By Monday, the campus had learned Vanessa Crawford's rhythms: the way she cut through the quad like she owned it, the way she laughed too easily at Skylar's terrible jokes, the way she never took the same path twice. What the campus hadn't learned was that the map in her head wasn't about shortcuts or scenery. It was a hunt.
Her wolf liked the morning best—air clean, scents crisp. The flag on the admin tower snapped in the wind; someone on a skateboard careened past; a professor in tweed argued with a vending machine. Overland North was alive in the only way that mattered to her now: it didn't pause to pity her.
"Today's agenda," Skylar said, trotting alongside in a plaid skirt and boots. "Intro to Behavioral Psych, lunch at Monty's, then you stalking the broody statue that learned to walk."
"I don't stalk," Vanessa said, scanning the library steps out of muscle memory. "I pursue."
"Semantics are my love language." Skylar tucked a mini croissant into Vanessa's hand. "Eat. I can feel your blood sugar dropping from here."
Vanessa obeyed, chewing while her eyes tracked patterns: where Ethan tended to cross the quad at ten past the hour, which path he preferred to the engineering building when the food trucks lined the east walk, how he seemed to avoid crowds even when it meant detours. He was not unpredictable. He was cautious.
Her wolf prowled awake. He is clever prey. We are cleverer.
"Stop narrating like a nature documentary," Vanessa muttered under her breath.
"Did you just talk to me or your inner murder puppy?" Skylar asked.
"Class," Vanessa said, and fled before she had to answer.
Behavioral Psych filled a lecture hall with three hundred students and one professor who wrote like a storm on the whiteboard. Vanessa took notes until the words floated. The bond inside her was a live wire; when it hummed, she knew why—the door at the back opened halfway through the lecture, and Ethan's scent drifted in on a draft. Cedar. Rain. Ink. Her hand tightened around her pen so hard it nearly snapped.
He did not come in; he passed the open door, moving down the corridor. The scent faded, then returned stronger—someone else had brushed past him and carried a whisper of it into the room. Her wolf pressed hard against her skin, whine low and furious.
Stay. Vanessa gritted her teeth, fought the urge to bolt. She was not going to be the girl who sprinted out of class because her mate exhaled near a hinge. She underlined a sentence on reward systems and told her pulse to sit down.
"Ms. Crawford," the professor said suddenly, without looking back. "Do you agree that intermittent reinforcement is the stickiest?"
Vanessa pulled herself into focus. "Intermittent keeps you guessing," she said. "Brains like jackpots."
"Exactly." The professor flicked a grin over her shoulder. "Brains are raccoons in lab coats."
Skylar, one row down, shot Vanessa a look that said you're being intermittently reinforced by a six-foot jackpot with trust issues. Vanessa didn't dignify it with a glance.
After class, she cut across the science quad on instinct and caught sight of him at a distance. Ethan stood at an outdoor table with a guy she didn't know—another engineer by the look of the notebook full of math that hurt her soul. Ethan's head was tilted, listening; the other guy's hands moved in the air, enthusiastic. Ethan said something short; the guy laughed, clapped him on the shoulder. Ethan didn't flinch away, exactly, but he didn't lean in either. He existed. He endured.
As if sensing her, he looked up. The air snapped tight. She lifted a hand in a small, ordinary wave. He blinked, not in surprise—more like recalculating a route he'd already planned. Then he looked past her and returned to the page.
"Cold," Skylar said, appearing with two iced coffees and zero shame. "On a scale of one to Antarctica, we're somewhere near 'penguins wear coats.'"
"He's not cold," Vanessa said. The words came out before she could sand them down. "He's… keeping warm in a way that looks like cold."
"Poetic. Gross." Skylar shoved a coffee into her hand. "Okay, huntress. Where to next?"
"Monty's," Vanessa said. "I need fries and the illusion of control."
They found a table by the window of the student dining hall just as lunchtime crowds fractured along the fault lines of convenience and pack. Wolves tended to clump, humans too; the best tables were where the lines blurred. Monty's smelled like grease and happiness.
