CHAPTER 5 : An invitation

The invitation from Professor Ashford the next day was simple, polite, but it carried an unspoken weight.

"Miss Bain, come to my office after class. We need to review your project notes," Ashford said, his eyes lingering a little too long before adding, "I want to make sure you are keeping up."

I knew that was not the truth. He had noticed me distracted in class, observed my absences, and assumed it was because of Julian. Perhaps he thought he needed to protect me, though I required no protection at all. The irony was not lost on me—not one bit.

Quietly, deliberately, I asked Rowan to let it go. To stop guarding me so closely.

He did not like that. He never did.

It was not the first time I had made the request. Over the years, I had asked it again and again, usually in moments like this, when the curse muddied my instincts, when desire and danger tangled too tightly for comfort. Rowan always knew when those moments came. He felt them in me as surely as I did. And still, he obeyed. Reluctantly. Always.

Because I was his Alpha. More than that, I was the True Alpha. The Moon Goddess's direct heir. The first wolf.

Even now, even with my wolf dormant beneath layers of spells and centuries of restraint, even weakened by a curse I could not fully break, that truth remained immutable. No pack politics could erase it. No modern hierarchy could challenge it. There was no one left alive who could tell me what to do. Not truly.

I had chosen this life. Among humans. Away from the rot of pack councils and blood feuds, from the posturing and manipulation of modern wolves who did not even know I still existed. I had walked away from all of it to breathe freely, to think, to live without being claimed or commanded.

Rowan understood that, even when it cost him. He always did.

And so, however much his instincts rebelled, however much it tore at his sense of duty, he stepped back when I ordered him to. Not because he stopped caring, but because he respected my will. Because he had sworn himself not only to my safety, but to my choice.

Carrying my notes and books through the quiet, echoing corridors of the college, my pulse quickened with each step. The thought of being alone with Professor Ashford in his office unsettled me more than I cared to admit. Every rational part of me warned against it, yet another, far more dangerous part of me—the part that had long since learned how to read desire and command it—tugged insistently in the opposite direction.

What would happen once we were enclosed in that small, book-lined room? Could I remain composed, professional, restrained? Or would the closeness, the heat radiating off him, make me abandon every ounce of control? The very thought sent shivers down my spine, a delicious tension I could neither ignore nor wholly deny.

He motioned for me to sit, and for several minutes, neither of us spoke. The silence was heavy, deliberate, and charged with unspoken energy.

Finally, he broke it.

"You have remarkable insight, Miss Bain. Your analysis of the Covenanters in your last assessment was brilliant. I didn't know you had access to such sources."

"I like to read beyond the textbooks," I said lightly, letting my gaze drift over the rows of leather-bound tomes lining the office walls. "It's the only way to understand the context. One can quote endlessly, but interpretation is what truly matters."

He leaned back, arms crossed, studying me.

"You leave very little room for anyone to teach you anything, do you realise that?"

"Yes," I replied, a faint smile brushing my lips. "I like to think I at least push the teacher to think harder."

Our discussion turned naturally to historical strategy: the Scottish campaigns of 1650, the tactical manoeuvres at Dunbar, Cromwell's often underestimated decisions. The tension in the room built with each pointed argument. Our hands occasionally brushed while passing notes or books, and each contact lingered slightly too long. My pulse quickened every time.

It was Ashford who shifted the terrain.

"History," he said thoughtfully, fingers resting on the edge of a folio, "is rarely content with facts alone. Particularly in periods like these. Wars breed stories. Legends. Fear fills the gaps where certainty fails."

I kept my expression neutral. "Legends are convenient. They give shape to what people cannot explain."

His gaze sharpened. "Or what they don't wish to understand."

A pause. The kind that stretches, listening.

"Take seventeenth-century Scotland," he continued. "Battlefields haunted long after the blood dried. Accounts of creatures roaming the hills. Vampiric revenants. Wolves walking upright. Scholars dismiss them as superstition, but the consistency is curious."

"Consistency doesn't equal truth," I replied lightly. "It equals repetition."

"Perhaps," he said. "But repetition across regions, across decades, suggests a shared source. Fear has patterns."

I leaned back slightly, folding my arms. "Fear always does. Give starving men cold nights and unburied corpses, and they will invent monsters."

"And yet," he said quietly, "some myths are remarkably precise. The rituals. The symbols. The methods."

I met his eyes then, deliberately. "Methods?"

He smiled faintly. "You know. Silver. Fire. Decapitation. Running water. The idea that such creatures could only be destroyed in very specific ways."

My heartbeat remained steady, but something cold slid down my spine.

"People have always been inventive when it comes to killing what frightens them," I said. "Especially what they envy."

His brow lifted. "Envy?"

"Strength. Longevity. Freedom from rules humans bind themselves to." I paused, then added, "Extraordinary creatures invite extraordinary hatred."

He studied me as if recalibrating. "You speak as though you pity them."

"I pity anyone hunted for existing," I replied evenly.

A silence settled, thick with unspoken meanings.

"And werewolves?" he asked at last. "They fascinate me most. The duality. The discipline required to live between instincts. Legends insist they must be killed on sight."

"They must," I said too quickly, then softened it. "At least, that's what the stories say."

