10. Lynn
— ? —
Lynn
I’ve been staring at my ceiling for two hours.
The almost-kiss plays on a loop in my head like a song I can’t get out, his hand on my face, the way his eyes dropped to my lips, the heat of him so close I could feel it through my clothes.
I’ve analyzed it from every angle. I’ve constructed seventeen different interpretations.
I’ve convinced myself it meant everything and nothing at least four times each.
My phone buzzes with a text from my mom asking if I’m eating enough vegetables.
I send back a thumbs up emoji and go back to spiraling.
The knock on my window nearly sends me into cardiac arrest.
I bolt upright, heart hammering, and there he is, Milo, crouched on the narrow ledge outside my third-floor window, fully clothed this time in dark jeans and a forest-green sweater that makes his eyes look almost amber in the dim light.
I scramble across the room and yank the window open.
“Get in here,” I hiss, grabbing his arm and pulling. “There’s a man on a third-floor ledge, people are going to call campus security, they’re going to think you’re - I don’t even know what they’re going to think-”
He climbs through with that infuriating grace, like scaling buildings is just a normal Tuesday activity for him.
“I used the shadows,” he says. “No one saw.”
“You used the shadows? What does that even - no, you know what, I don’t want to know.” I shut the window harder than necessary. “Why are you here? It’s almost midnight.”
He straightens to his full height, and my room suddenly feels very small. Very, very small. He’s taking up all the oxygen again.
“I brought you something.”
He reaches into the messenger bag slung across his chest and produces a stack of papers, handwritten notes, I realize as he hands them to me. Class notes. From my other courses.
“What is this?”
“Your professors noticed you were struggling to keep up with the reading. They offered to provide supplementary materials.”
I flip through the stack. Detailed summaries from my Victorian Literature professor. Study guides from my History of the English Language course. Even annotated timelines from my Linguistics seminar, a class I’ve been drowning in all semester.
“They just… volunteered this?”
“I may have mentioned that you were a dedicated student facing some challenges.”
I narrow my eyes at him. “You asked them for this.”
“I inquired if there were resources available.”
“You asked them.” I flip through more pages, my chest tight. “And they just gave them to you because - what? Because you’re hot? Because they want to do favors for the mysterious new professor?”
“I wouldn’t presume to know their motivations.”
Something ugly twists in my stomach. All these professors, falling over themselves to help him. Probably half of them have been making excuses to stop by his office, bringing him coffee, asking if he needs anything.
I set the papers on my desk with more force than necessary.
“This has to stop.”
His expression shifts. “The notes? If you don’t want-”
“Not the notes. This.” I gesture between us. “Whatever this is. The window visits and the library conversations and the - the hand-holding and the almost-”
I can’t finish that sentence. My face is already burning.
“This isn’t appropriate,” I press on, wrapping my arms around myself. “You’re my professor. I’m your student. I could lose my scholarship if anyone thought I was - if they suspected we were-”
“We’re not doing anything wrong.”
“We’re doing something adjacent to wrong, and in academia, adjacent is close enough to get me expelled.” My voice cracks, and I hate it. “You could lose your job. I could lose everything I’ve worked for. My whole future is riding on this degree, and I can’t - I can’t risk it for whatever this is.”
He’s very still. The dim light from my desk lamp catches the sharp angles of his face, and I can’t read his expression.
“You want me to give you space.”
It’s not quite a question. His voice is carefully neutral, but there’s something underneath it, something that sounds almost like hurt.
“I want us to be realistic about what this is.”
“And what is it?”
“I don’t know!” The words burst out louder than I intended, and I clap a hand over my mouth, glancing at the wall I share with my neighbor. More quietly: “I don’t know what this is. I don’t know what you want from me. I don’t know why you keep showing up or why you look at me like-”
I stop. I can’t say it.
He takes a step closer. “Like what?”
“Like I matter.” My voice is barely a whisper. “Like I’m something important. And I don’t understand, because we’ve known each other for a week, and nothing about this makes sense, and you’re-” I gesture vaguely at all of him. “You’re you, and I’m just-”
“Don’t.”
The word is sharp, almost harsh. His jaw is tight.
“Don’t finish that sentence. Don’t reduce yourself to just anything.”
“I’m trying to be logical here.”
“I don’t want you to be logical.” He crosses the remaining distance between us, and suddenly he’s right there, close enough that I have to tilt my head back to meet his eyes. “I’m not leaving you, Lindsay. I’m not going anywhere.”
