

Lucas squinted, his chaotic brain struggling to process the sight of the untouchable prep-school tactician looking genuinely terrified. "Andy? What about him?"

Declan looked away, staring fixedly at a row of World Book encyclopedias. He took a deep, shuddering breath. "I have attempted to optimize the romantic variables between us. I have presented tailored garments to replace the humiliating ones his Sire forced upon him. I have utilized refined intellect. I have attempted to establish myself as a stable, secure Alpha presence. It has yielded a net negative result. He is currently trapped in a psychological cage by Esca, and I... I cannot seem to bridge the gap."

Declan’s hands curled into tight fists at his sides. He finally forced himself to meet Lucas’s eyes, shedding the last, bitter remnants of his immense Draven pride.

"You dated him," Declan said, his voice dropping to a raw, defeated whisper. "You bypassed his aristocratic defenses. You saw the warlord, and you somehow managed to make him laugh. I need to know... how did you do what I cannot?"

Silence descended on the dusty library aisle.

Lucas stared at Declan. He processed the perfectly pressed blazer, the rigid posture, and the sheer, agonizing desperation rolling off the werewolf.

Slowly, wonderfully, the realization dawned. A slow, entirely evil grin spread across Lucas’s face, stretching from ear to ear.

"Oh," Lucas breathed, his eyes lighting up with unadulterated, villainous glee. "Oh, this is beautiful."

Declan’s eyes narrowed. "I am asking for your assistance, Cooper. Do not make me regret this."

"Regret it? Draven, this is the greatest day of my life," Lucas whispered, stepping forward and clapping a hand firmly onto Declan’s rigid shoulder. "You came to the master. You seek the ancient wisdom of the Mac-Daddy."

Declan visibly flinched at the terminology. "I seek actionable intelligence."

"You seek the rizz," Lucas corrected sharply, already dragging the horrified tactician toward the library exit. "Come with me. We require a whiteboard, visual aids, and a captive audience. Your education begins now."

He snapped his wrist, as a poof of smoke, and the worlds lamest flower appeared.

Declan stared at it, Lucas stared at it as it wilted impotently.

“I am so screwed…” Declan intoned is dismay.

---

That was how, twenty minutes later, the fluorescent lights of the Oak Creek High School health and wellness classroom flickered with a depressing, sterile hum, casting a sickly pallor over the educational anatomical charts plastered across the cinderblock walls.

The room was supposed to be empty.

Instead, it had been commandeered for a tactical briefing of the highest, most embarrassing order.

Declan Draven, heir to the Draven pack, brilliant tactician, and possessor of a terrifyingly high GPA, was currently sitting in a molded plastic desk that was entirely too small for his frame. His posture rigidly perfect, his hands clutching a monogrammed leather notebook. His jaw was clenched so tightly a muscle feathered continuously beneath his ear.

Standing at the front of the classroom, wielding a wooden pointer like a maestro’s baton, was Lucas Cooper.

Lucas had somehow managed to steal a patched tweed jacket from the teacher’s lounge, which he wore over a chaotic graphic t-shirt. He slapped the wooden pointer against a pull-down chart of the human reproductive system, his expression one of grave, academic disappointment.

"You are fundamentally failing to grasp the concept of the Mac-Daddy Playa, Draven," Lucas lectured, pacing in front of the chalkboard. "You’re approaching romance like you’re trying to close a corporate merger. You can't just buy a three-hundred-year-old aristocratic vampire a tailored suit and expect him to swoon. It makes you look like his Sire. It’s creepy. You need to be less hedge-fund manager and more... chaotic disaster."

Sitting at the teacher’s desk, operating the overhead projector, Ronan Draven sighed deeply and clicked a button on a remote. The slide changed from a pie chart of 'Acceptable First Date Locations' to a crudely drawn stick figure of Andy surrounded by hearts, with the words OPERATION: RESCUE MISSION scrawled in red marker above it.

"Lucas is actually making a valid point, Dec," Ronan said mildly, eating a handful of dry cereal from a plastic baggie. "Andy likes to fix things. When you act like you have everything under control, you don't give him any room to exist. You have to be a little pathetic."

"I am not pathetic," Declan hissed, his golden eyes flashing dangerously. "I am a Draven. We do not do 'pathetic'."

From the back row of the classroom, a chorus of raucous, barking laughter erupted. Marty Sanchez, Buzz-cut, and Linebacker Dave were crammed into a single row of tiny desks, passing around a family-sized bag of sour cream and onion potato chips. They were treating the entire ordeal like a premium cinematic experience.

