Chapter Nine

BILLIE

The past two days have been some of the best of my life. The guys have all made me feel welcome, and everyone's allowed me to hide in the tower until I'm ready to meet more people. There are other girls in this dorm somewhere, and I intend to eventually seek them out.

I never had time to keep up with close friends growing up, but my personality has always made it easy for me to get along with all different types of people, and I’ve always been good with them. It’s why I was in the service industry. I’d like to make closer friends here.

Meanwhile, Raven showed me his attic studio and made me promise to sit for him on the first day of classes. He says I won't need to more than once, as his photographic visual memory is heightened by the Wolf inside him and he's able to do the rest by memory. As he showed me his beautiful pre-Raphaelite style paintings—mostly young women of all sizes and colors, but with a recurring them of redheads—he flirted with me again and made me feel pretty. 

“Do you have a boyfriend who might get jealous when I paint your lovely face?” he teased.

“I’ve been way too busy for anything like that,” I tell him while my face flushes.

“What, your whole life? Never been kissed?”

“That’s me,” I admit to the charismatic werewolf.

“Don’t be embarrassed, precious. The thought of an untouched girl is like an aphrodisiac for werewolves. We’re drawn to virgins.”

“Oh…oh,” I stutter, and he relents.

 And Fleming and I now have a standing lunch date in the courtyard. We became instant friends when we realized how much in common we have–he has a sick mother and no father, too, and was raised to be independent.

“I know you didn’t grow up with werewolves,” he says, “So you probably don’t know much about our hierarchy. But my father was a beta to Tristan’s father, Alpha Conner. That means he was one of his lieutenants, the other being Dominic’s father. Like yours, my father was killed in the line of duty, protecting the pack during a raid by rogue werewolves. He’s a hero in our hometown. I’m going to be like him. Dominic and I are the two strongest warriors, so we’ll be Tristan’s betas when we all graduate.” He brushes his hair out of his eyes and smirks. “Though Dom is more the fighter, I like to think of myself as an advisor.”

He flirts with me, too, saying things that make my cheeks flush but never going too far or for too long.

The Phantom always seems to be too busy to really get to know; an enigma like his name suggests. Every once in a while I can hear music coming from a sub basement, mostly organ and electronic music, and I'm told that's him. Fleming told me about the elaborate parties Phantom arranges in his underground lair hidden beneath the college, which are both exclusive and legendary. Fleming also told me he and the Phantom are mates.

“We're polyamorous–we have an open relationship since we're both bi and want to explore that.”

Thorne showed me his sensory room, a room off his dorm suite that's soundproofed and painted a soothing blue with rainbows in shades of pink. There’s a hammock, a large cushion on the floor, noise-damping headphones, a trickling fountain that can be turned off, and stars glowing on the ceiling. A bookcase holds plush animals and sensory fidget toys, as well as clay and meditative coloring books and a pile of weighted blankets. A crystal warmer lets out a steam smelling of lavender, vanilla, and ylang ylang. He told me to use it anytime if things get overwhelming.

Dominic escorted me to the Student Union to get my student ID and orientation papers, then took me on a walking tour of Crescent University. The campus is covered in oak trees and pine groves, and acorns and pine cones crunched beneath our feet. He showed me Grimstock Library, with its rooftop observatory, and Wellstone chapel, a tiny unused church made of limestone with an ancient graveyard right on campus. 

“This is where we hold initiations and holy days,” Dom tells me, indicating the ivy-covered chapel. “Anything that has to do with the secret society aspect of the Underground.”

He introduced me to the third major secret society on campus, the Children of Diana, whose house looks like a great stone cathedral. “They’re focused on academics, they mostly keep to themselves and just want to be left out of turf wars as long as no one attacks them.”

At one point he led me past the Performing Arts Center and showed me a path.

“That leads directly through the woods to the Lunacy Asylum, Lunacy's big stone residence. Don’t ever follow that path, it’s not safe for any girl.”

Tristan…I haven't spoken with him since I arrived, but every so often I sense someone watching me, and it's his forest green eyes, the ones haunting my dreams—and occasionally my waking thoughts—that are on me. He was at the Gaelic Wolf last night for the entirety of my last shift, and all he did was slowly sip a pint of stout and watch me.

I like the way his eyes feel on me. They make my skin tingle.I want to know why he watches me so much.

What does he see? Have I earned his disapproval somehow? His face gives nothing away, I’ve never seen anyone so straight faced. Does he feel the heat between us? Does he like it?

“Are you going to have any food with your beer, or are you just going to get drunk on stout all night?” I ask him.

He meets my stare, takes a drink, and asks, “Do all of your customers like to touch you, or is tonight just special?”

“Tonight is nothing. It’s usually way worse than this.”

“Good thing you don’t have to work here after tonight, then.”

“Yeah. Good thing.”

I don’t get him. He looks at me like he wants to eat me—and he could, being a werewolf and all—but he speaks to me as little as possible, and when he does, I can’t read his moods.

Since the Gaelic Wolf is so close to campus, he walks me back to the Rock House when my shift is over. The air smells like rain and lightning, and the breeze is up and unusually warm.

It’s a creepy night, and I’m being protected by a werewolf. The irony isn’t lost on me.

He’s silent the entire way home.

The tension is thicker than the fog rolling in from the coast.

That night, after I put on my nightgown and get ready for bed, I turn off the lights and sit down in the windowseat next to my bed. The full moon is high in the sky, and I look out on the grounds below. I hear yips and answering howls, and I can see movement in the brush and through the trees. Occasionally a burst of motion explodes violently through the forest, and I can just make out the shadows of animals chasing each other through the mist. One giant shadow in particular comes to the tower and stops below the window, four stories safely below, and just stands there like a sentry in the night. I wait, frozen, to see if the wolf does anything else, and eventually, it lets out a soft, almost soothing series of howls. Then there's a yip from the forest, and the huge shadow runs off.