Claire spent the next four days pretending the rooftop never happened.

Which mostly involved: working too many shifts, sleeping far too little, and trying not to think about Killian.

By Thursday morning, exhaustion had settled so deeply beneath her skin that even a triple shot of espresso barely cut through the fog.

The steam from the espresso machine hissed, a jagged sound that cut through the 5:00 AM silence of the café. Claire Reyes wiped the stainless steel counter for the tenth time in three minutes. Her reflection in the chrome looked like a ghost with dark golden curls and eyes that hadn't seen enough sleep.

Five in the morning in Chicago always tasted like burnt beans and the biting wind off the lake. Claire adjusted the sleeves of her oversized cream sweater, pulling the wool over her knuckles. The fabric felt too soft against skin that still hummed with the memory of a different, more dangerous touch.

Charcoal silk. The scent of sandalwood and rain.

A man's low voice across the café pulled memories loose before she could stop them.

She gripped the damp cleaning cloth until her fingers turned white. "A mistake," she whispered to the empty display bins of biscotti. She treated the memory like a data point in a failed experiment on impulsive behavior. It was a one-off deviation from her 4.0 GPA life.

Claire settled into the back row of her afternoon lecture ten minutes later with three psychology textbooks spread open around her like defensive walls.

"Trauma and emotional suppression," Professor Bennett announced while adjusting his glasses near the projector screen. "Can emotional restraint become psychologically dangerous over time?"

Claire almost laughed.

Apparently the universe enjoyed irony now.

Students around her began discussing case studies while she underlined passages she wasn't fully reading.

Her brain kept drifting elsewhere—toward amber eyes, rough hands carefully softened against her skin, and the frightening gentleness Killian carried.

Stop thinking about him.

"Miss Reyes."

Claire looked up abruptly.

Professor Bennett gestured toward her from the front row.

"You've studied emotional suppression extensively. Thoughts?"

Every eye turned toward her instantly.

Claire straightened slowly, forcing her brain back into the room.

"Suppression works short-term," she said after a moment. "But eventually emotions start leaking through behavior anyway. Usually in indirect ways first."

Professor Bennett nodded, encouraging her. "Such as?"

"Hyper-control. Emotional detachment. Extreme overcompensation." Claire glanced absently down at her notes, though the words came from somewhere deeper. "People convince themselves that restraint equals stability, when sometimes it just means they're terrified of what will happen if they finally stop controlling themselves."

A brief, focused silence followed her words.

Claire finally looked up to meet the professor's eye—and instead caught someone else watching her from the shadows at the side of the lecture hall.

It wasn't a student. It was the graduate teaching assistant.

He was tall, dark-haired, and possessed a striking paleness that looked expensive rather than unhealthy. Adrian Keller leaned casually against the back wall beside a stack of research papers, his sleeves rolled neatly to his forearms. The rest of the class continued debating around him, but Adrian wasn't listening to them anymore.

He was watching Claire. Infinitesimally close.

His expression remained perfectly composed, but something about his absolute stillness suddenly reminded her unpleasantly of another man. They weren't outwardly similar, but the 'atmosphere' was identical.

Controlled, absolute attention.

Claire looked away first.

---

The rest of the lecture blurred past.

Something about Adrian unsettled her—not a loud sense of danger, exactly, but an awareness so sharp it made her feel examined, like a specimen under a microscope.

By the end of the class, students filtered toward the exits beneath a low murmur of conversations and the rustle of backpacks.

Claire shoved her notebooks into her bag quickly, already mentally calculating her schedule: study hours, unfinished readings, and how many shifts she needed to pick up next week—

"Claire."

She looked up. Adrian was standing right beside her desk.

Up close, he looked slightly older than most graduate students. He had calm, dark blue-gray eyes and a relaxed, unhurried posture. He possessed the kind of face people instinctively trusted because it seemed impossible to imagine him ever losing his temper.

Safe.

That was the first impression he gave. Which immediately made Claire suspicious of herself for noticing.

"You referenced behavioral leakage earlier," Adrian said smoothly, his voice carrying a quiet precision. "Interesting framing."

Claire slid her pen into her bag. "It's basic trauma psychology."

"Not the way you explained it."

Every word he spoke felt carefully chosen, yet entirely unrehearsed. Claire noticed the details automatically: the faint, elegant accent beneath his words, the unsettling steadiness of his eye contact, and the fact that despite standing casually, he somehow occupied the space with an unnatural, heavy stillness.

Then, Adrian tilted his head slightly, his gaze dropping to the faint shadows under her eyes. 

"I was heading toward the faculty archive," he said after a deliberate pause, letting the tension melt away. "You mentioned an interest in gothic monster narratives earlier this semester, didn't you?"

Claire hesitated. "I'm writing my comparative lit thesis on them."

His expression shifted, a subtle, genuine interest deepening beneath his composed veneer. "Stay a minute after class sometime," Adrian said, offering a small, polite smile. "I think you'd really enjoy some of the restricted folklore texts we keep downstairs."

It was faint, but it was there. A predatory, non-human awareness.

The scent clinging weakly to Claire wasn't obvious enough for an ordinary supernatural to catch—the heavy October rain had diluted most of it. But Adrian Keller had survived centuries by noticing what others missed.

Wolf.