Bones and Oaths

Aleks Novak is at Bellhollow College under a debt, and the only person who's ever known he's a wolf has been dead for two years. Then Otto Vael transfers in with the family's ring and a renegotiated deal that ends the moment Aleks refuses to help. Otto was publicly disowned and privately tolerated, raised to be a wolf the Vaels could point at their enemies. Now he's back for the ledgers his mother signed away, and the only way to get them is to trust a stranger who has every reason to run. They say no to each other for weeks. Then they say yes in a motel room two towns over, with the ledgers half-recovered and a rival family two steps behind. When the campus camera catches them shifted at the fountain, the family cuts them off and the semester gets interesting. By spring the two of them own a deed, a house, and each other.