"Bro, you are sitting in a sex-ed classroom taking notes from a guy who literally thinks Bigfoot is his uncle," Marty chuckled, tossing a chip into the air and catching it in his mouth. "You passed pathetic twenty minutes ago."

In the very front row, sitting in perfect, terrifying synchronization, were the Sanchez triplets. Alvin, Simon, and Theodore were leaning forward, their unblinking eyes locked on Declan, analyzing his every micro-expression.

"Your posture is..." Alvin stated, his voice entirely monotone.

"...far too rigid for..." Simon continued seamlessly.

"...optimal Mac-Daddy output, Declan," Theodore finished, blinking at the exact same moment as his brothers.

Declan rubbed his temples, a headache of monumental proportions building behind his eyes. He looked down at his notebook, where he had forcefully written down phrases like 'Shawty' and 'Rizz' just to make Lucas stop yelling.

"This is absurd," Declan muttered, closing the notebook. "I should just ask him to accompany me to the symphony. It’s civilized."

"The symphony!" Lucas gasped, clutching his pearls—which were actually a strand of Mardi Gras beads he had found in a desk drawer. "No! Absolutely not! You want to take the immortal warlord who is currently being psychologically tortured by his classical-music-loving sociopath of a father to the symphony? Are you trying to dry him up permanently?"

Lucas marched down the aisle, leaning over Declan’s tiny desk, invading his personal space with absolute, unbothered confidence.

"Listen to me, Virgin-King," Lucas whispered dramatically. "You want this guy? You want to break through that ancient gothic armor? You have to throw him entirely off balance. You have to approach him with the kind of aggressive, brain-dead frat-boy energy that he literally cannot comprehend. You have to short-circuit his tactical mind."

Declan glared up at the chaotic teenager. "I am not calling him 'babe'."

"You are going to call him babe," Lucas countered, his eyes wide and manic. "And you are going to slouch. And you are going to wear sweatpants."

"I do not own sweatpants!"

"I lend you some," Lucas said cheerfully, kicking a duffel bag under Declan’s desk. "Grey ones. Heather grey. It’s an optical illusion of fertility. Trust the science."

Declan looked at the duffel bag as if it contained a live explosive. He looked at his brother, who merely shrugged. He looked at the Alphas in the back, who were howling with renewed laughter.

"I need help," Declan whispered, his pride fracturing.

"Well, well, well," Lucas grinned, leaning back and crossing his arms, relishing the absolute inversion of their usual status. "The mighty Virgin-King of Purity needs my deviant and perverted help, huh? A tragedy in three acts."

Before Declan could respond, Lucas reached out with lightning speed and a snap of his hands. His fingers held the heavy, silver purity ring that should have been resting on Declan’s right hand.

"Hey!" Declan barked, lunging forward, but Lucas easily danced out of reach, tossing the ring into the air and catching it.

“I did it, I did magic!” Lucas declared triumphantly, dropping the ring into his tweed jacket pocket. "Nothing says 'turn off' more than purity bullshit. The whole 'I'm a virgin, tee-hee' routine sank with the Mayflower, Draven. You’re an apex predator. Start acting like one who actually wants to get laid."

Declan sat frozen. He looked at his bare finger. He had built his entire prep-school persona on being above it all—pure, untouchable, operating on a higher intellectual and moral plane. But as he looked at Lucas—the chaotic, disorganized, absolute disaster of a human being who had somehow successfully dated the Scourge of the Carpathians—Declan slowly, agonizingly realized the truth.

The prep-school routine hadn't worked.

Declan swallowed the last, bitter dregs of his immense pride, reached down, and unzipped the duffel bag containing the heather grey sweatpants.

---

The hallway outside the main cafeteria was a warzone of slamming lockers, teenage shouting, and the heavy scent of institutional floor wax.

Andy stood in front of his assigned locker, experiencing a level of sensory and aesthetic overload that his three-hundred-year-old brain was struggling to process. He was a walking, patched-together Frankenstein of pack identities. He was wearing Declan Draven’s perfectly tailored, dark Hugo Boss trousers. He was wearing Esca Tyrell’s mandated, pastel-pink polo shirt, buttoned stiflingly tight to his pale throat. He was wrapped in Martin Sanchez’s massive, blue-and-gold varsity letterman jacket, which smelled aggressively of werewolf musk. And his dark hair was currently glued to his skull like a plastic helmet, courtesy of Marty’s expired 1998-era hair gel.

