2. Lynn
— ? —
Lynn
I don’t sleep.
It doesn’t help.
Nothing helps.
I take the longest shower of my life and still feel his tongue on my throat.
By the time my “GO TO CLASS, IDIOT” alarm goes off at 8 a.m., I’ve had approximately forty-five minutes of sleep, two cups of coffee, and one very confusing dream about wolves that I’m choosing not to examine.
I throw on the first clean clothes I can find, shove a pencil into my disaster of a bun, and stumble across campus toward the one class I actually care about.
Mythology in Literature. My favorite. The only place my brain doesn’t fight me, because the material is interesting, because Professor Hargrove always made it feel like we were uncovering secrets instead of just studying-
Professor Hargrove is gone.
The thought hits me fresh, like I’d somehow forgotten during my spiral about the stranger, and the grief of it mixes with the confusion until I feel slightly sick.
Whoever they’ve found to replace her will be terrible. They always are. Emergency hires are always either ancient adjuncts reading from slides they made in 2003 or fresh-out-of-grad-school types who can’t handle questions. I’m bracing myself for disappointment as I push open the lecture hall door.
The room is… different.
There’s a buzz in the air, a current of whispered conversation that’s louder than it should be for 8:30 in the morning. Students who usually slouch in the back rows have migrated forward. A girl I don’t recognize is actually applying lipstick.
“ - did you see him?”
“ - looks like a fucking model-”
“ - I heard he’s published in like six journals-”
I find my usual seat in the third row and start pulling things out of my bag, notebook and pen and phone and the monster romance I’m rereading for comfort because last night was a lot and I deserve-
Someone clears their throat.
The room goes silent.
“Good morning, class.”
The voice hits me before I look up, deep and unhurried and horribly familiar.
No. No, no, no-
“My name is Miles Draven, and I’ll be your new Mythology in Literature professor.”
I look up.
The stranger from the library is standing at the front of the room.
He’s wearing a charcoal sweater over a button-down, glasses I know he didn’t have last night perched on his nose, and an expression of calm authority that makes him look like he’s been teaching here for years instead of appearing out of nowhere to lick my throat in the stacks.
The blood drains from my face so fast I get dizzy.
Around me, the whispers have turned into barely contained chaos. Someone actually giggles. The girl with the lipstick looks like she’s about to pass out. A guy in the front row has his phone out under his desk, clearly taking a photo.
“I understand Professor Hargrove’s departure was abrupt,” Miles, Professor Draven, continues, “and I want to assure you that I take this subject as seriously as she did. Perhaps more so.” His eyes scan the room.
“Mythology isn’t just stories. It’s the way cultures have tried to understand the incomprehensible. The monstrous. The divine.”
His gaze lands on me.
I forget how to breathe.
He’s my teacher. He’s my TEACHER. The hot stranger I spent all night fantasizing about is my TEACHER.
I need to disappear, transfer schools, go back in time and not let a stranger smell my neck like a deranged sommelier-
“Today,” he continues, eyes still on me, “we’ll be discussing fated bonds in wolf mythology. The idea that certain beings are destined for each other. Chosen not by circumstance, but by something older. Deeper.”
He picks up a piece of chalk and writes on the board: MATE BONDS.
I’m going to die. Right here in this lecture hall.
“The concept appears across cultures,” he says, turning back to face us.
“In Norse mythology, wolves are tied to fate itself - Fenrir bound until Ragnar?k, the wolves Sk?ll and Hati chasing sun and moon. But it’s the mating myths that persist most strongly.
The idea that a wolf knows its mate. Instantly. Irrevocably.”
A girl raises her hand. “Like love at first sight?”
“Deeper than that.” His voice drops, and the room leans in. “Love is a choice. Mating, in these myths, is recognition. Your soul meeting its match and knowing. The wolf doesn’t decide to love its mate. The wolf simply… can’t be complete without them.”
He’s looking at me again.
I should look away, take notes, do literally anything other than stare back at my professor like he’s describing my future.
The classmate next to me, some guy named Derek who’s never said more than two words to me, taps my shoulder.
“Hey, did Hargrove ever cover the reading list for the Fenrir unit? I missed that class.”
I open my mouth to answer.
Professor Draven growls.
The sound is audible, low and rough and inhuman, and the word that comes out of him isn’t academic.
“MINE.”
He’s staring at Derek. At Derek’s hand. Still on my shoulder.
The room freezes.