The door chimed; Vanessa's skin prickled a half second before the scent hit. Ethan walked in with a small cluster of engineers, the kind of guys who made jokes with straight faces. Vanessa's body prepared to do something stupid; she took a hard sip of iced coffee instead.
Skylar whistled under her breath. "He's like a solar eclipse. Everyone wants to look and also everyone knows it's a bad idea."
"He knows I'm here." Vanessa kept her eyes on her fries. "He's going to pretend he doesn't."
Skylar swirled a straw, studying him with cheerful ruthlessness. "He looks like the kind of man who measures portions of air before he breathes. You're going to drive him insane."
"That's the plan." Vanessa put her elbow on the table and her chin in her palm, casual. Without looking, she tracked him: the way he chose a line with the fewest people, the way he stood at the edge of the group like a guard dog whose job was also to keep himself out. His posture changed almost imperceptibly when a pair of wolves in rut energy blundered through the door—hackles under hoodies, voices too loud. Ethan angled his body so the youngest of his friends was behind him. Protective. Automatic.
Vanessa's chest loosened in a way she didn't authorize. Pack. her wolf said, surprised and pleased, as if she'd found a river in a desert.
The rut-raw pair jostled a tray; a soda went down in a sticky amber flood. The bigger one laughed and elbowed the smaller; the smaller went sharp around the mouth and rolled his shoulders like a warning. The air changed. Human heads didn't notice; wolves did.
"Shift rooms," Skylar said under her breath, already scanning for the nearest "S" sign on the wall map—clean, soundproof rooms scattered across campus for when the animal pushed too hard.
"Not our fight," Vanessa said, even as her wolf bared its teeth.
It didn't have to be. Ethan turned, grabbed a stack of napkins, and inserted himself into the crack with all the force of a quiet command. "Hey," he said to the bigger one, steady and low. "Help me mop it. You two don't need a record this week."
The bigger one blinked, disoriented by someone defusing without challenging. He laughed again, less mean, and took the napkins. The younger one exhaled in relief so obvious Vanessa wanted to tip his chin up and buy him a sandwich.
Ethan stepped back as soon as they bent, as if allergic to being center frame. He handed the cashier a damp wad, said thank you, and moved on.
"Okay," Skylar said, mouth tilting. "Your vampire prince has community service energy."
"Don't call him a prince," Vanessa said, heat and pride tangling in her throat. "He hates crowns."
Ethan's table ended up three away from theirs. He sat with his back to the wall, habit, hands neat even when he unwrapped a sandwich. He didn't look at her. She let herself look at him—one, two, three beats—then looked away before he could mistake staring for a plea.
Her wolf sprawled in her chest, tail flicking. We could sit at his feet and still be queen.
"Never that," Vanessa murmured.
"What?" Skylar asked around a fry.
"Nothing." Vanessa licked salt from her thumb, aware of him, always aware. She forced a conversation about textbooks with Skylar, about their RA who used her whistle like a religious instrument, about the rumor someone had seen a wolf sprint across the soccer fields at dawn. Normal. She could do normal with a bomb under her ribs.
Ethan finished, stood, carried his tray away. He didn't brush against her. He didn't cut closer than necessary. The only evidence he knew she existed was the fraction of a second his head angled when he passed, as if to memorize her without rewarding her with acknowledgment. It would have stung if it hadn't been so obvious he was starving and refusing a plate.
"Library after?" Skylar asked. "I need a table and you need a crime."
"A table," Vanessa said. "No crimes. Not today."
They found a corner on the second floor with a view of the stacks like a promise. Vanessa opened her laptop and pretended to outline a psych paper. The campus library was one of her favorite places already: whisper-laughs, the soft thunder of pages, the quiet supervision of lamps. It smelled like diligence and ink with that faint chemical bite of old glue—soothing, unless cedar sliced through it like a clean blade.
It did. Of course it did. The bond plucked a string in her sternum; she looked up without meaning to. Ethan had taken a table on the far side of the mezzanine, facing a window that turned him into a cutout of sky. He worked like he breathed—precise, efficient, relentless. Pencil. Calculator. Scratch paper. Repeat.
Vanessa's laptop screen blurred. She tried to outline a paragraph on conditioning. Her fingers typed conditioned to you and she slammed the delete key hard enough to make Skylar glance up.