He looked, and felt, completely insane.

He was just reaching for his combination lock, praying for the sweet release of a quiet study hall, when a bizarre, shuffling set of footsteps approached from the left.

Andy turned his head.

His dead heart actually stalled in his chest.

Approaching him through the crowded hallway was Declan Draven. But it wasn't the Declan Draven he knew.

The pristine, untouchable tactician was gone. In his place was a walking catastrophe. Declan was wearing a pair of baggy, heather-grey sweatpants that hung loosely on his hips. He wore a chaotic, oversized graphic t-shirt featuring a cartoon skateboarding dog. On his head, perched at a rakish and deeply uncomfortable angle, was a backward baseball cap.

He looked like he had been dropped in from an alternate dimension where frat-house basements were the peak of high fashion.

But it was Declan’s physical posture that was the most alarming. He was trying to slouch, attempting a loose, rolling gait, but his spine was still instinctively ramrod straight. The result made him look like a Buckingham Palace guard trying to casually infiltrate a skate park.

Andy simply stared, his pale lips parted in absolute, reality-breaking horror.

Declan stopped in front of the locker. He looked at Andy’s pastel polo and stiff hair. Andy looked at Declan’s sweatpants and backward cap. They were two ancient, lethal beings completely stripped of their dignity, standing in a high school hallway looking like confused aliens.

About twenty feet away, hiding partially behind an open locker door, Lucas Cooper was aggressively pantomiming directions. He gave Declan a double thumbs-up, mouthed "Commit to the bit!", and aggressively mimed a crotch-grab.

Declan ignored Lucas, his face flushing a violent, patchy red. He sniffed loudly, a manufactured, awful sound, and wiped his nose with the back of his hand—a physical tic that Lucas had clearly forced him to practice.

"Uh," Declan said, his voice cracking slightly before he forced it down into an unnatural, gravelly register. "Hi... babe."

Andy blinked. Once. Twice. He looked around to see if he had accidentally walked into the sun and was currently hallucinating in purgatory. "Dec... what are you doing?"

Declan squeezed his eyes shut for a fraction of a second, fighting a war against his own soul. He reached into the pocket of his sweatpants, pulled out his pristine, monogrammed leather notebook, and flipped to a dog-eared page. He cleared his throat.

"So, babe," Declan read directly from the notebook, his tone stiff and clinical, like a general delivering a casualty report. "Wanna do it in the bushes? Um..." He squinted at Lucas’s terrible handwriting. "Nice shoes, wanna boink?"

Andy gaped at him. The sheer absurdity of the flawless, eloquent Declan Draven standing in the hallway quoting perfect Lucas-speak was enough to break the vampire’s brain entirely. "I... I do not understand what is happening right now."

Declan shoved the notebook back into his pocket. He took a jerky step forward, trying to lean casually against the locker, but missed slightly and awkwardly caught himself on his elbow.

"Just figured, I'd show you my Alpha, big D energy, babe," Declan pushed out, the words looking as though they were physically burning his throat on the way up. His jaw ticked violently. "So whatcha say, we go..." He swallowed in actual, visible pain. "...we go hump till the end of Study hall... brah."

From around the corner, Marty, Buzz-cut, and Linebacker Dave suddenly appeared. The three massive Alphas took one look at Declan Draven in sweatpants saying the word 'brah', and collectively lost their minds. Marty doubled over, howling with laughter so loud it rattled the locker doors, slapping Linebacker Dave on the back as tears streamed down his face.

Andy closed his eyes. The headache he had been fighting since Esca forced him onto the yellow Vespa that morning finally blossomed behind his temples. First Tyrell, then Marty's hair gel, and now this. He was so aesthetically and psychologically battered he had no fight left in him.

He opened his eyes and looked at the miserable, red-faced tactician who had humiliated himself in front of half the school just to get his attention.

Andy sighed, a long, exhausted exhalation of defeat. "Fine. You want a date this badly... fine."

Declan’s head snapped up, the backward baseball cap almost falling off. "Truly?"

"Pick me up at seven," Andy commanded, his voice dropping back into its quiet, aristocratic authority. "Dress like you. Never call me babe or brah ever again. And tell Lucas he is not coming, and no, he cannot film it for TikTok."