For a heartbeat, nobody moves. Nobody breathes. Professor Draven’s eyes flash, gold, unmistakably gold, and then he blinks, clears his throat, and the mask slides back into place so smoothly I almost think I imagined it.
“My apologies.” His voice is steady, but there’s a tightness around his jaw. “As I was saying - the concept of possessiveness in wolf mythology. The territorial nature of the bond.”
He continues the lecture like nothing happened.
But he keeps looking at me. Every few minutes, his eyes find their way back to the third row, back to me, and there’s something hungry in his gaze that makes it very hard to take notes.
I try anyway. I write words down without processing them, fate, bond, recognition, mine, and by the time he dismisses us, my page looks like the manifesto of someone having a very specific breakdown.
“Miss Crowe.”
I freeze halfway out of my seat.
“A moment, please.”
The other students file out, shooting me curious looks. The lipstick girl straight-up glares. I wait until the room empties, my heart hammering so hard I can feel it in my throat.
“Professor Draven.”
“Close the door.”
I shouldn’t close the door. The smart move is to leave, to report him to someone, HR, the dean, anyone, for whatever the hell happened last night and whatever the hell happened just now.
I close the door.
He’s leaning against his desk when I turn around, arms crossed, watching me with an intensity that makes my skin prickle.
“I believe we need to discuss last night.”
“There’s nothing to discuss,” I say, too fast. “You were - I was - it was a weird moment. We don’t have to-”
“I licked your throat and called you my mate.”
My face goes nuclear.
“That’s - yes. That happened.”
“And now I’m your professor.”
He says it flatly, a plain statement of fact, and my stomach drops all over again.
“Also that.”
“And you haven’t run away screaming.”
“I’m considering it.”
His mouth twitches. Just barely. “Fair.”
We stare at each other across the empty lecture hall. He’s still unfair to look at, the glasses somehow making it worse, and I hate that I notice, hate that my body remembers the warmth of his hands.
“This is inappropriate,” I say, because someone has to.
“Extremely.”
“You’re my teacher.”
“I’m aware.”
“I could lose my scholarship. You could lose your job. This is - it’s-”
“A complication,” he finishes. “Yes.”
“Then why are you looking at me like that?”
He goes still. “Like what?”
“Like-” I gesture vaguely at my everything. “Like I hung the moon. The one you keep quoting myths about.”
His jaw works. Want and restraint war behind his eyes, and underneath them, a hunger older and more dangerous than either. When he speaks, his voice is rough.
“Because I’m trying very hard to be professional, Miss Crowe. And you’re making it extraordinarily difficult.”
“I’m making it difficult? You GROWLED at a guy for touching my shoulder!”
“He shouldn’t have been touching your shoulder.”
“He was asking about the READING LIST!”
“I don’t care.”
We’re both breathing hard now. The space has gone tight and close, wound to the point of snapping.
“This can’t happen,” I say.
“No.”
“You’re my professor.”
“I am.”
“So whatever - whatever this is-” I gesture at the space between us, the impossible tension, the way he’s watching me like I’m the one fixed point in a room that keeps tilting. “It has to stop.”
He’s quiet for a long moment. Then he pushes off the desk and crosses the space between us, slow enough that I could run if I wanted to.
I don’t want to.
He stops just short of touching me. Close enough that I can feel the heat of him, catch a woodsy warmth coming off his skin, see the flecks of gold scattered through the green of his eyes.
“I don’t think it can stop,” he says softly. “I don’t think it knows how.”
“What does that even mean?”
“I wish I could explain.” His hand rises like he’s going to touch my face, then drops. Clenches at his side. “I wish I could explain everything. But right now, Miss Crowe, you should go to your next class.”
“And you?”
“I’m going to stand here and remind myself of all the reasons I can’t follow you.”
I should leave. I need to leave. But my feet don’t move, and my heart won’t slow down, and when I finally force myself to turn toward the door, I hear him exhale like it costs him something.
“See you next class,” I say.
“Yes,” he says. “You will.”
I walk out of the lecture hall on shaking legs, and I make it all the way to the bathroom before I slump against the sink and stare at my own flushed reflection.
I spent all night telling myself it was nothing.
It’s not nothing.
My professor is gorgeous and strange and he called me his mate and I’m more attracted to him than I’ve ever been to anyone and this is a disaster.
This is an absolute, complete disaster.
And the worst part?
I can’t wait to see him again.