Chapter Three

"Something that isn't on our side."

I replayed Adrian's words the whole ride back to campus.

Nobody spoke in the car. Karl sat in the back seat beside me, his arm pressed against mine, that constant furnace heat soaking through my hoodie. Adrian drove. Jaw tight. Eyes forward. The composed mask was still there but something underneath it had shifted.

Adrian was scared.

That terrified me more than anything else.

"Who is it?" I finally broke the silence.

"Not who." Adrian's eyes met mine in the rearview mirror. "What."

Karl's arm pressed closer against me.

"A Rogue," Karl said. Low. Like the word itself was dangerous. "A shifter who broke from their pack. No loyalty. No code." His voice hardened. "They hunt Lures for sport."

The car felt very small.

"For sport," I repeated.

"A Lure's scent is addictive," Adrian said. "To a Rogue, you're not something to protect." A pause. "You're a prize."

I stared at the back of his head. "And it's already on campus."

"Since yesterday." His knuckles tightened on the wheel. "I picked up the trail this morning near Pemberton Hall."

My dorm.

It had been outside my dorm.

"Why didn't you tell me this inside the coffee shop?" My voice came out sharp.

"Because I needed to see your reaction without Karl influencing it."

Karl went very still beside me.

"Excuse me?" Karl's voice dropped dangerously.

"You affect him." Adrian's eyes cut to the mirror again. "Your proximity. Your heat. It clouds his thinking. I needed him clear."

"You manipulated the situation."

"I managed it—"

"Stop." I held up my hand. "Both of you." I looked at Karl first, then the mirror. "Figure out your issues later. Right now tell me what we do about whatever is hunting me."

Silence.

Then Adrian said — "You move out of Pemberton Hall. Tonight."

"Absolutely not."

"Ethan—"

"I have a life. I have classes. Tony and Yen and Lina think I'm already losing it." I shook my head. "I am not disappearing from my own life because something scary is nearby."

Karl turned to look at me fully. Up close his expression was complicated — that gold flickering behind the brown, jaw set, something fierce and protective pulling at every line of his face.

"Then we stay close to you," he said.

"How close?"

His eyes didn't waver. "Every minute."

Karl walked me to my nine o'clock lecture.

Not beside me. With me — shoulders almost touching, his body angled slightly toward mine the whole way, eyes scanning every face we passed. Three girls from the swim team stared openly. Someone wolf-whistled from across the quad.

I ignored all of it.

"You're being obvious," I muttered.

"Good." He held the building door open. "Let it be obvious."

"Karl—"

"Something out there already knows your scent." His voice was low, close to my ear as I passed him. "Let it know you're not alone."

I didn't have an answer for that.

I sat through sixty minutes of economics understanding absolutely nothing. Karl sat one row behind me. I could feel his heat from there — steady, constant, like a radiator that had learned to be possessive.

When class ended he was at my shoulder before I even stood up.

"Lunch," he said.

"I eat with Tony and Yen—"

"Then I eat with Tony and Yen."

Tony took one look at Karl sitting down at our table and grabbed my arm.

"Bathroom," he said. "Now."

He dragged me across the cafeteria, shoved me through the door and stared at me with enormous eyes.

"Karl Voss," he hissed. "Is eating lunch with us."

"I know."

"Karl. Voss. The Karl Voss—"

"Tony I know who he is—"

"Why is Karl Voss eating lunch with us Ethan what did you do—"

"I didn't do anything." Technically accurate. "He's just — we're hanging out."

Tony squinted at me for a long, terrible moment.

"You're lying," he said. "Your left eye does the thing."

"It doesn't do a thing."

"It absolutely does a thing." He crossed his arms. "What's going on?"

I opened my mouth.

My phone buzzed.

Adrian: Don't go back to your dorm alone after lunch. I'll meet you at the east gate at two.

I stared at the message.

Tony read it over my shoulder. His voice went very quiet.

"Ethan." He turned me by the shoulder. "Who is Adrian?"

I didn't tell Tony everything.

I told him enough — which was nothing — and spent lunch watching Karl eat a completely normal plate of food like he wasn't a supernatural predator who'd shredded steel with his bare hands twelve hours ago. He was laughing at something Yen said. Yen, who hated everyone, was actually laughing back.

It was deeply disorienting.

At 1:55 I stood up to leave.

Karl stood with me.

"I've got it," I said.

"East gate." He looked at me steadily. "Adrian's territory ends at the east boundary of campus. He can't cover the south entrance from there."

"How do you know where he'll be standing?"

"Because I know how he thinks." Something moved across his face. Not quite hostility. Not quite respect. Something complicated that lived between both. "We don't agree on much. But we agree on you."

Something warm moved through my chest.

I really needed to stop letting that happen.

Adrian was at the east gate exactly at two.

Leaning against the stone pillar, jacket dark, arms crossed, silver eyes finding me immediately. Something in his posture shifted the second he saw me — subtle, barely there. But I was starting to learn his face.

He was relieved.

"You're two minutes late," he said.

"I was at lunch."

"With Karl."

"With Karl." I stopped in front of him. "You knew he'd follow me."

"Yes."

"You let him."

A pause. "It was useful."

I studied him. That locked-down composure. Those careful eyes. Two years of watching me from a distance, moving things away before they reached me, saying nothing.

"Adrian." I kept my voice even. "Why didn't you just talk to me? Two years ago. Why didn't you just—"

"Because the moment I talked to you," he said quietly, "I couldn't maintain distance anymore."

The words landed somewhere they had no business landing.

I stepped closer. I don't know why. Something just pulled.

He didn't step back.

Up close his eyes weren't just silver — there were threads of something luminous underneath, pale and ancient, like light through deep water. His jaw was tight. His breathing — for the first time — not quite steady.

"You feel it too," I said. Not a question.

His hand came up slowly and his fingers curved around the back of my neck — warm, deliberate, nothing like Karl's desperate heat. This was controlled. Chosen.

"I've felt it," he said, very low, "since the first day you walked onto this campus."

He tilted my face up.

My heart slammed against my ribs.

His lips were an inch from mine—

A sound split the air.

Not human.

A howl — low, rolling, wrong — came from somewhere inside the campus trees. Close. Too close.

Adrian went rigid.

His eyes snapped up over my head, silver bleeding to something brighter, something burning.

Behind me — footsteps running. Fast.

Karl skidded to a stop beside us, chest heaving, eyes full gold in broad daylight.

"It's here," he said. "It's on campus right now."

Adrian's hand tightened at the back of my neck.

"Stay between us," he said. His voice had changed — stripped of everything careful, everything measured. Pure authority underneath. "Do not run. Do not pull away from us. Whatever you see—"

Another howl. Closer.

"Whatever you see," he repeated, eyes burning down at mine, "stay with us."

I grabbed his jacket with both fists.

From the trees — something stepped out.

It was shaped like a man.

But it didn't move like one.