The immediate, overwhelming relief that washed over Declan’s face was palpable. You could practically see his soul re-enter his body at the phrase 'dress like you'. He didn't even care that Andy sounded entirely exasperated. He had secured the objective, and more importantly, he could finally take off the awful graphic tee.

"Seven o'clock," Declan nodded sharply, his posture instantly returning to its usual rigid perfection. "I will be punctual."

He reached into his pocket, pulled out the little leather notebook, solemnly crossed out the words 'Nice shoes, wanna boink?', and dropped the entire book directly into a nearby trash can before turning and marching briskly toward the locker rooms to change.

In the background, Lucas slowly lowered the smartphone he already had angled toward them, his face dropping into an aggressive pout. "You guys hate love!" he yelled down the hallway.

---

Marcus Draven stood perfectly still in the doorway of his own living room, a steaming mug of black coffee suspended halfway to his mouth. For a werewolf Alpha of his age, pedigree, and formidable temperament, there were very few things in this modern world that could genuinely instill a sense of profound, existential weariness. He had fought off rogue packs tearing through his territory. He had negotiated territorial treaties with ancient, blood-drinking covens. He had survived the sheer, unmitigated nightmare of raising teenage boys.

Yet nothing—absolutely nothing in his long, violent life—had adequately prepared him for the sheer, unadulterated, chaotic force of nature that was Lucas Cooper.

The human teenager had essentially become an invasive species within the Draven household. He could not be eradicated, he could not be reasoned with, and worse, the pack had fully imprinted on him. And now, Marcus watched in grim, silent agony as this walking disaster actively corrupted his eldest son.

"No, no, no, listen to me, Draven," Lucas was saying, aggressively adjusting the collar of Declan’s crisp, pristine dress shirt. Lucas was currently wearing a graphic t-shirt that said ‘I Paused My Game To Be Here’ and a pair of mismatched socks. "You are approaching this with entirely the wrong energy. You’re going in there like you’re trying to close a merger. You are not a hedge fund manager tonight. You are a Mac-Daddy. You are a playa. You need to exude an aura of undeniable, borderline-feral rizz."

Declan Draven, the brilliant, arrogant, untouchable tactician of the Oak Creek pack, stood frozen in the center of the living room rug. He looked absolutely terrified.

"I don't know what 'rizz' is, Lucas, and I am fairly certain it is not in the Oxford English Dictionary," Declan replied, his voice tight, his jaw clenched so firmly a muscle feathered beneath his ear. "And I am not going to refer to a three-hundred-year-old aristocratic warlord as a 'shawty'. I value my internal organs remaining inside my abdominal cavity."

"That’s exactly your problem," Lucas groaned, throwing his hands up in the air and pacing across the rug like a theatrical stage director. "You overthink it! Andy doesn't want a perfectly planned, sanitized date. He lives in a sterile nightmare house with a sociopath! He wants a guy who might accidentally drive over a mailbox because he’s so distracted by his sheer, raw magnetism. Slouch a little. Try to look like you occasionally listen to rap music."

On the oversized leather sofa, Ronan Draven sat cross-legged in a pair of comfortable sweatpants, calmly eating a bowl of brightly colored cereal. For once in his life, the Omega wasn't the one actively managing Lucas’s chaos. He was simply enjoying the show.

"Actually, Declan," Ronan said around a mouthful of cereal, pointing his spoon at his older twin, "Lucas isn't entirely wrong. When you try to be the untouchable prep-school mastermind, you just come across like another version of his Sire. You need to be less... you. Be a little pathetic. Give Andy a rescue mission."

Declan’s head snapped toward his brother, his eyes flashing a dangerous, golden hue. "I am not pathetic. I am the future Alpha of this territory."

"You’re wearing a pocket square to a fast-food date," Ronan countered mildly, taking another bite. "It’s a little desperate, Dec."

Marcus finally took a slow, deep sip of his coffee. The bitter, scalding liquid did nothing to soothe the massive headache blooming behind his eyes. He looked at Lucas, who was now trying to teach the highly lethal, aristocratic Declan how to do a casual "sup" nod. He looked at Ronan, who was entirely unbothered by the desecration of his brother's dignity.

Marcus slowly lowered the mug. "I am going out to the woods," the Alpha announced to the room at large, his voice a low, gravelly rumble. "I am going to find a very large, very thick tree. And I am going to bite it until my teeth hurt. If the house is on fire when I return, I expect you to have at least saved the good silver."

