"You sure know how to pick a spot." 

Claire watched Adrian dry his fingers with a white linen towel, his movements elegant and cold. 

"He's coming for you, you know," Adrian said, his blue-gray eyes turning a dark, bruised obsidian. 

The office door was ripped from its hinges with a sound like a gunshot.

Killian stood in the threshold, his chest heaving, his tactical vest shredded and dark with blood. The red in his eyes was still glowing, a feral, uncontained hunger for violence. He scanned the room in a heartbeat—the dead hunter, the frantic, clinical way Adrian was drying his hands, and Claire standing by the window.

He crossed the room in two strides, his hand catching Claire's arm and pulling her firmly behind him, shielding her from the professor.

Killian's gaze locked onto Adrian, his lip curling back to reveal his teeth. The air in the room grew heavy, charged with the crackling, static electricity of two predators—one who had forgotten his humanity, and one who had never truly possessed it—meeting in the center of a blood-stained room.

"Did he hurt you?" Killian said.

"No, he helped me," Claire replied, her voice steady. She met Adrian's gaze, the tension between them a silent, high-frequency signal.

"The campus is currently experiencing an… architectural instability," Adrian said, stepping past the carcass of the hunter as if it were nothing more than a spilled bag of trash. "I suggest you take your pet elsewhere, Claire. The cleaners are going to be busy enough as it is."

Killian stepped forward, his body coiled to strike, but Claire moved first. She stepped out from behind his back, blocking his path. She pulled her phone from her pocket and tapped the screen, holding it up just long enough for Adrian to see the message she had just composed and sent.

She hadn't given him the codes. Instead, she had sent him a brief, cutting line: "I didn't give it to him. And I won't give it to you."

Adrian's polite mask fractured. The air in the room seemed to drop ten degrees. He wasn't looking at the Alpha anymore; he was looking at Claire, his gaze calculating, stripping away the professor persona to reveal something much colder and sharper beneath.

"Bravery is such a short-lived commodity, Claire," Adrian whispered, leaning toward her. The scent of old paper and winter chill was stiflingly close. "Especially when you're standing in the middle of a slaughterhouse."

Killian shoved her aside, his hand moving to Adrian's throat. "Don't ever speak to her again."

Adrian didn't struggle. He simply looked up at Killian, his eyes devoid of fear, filled only with a pity that was worse than hatred. "You're so focused on the monster in the room, Killian, that you haven't realized… the doors are locked. And you're not the one who holds the key."

A mechanical thud echoed from the floor below—the sound of the main campus security shutters slamming into place. The school was sealed.

Killian's head snapped toward the window. Below, the plaza was a churning sea of shadows. More hunters were emerging, their movements synchronized, surrounding the Faculty Hall. They weren't just hunting anymore. They were converging.

"Claire," Killian said, his voice deadly and low. "We're leaving. Now."

He didn't wait for her to agree. He swept her off her feet, his strength effortless, and turned back to the ruined door. 

He didn't spare another glance for the professor, who stood in the center of his blood-spattered office, watching them go with the quiet, terrifying anticipation of a man waiting for a curtain to rise.

"We can't," Claire said, her face muffled against the coarse wool of his tactical vest. 

She pulled back just enough to look at him, her green eyes sharp and clinical. 

"Leon is on the comms. They're systemizing the dorms. If we leave, those students... they can't survive."

His comms unit buzzed on his wrist. Leon's voice was a frantic, distorted crackle. 

"Alpha! The dorm gates are down. They've... they've deployed the prototypes. We can't maintain the masquerade. Requesting permission to shift!"

Killian's fingers curled into fists. If his men shifted, the university would be a national news story within ten minutes. Virel Holdings would be dismantled by dawn. 

"Hold the line, Leon," Killian commanded, his voice dropping into a register meant for the battlefield. 

"No shifting. Use the silver-tipped ordnance. I'm moving to your position."

Adrian stepped away from the bookshelf, adjusting his silk tie with a terrifyingly slow deliberation. 

"The silver won't work on the enhanced hunters, Virel," Adrian noted, picking up his crystal glass from the desk. 

"They've been bred to metabolize it. They're using it as a conductor now."

Killian turned on him, his upper lip curling to reveal teeth that were too long, too white. 

"And you just happen to know the exact metabolic rate of their new batch?" 

"The Suture isn't just harvesting, Claire. They're looking for a catalyst. An anchor with a specific psychological frequency."

"They're using her to destabilize me. To make the Alpha howl so they can map the frequency of the bond."

Claire looked between the two monsters. One who protected with fire and blood, the other who analyzed with ice and contempt. 

She realized then that neither of them had the full map. They were both variables in a larger equation. 

"Leon. Full extraction grid," Killian barked into his comms. 

"Forget the masquerade. If it has grey skin, tear it out of the air."

"Copy that, Alpha. The wolves are out."