"Why?" His tone was not academic now. It was genuinely curious. "If they existed, why destroy them? Wouldn't it be more... enlightening to study such a creature? To understand it?"

Something sharp flashed behind my ribs.

"Because," I said quietly, leaning forward, "they would not grant you the same courtesy."

His lips curved, amused rather than alarmed. "You think they'd kill me?"

"Without hesitation," I said. "Self-preservation. Experience. They know how curiosity ends."

"And yet," he murmured, "you don't speak like someone afraid of them."

"No," I agreed. "I don't."

Our eyes held. Not challenging. Measuring.

"You know these legends unusually well, Miss Bain," he said at last. "More than most historians."

I shrugged. "I read widely."

"Mm," he murmured. "You read... intimately."

There it was. Not an accusation. An invitation.

I smiled faintly, letting nothing through. "Myths endure because they are human mirrors. They tell us what we fear becoming."

"And what we secretly wish we were," he countered.

My breath caught for the briefest moment. Perhaps. But I said nothing.

On the third evening, the lamp cast long shadows across the office. I was catching up on lectures I had missed, not because of Julian, but because I had deliberately kept myself distant. Distancing myself from Julian only brought me closer to Ashford, and I was not certain that was wise.

He watched me for a while in silence, the scratch of my pen the only sound between us.

Then, softly, he asked, "Do you always work like this? So late, so absorbed?"

I smiled faintly without lifting my head. "You could say so."

"Why?"

"Because it's easier than the alternative."

He tilted his head as if weighing whether to press, then let it go, leaning back in his chair. The silence that followed was not uncomfortable. It was expectant, threaded with questions neither of us dared to ask.

"You never say much about yourself," I ventured after a while, glancing at him across the desk.

His eyes narrowed slightly, thoughtful.

"There isn't much worth saying."

"That sounds like something people only say when there's too much to tell."

He gave the smallest of smiles, one corner of his mouth curving. "Perhaps."

And that was all. I let it be, though curiosity tugged at me. His restraint, his secrecy—it drew me in rather than pushing me away.

Before I could risk more, he shifted the focus.

"I noticed you've studied at other universities. That's rare. Most students don't have the drive, or the stamina. And yet, you make it sound effortless. As if you've seen more than most at your age."

His gaze sharpened, lingering on me as though he were trying to untangle a knot.

"You've gathered more in those years than many do in a lifetime."

I felt heat rise in me at the weight of his words.

"I like to learn," I said lightly, though my eyes dropped to the page.

"And your family?" he asked, almost idly. "They must be proud, surely. To see you achieve so much."

I stilled, pen hovering mid-word. After a moment, I shook my head.

"I don't have a family. They're gone."

What did he expect me to say? That I had lost my family, my pack, centuries ago, and had been alone ever since, forcing myself into a human life when nothing in me was bloody human at all.

He did not answer straightaway. His expression shifted—something like regret, something like recognition. Then, simply, he nodded. No prying, no apology, only acceptance.

I met his eyes then, and the quiet between us changed. His secrets lay behind his silence, mine behind my refusal to explain, and strangely, it was that distance that pulled us closer.

Back to work, and trying to shift the conversation, I quoted a sentence from Durham's private collection, something no living scholar should know, and saw his jaw tighten. His eyes held mine far longer than professional courtesy demanded. For a heartbeat, I glimpsed the man beneath the scholar, restrained curiosity simmering just below the surface. My breath caught, my pulse surged. He leaned ever so slightly nearer, the small movement enough to charge the air between us, thick with something unspoken.

I could feel the warmth radiating from him, catch the faint trace of his cologne mingling with the crisp scent of old books and polished wood. What unsettled me was what I did not smell. There was no sharp bloom of lust, no hunger clinging to his skin the way it always did with men. Desire, for my kind, had a scent. The curse made it impossible to miss. I caught it on Julian, thick and reckless. Sometimes even on Rowan, despite his restraint. On countless others who lingered too long, who watched too hard. But with him, it was different. I saw the desire in his eyes, in the careful restraint of his gestures, the way his attention lingered not on my body but on what lay behind my gaze. His scent held something else entirely. Not hunger, not shallow obsession, but a strange pull I had never known before. Something quiet. Something deep. Almost unreal.

His chest rose and fell with sharper breaths than before, his gaze glimmering in a way that betrayed the restraint he was forcing on himself. I caught myself tracing the line of his jaw, imagining how it would feel under my fingertips. My eyes drifted, almost against my will, to his lips—so full, so tempting, so impossibly close. The rational part of me screamed to remain professional, to retreat, but another part—a dangerous, impatient part—teased at the edges of my control.

I was the one who chose to pull back. Because that kind of pull frightened me. I had to admit it. It did. Not because it was weak or fleeting, but because it was unknown.

Slowly, deliberately, I gathered my notes, adjusted my posture, and let my gaze lift from his lips. My heart still raced, my body still quivering from the proximity and the heat, but I walked away first, leaving the tension suspended in the air between us. Behind me, I heard him rise abruptly, the sound sharp in the quiet room—courtesy, perhaps, or the same impossible pull he was fighting.

Bloody hell, I reminded myself. I was his student.