"Have a good time, Dad!" Ronan called out cheerfully.

"Don't wait up, Mr. D! I’m shaping the youth!" Lucas shouted, giving the massive werewolf a jaunty salute.

Marcus merely groaned, turning on his heel and walking out the front door.

Once the heavy oak door clicked shut, Declan let out a long, shuddering breath. He reached up and forcefully swatted Lucas’s hands away from his collar. "Enough. I am not slouching, I am not wearing a backward hat, and if you say the word 'boink' one more time, I will physically throw you through the drywall."

"Fine, fine," Lucas held up his hands in surrender, a wildly triumphant grin plastered across his face. "Be a square. But remember what we talked about. His dad is a two-thousand-year-old billionaire psycho. Do not try to alpha him. You can't out-alpha a guy who probably invented the concept of murder. Just survive the living room, get the boy, and get out."

Declan swallowed hard. The prep-school arrogance faded, leaving behind the pale, nervous reality of a teenage boy who was completely out of his depth.

"Survive the living room," Declan repeated softly to himself, straightening his cuffs. "Right."

He turned and walked toward the hallway, grabbing the keys to his father’s heavy, imposing Volvo estate car from the hook by the door. The Volvo was a tank. It was safe, it was reliable, and it smelled faintly of dog hair and pine needles—a scent he desperately hoped would provide some small comfort to the vampire currently trapped in a sterile corporate cage.

---

The heavy oak door clicked shut, the sound of the Volvo’s engine firing up and fading down the driveway leaving a sudden, echoing quiet in the Draven living room.

Ronan sat on the oversized leather sofa, methodically crunching a spoonful of brightly colored cereal. He stared at the empty foyer for a long moment before letting out a slow, heavy sigh.

"He's doomed," Ronan announced to the quiet room. He turned to look at Lucas, who was currently attempting to stretch out along the opposite end of the couch. "Andy's not going to really date him, is he? I mean, my brother just went into a hostage situation armed with a pocket square and advice from you."

Lucas scooted over, entirely ignoring personal space boundaries, and flopped his head directly onto Ronan’s sweatpants-clad thigh. "Sure he will," Lucas said easily, reaching up to steal a dry piece of cereal from Ronan’s bowl. "Dec’s cute. And he’s trying. Honestly, I think his massive, embarrassing crush on Andy is kinda adorable. It makes him less like a repressed Young Republican, and more... I don't know. Normal."

"We're werewolves, Lucas," Ronan pointed out dryly, resting a hand in Lucas's messy hair.

"You know what I mean," Lucas grinned, chewing the cereal loudly. "It strips away that whole untouchable Alpha-tactician vibe. Makes him relatable."

Ronan narrowed his golden eyes, looking down at the chaotic teenager resting on his lap. "You just like him because he looks exactly like me."

"Please," Lucas scoffed, rolling his eyes theatrically. He reached up and affectionately poked Ronan in the cheek. "I think you're the cute one."

"Lucas, we're identical twins," Ronan deadpanned, gesturing vaguely to his own face. "We literally share the exact same genetic sequence. Our faces are mathematically the same."

"Yeah, but the vibes are different," Lucas argued, entirely unbothered by basic biology. "Declan has ‘I’m going to audit your taxes’ face. You have ‘I’m going to make you a sandwich’ face. Ergo, you are the pretty one."

Ronan’s cheeks flushed a faint, dusty pink, though he tried valiantly to maintain his exasperated Omega composure. "Liar."

"Don't make me hump you to prove it," Lucas threatened cheerfully, wiggling his eyebrows and shifting his weight aggressively against the cushions. "I will assert my Mac-Daddy dominance right here. But your dad will probably get mad if I make a mess on his good leather sofa, and I'm pretty sure he’s currently out in the woods chewing on a pine tree because of me. I don't want to push my luck."

Ronan looked at the front door, then down at Lucas’s ridiculous, mismatched socks and the faded graphic tee. A soft, genuine smile finally broke through his deadpan expression. He set the half-empty cereal bowl on the mahogany coffee table with a quiet clink.

"We could go up to my room," Ronan suggested softly, his voice dropping half an octave, the golden hue in his eyes warming into something deep and entirely focused on the human in his lap.

Lucas beamed, a triumphant, wicked spark lighting up his face as he scrambled off the sofa and grabbed Ronan's hand. "Lead the way, Sherpa. I have a lot of Mac-Daddy wisdom left to impart."