"Bite your tongue," Skylar whispered. "Or bite him. Dealer's choice."
"Not helping."
"Then consider me white noise," Skylar said and slid her headphones back on, scribbling color-coded notes that could pass for modern art.
The library had rules Vanessa liked—no food, low voices, quiet corners where a girl could breathe her wolf down if it rose. It also had a line from her table to Ethan's that felt like a road. Every minute or five he would stop, stare at nothing, and the line would hum like a live wire; she'd feel the hum in her molars. He didn't move to leave; she didn't move to approach. They were practicing not starting a storm.
Two hours into pretending she was a student and not a gravitational body, Vanessa closed her laptop. "I'm going to get a book," she lied.
Skylar slid one earcup off. "I'm going to pretend to believe you."
"Good friend," Vanessa said, and stood.
She didn't walk straight to him; she drifted through stacks, touching spines as if she were choosing, letting the scent pull her without looking up to catch him watching her track him like the North Star. By the time she reached his aisle, her heart was beating with a steady, traitorous joy that had nothing to do with reason.
He didn't glance up. She slid a book from the shelf at random and let the cover flap quietly. He didn't flinch. Obstinate.
She rounded the endcap and set the book down on the edge of his table without a thunk. "Do you ever get bored of pretending you don't notice me?" she asked, voice soft enough for them and the lamp.
His pencil paused above a number. He finished writing it, set the pencil down, and finally lifted his eyes. Gray. Guarded. But not empty.
"Do you ever get bored of pretending you have a right to?" he asked back.
She relaxed a fraction. Banter was a truce and a blade. "I have a bond. That's close."
"That's a leash. I don't wear those." He glanced at the book she'd set down. Behavioral Conditioning in Social Mammals. His mouth almost quirked. "Studying, or editorializing?"
"Both." She pulled out the chair opposite him and didn't sit. "I can leave if you say please."
He didn't. He didn't tell her to stay either. His wolf pressed at his skin, eager but not wild, like a dog that had been trained too hard and still wanted to be good.
"Two minutes," he said finally, as if offering a bone hurt. "Then go."
"Two minutes," she echoed, and sat, pulse landing in her throat like a bird. "Deal."
She did not reach across the table. He did not recoil. They looked at each other in a library built to keep people from saying what mattered, and let two minutes stretch into three.
"Why here?" she asked, nodding at the window. "You always sit facing light."
"I like to see what's coming."
"Me too," she said, and he had the nerve to flinch.
A printer coughed somewhere below; a librarian shushed a giggle; the lamp on their table hummed like it had chosen a side. Vanessa thought, wildly, that if she leaned forward an inch she could inhale enough courage to never be scared again. She didn't move.
"Two minutes," he reminded, voice rough.
"I'm not timing," she said.
"I am," he said, but he hadn't looked at his watch once.
When she stood, finally, her chair didn't squeak. "I'll be around," she said, like a warning and a promise. "You can keep pretending. I can keep not believing you."
He watched her go. He didn't look back down at his page until she turned the corner and her scent thinned.
Her wolf rolled onto its back, paws tucked like a thing in the sun. You gave us more than two minutes.
Ethan picked up his pencil and aimed for numbers like a man aiming for air. "Shut up," he said under his breath, and did not leave.
The library closed at ten, herded students out with polite announcements and the jangle of keys. Vanessa and Skylar wandered back to the dorm with the tide, laptops heavy, shoulders light. Vanessa's wolf hummed under her skin like it had swallowed a star. We sat with him. We spoke. We are closer.
Closer was not enough. Not when every breath tasted of him, every hour sharpened by the absence of his voice.
By eleven, the dorm quieted. Skylar sprawled on her bunk with earbuds in, mouthing lyrics and highlighting entire paragraphs in pink. Vanessa lay on her bed staring at the ceiling, restless. The bond tugged. Not gently, not politely. Like claws snagging her ribs.
She got up.
"Don't do anything I'd do," Skylar called, not looking up. "Which is everything."
"Noted," Vanessa said, tugging on her sweater. Her wolf flicked its tail. Hunt.
The common lounge at the end of the hall buzzed faintly—lamps low, students bent over group projects, wolves holding their wolves at bay in close quarters. Vanessa slipped in quietly, scanning. She didn't have to scan long.
Ethan sat in the corner, hood up, laptop open, posture rigid as if bracing against impact. Alone, as always. A circle of space existed around him not because he demanded it, but because everyone felt the wrongness of filling it.
Her pulse skipped. Her wolf surged. Ours.
Vanessa crossed the room before she thought about it. She sat down across from him without asking. His head lifted slowly, as if dragged. Gray eyes, shadowed, ringed with exhaustion. For a moment, just a moment, relief softened the harsh line of his mouth—like finding her there was easier than not. Then the mask slammed back down.
"You don't quit," he said. Not a compliment. Not an accusation. An observation.
"No." She rested her chin on her hand. "Do you?"
He shut his laptop with deliberate care, as if anything rougher would count as emotion. "I told you—"
"That you don't believe in mates." Her smile was small, dangerous. "Belief doesn't matter. The bond doesn't ask for your permission."
His wolf whined softly inside him, tail tucked, desperate. Listen to her. She is truth.
"Don't," he said, voice low, like he was begging and ordering at once.
Vanessa leaned forward. "Your wolf knows. Mine knows. You're the only one pretending."
He flinched—not visibly, but enough that she felt it. The bond hummed, fierce and bright, tugging them closer.
A pair of sophomores burst into laughter by the vending machine. A wolf too young to hide it well shifted restlessly, claws nearly tipping through skin. The air sharpened—scent mixing, hormones spiking. Heat and rut threading under the room like a fuse.
Ethan's head snapped up, nostrils flaring. Vanessa smelled it too—wolves sparking each other, the crowd balancing on the edge of something dangerous.
His wolf surged, snarling. Protect her. Keep her safe.
He pushed up from his seat. "You should go."
"No," she said simply, standing too. "I stay."
"Vanessa—" His voice cracked. She felt the bond coil, pull, demand. He clenched his fists until his knuckles whitened, as if pain could chain it.
One of the restless wolves bumped shoulders too hard with another, and the air snapped. Snarls ripped out—low, warning, vibrating the room.
Ethan moved before she could. He was there between them, voice steady, body radiating authority he claimed not to want. "Not here," he said. "Shift rooms. Now."
The young wolves froze. His tone wasn't loud, but it brooked no refusal. They muttered curses, but slunk off toward the marked door at the end of the hall. The room exhaled.
Vanessa hadn't moved. She stood where she was, watching him. The mask had slipped in the heat of command; for one raw second, she saw what he tried to bury. A leader. A protector. A wolf who cared.
Her chest ached.
"You can't keep this up forever," she said softly when he turned back. "Pretending you don't care. Pretending you don't feel it."
His eyes locked on hers, gray storming with conflict. "Watch me."
Her wolf growled, tail high, defiant. We will not lose. We will hunt. We will stay.
Vanessa stepped closer, so close the air between them trembled. "You can run all you want, Ethan. But I don't chase prey. I pursue what's mine. And you—" She leaned in just enough that only he heard it. "—you're mine."
The bond snapped, flared, seared through them both. His breath hitched, hand twitching like he almost reached for her. His wolf roared approval. Ours. Ours. Bite. Bond.
He wrenched back a step, trembling with restraint. "Don't."
"I will," she whispered, fierce. "I don't give up. Not on you."
The room hummed again with noise, but it felt like a distant planet. He stared at her for a long, endless moment. Then he turned sharply, grabbed his laptop, and strode out, shoulders rigid, as if fleeing fire.
Vanessa let him go. She didn't need to follow tonight. The hunt wasn't about speed. It was about persistence.
Skylar appeared in the doorway, wide-eyed, holding a bag of chips. "Okay," she whispered, "I know you just verbally cornered the most terrifying man on campus, but please tell me this is foreplay and not suicide."
Vanessa exhaled, long and steady, her wolf humming fierce under her skin. "Both."
She turned back to the table, sat, and smiled like she'd just won a round in a game only she understood.
Because she had.