My breath catches. “Why?”
“Because I can’t.” He reaches up, fingertips brushing my temple, tucking a strand of hair back from my face so carefully it aches.
I blink.
Then I blink again.
“I’m sorry, what?”
“The goddess who guides my people. She didn’t make a mistake when she-”
“No, I heard the words, I just-” I take a step back, holding up my hands. “Okay. Okay. Are you high right now, Professor Draven? Is this some kind of lycan drug situation? Because I need to know if I should be calling someone.”
Amusement flickers across his face, or the desperate cousin of it.
“Call me Milo.”
“I’m not calling you anything until you explain what the hell you’re talking about.” I’m aware that my voice is reaching a pitch usually reserved for dog whistles. “Goddess? Mine? I need so much context right now.”
He lets out a long breath. Then he reaches for my hand, not grabbing, just offering, palm up.
“Will you sit? This will take a while to explain.”
I eye his hand like it might bite me. “Last time I let you hold my hand, we had a moment in the library and you almost kissed me and now you’re saying things like goddess and mine and I feel like I’m losing my mind.”
“Please.”
The word is soft. Almost vulnerable.
Against every instinct screaming at me to maintain boundaries, I take his hand and let him lead me to sit on the edge of my bed. He settles beside me, close but not touching except for our linked fingers.
“I didn’t come to Ashevale College to teach,” he says.
“Okay, great start, very comforting, please continue.”
His lips twitch. “I came for you.”
“For me.” I stare at him. “You came to this random liberal arts college in the middle of nowhere… for me. A twenty-two-year-old English major you’d never met.”
“Your name was given to me.” He meets my eyes, and his are doing that gold thing again, the shimmer that shouldn’t be possible. “By the goddess.”
“The goddess.”
“The one who guides my pack. The one who has guided our rituals for centuries.”
My brain goes staticky around the edges, the way it does when it’s processing too much at once. “Rituals.”
“Every five years, my pack performs what we call the knotting ritual.” He says it carefully, like he’s choosing each word with precision. “It’s a ceremony that strengthens the pack - brings power, health, prosperity. It can only be performed by couples who have been named by the goddess herself.”
“Named,” I repeat. “Named how?”
“When a lycan turns thirty, if they’ve been chosen for the ritual, the goddess reveals the name of their partner.
” His thumb traces a circle on my palm, and I try to focus on his words instead of how that small touch is making my entire arm tingle.
“Last month was my thirtieth birthday. And the goddess gave me a name.”
The staticky feeling intensifies.
“My name.”
“Lindsay Crowe.”
I open my mouth. Close it. Open it again.
“I was selected?” The word comes out slightly strangled. “By a goddess? Like a - a divine raffle? I didn’t even enter! I didn’t buy a ticket! I was just - living my life, doing my homework, not consorting with supernatural entities-”
“The goddess chooses based on criteria we don’t fully understand. Compatibility of souls, alignment of-”
“I didn’t even know goddesses existed until like three days ago!”
“Lindsay-”
“I’m your knotting partner?” The words come out high and slightly hysterical, and I’m on my feet now, pacing the tiny strip of floor between my bed and my desk. “That’s what this is? That’s why you’re here? I’m supposed to - we’re supposed to-”
I stop pacing. Turn to face him.
“What exactly does ‘knotting’ entail?”
Milo, who has faced down who knows what kind of supernatural threats in his centuries of existence, who carries himself like a warrior king, who probably has killed things with his bare hands-
Milo turns the color of a stop sign.
“It’s, ah.” He clears his throat. “A physical ritual.”
“Physical how?”
“The, um.” He makes a vague gesture with his hands. “The lycan male, when… in the context of intimate… there’s a biological component that-”
“A biological component.” I’m fighting to keep a straight face. This is the best entertainment I’ve had all year. Maybe all decade. “Could you be more specific?”
“During the act of-” He stops. Starts again. “When two people are engaged in-” Another stop. He’s actually sweating. “There’s a physical… joining… that occurs at the base of the-”
He makes a gesture that’s somehow both completely incomprehensible and absolutely clear in its meaning.
“ - which creates a temporary… connection… that facilitates the ritual bonding and the transfer of-”
“Milo.” I let my voice drip with faux innocence. “Are you trying to tell me that during sex, your dick does something weird?”
He chokes.
Actually chokes, like he’s swallowed his own tongue.
“That’s-” His voice cracks. He clears his throat. “That’s a crude way of-”
“I read monster romance,” I inform him. “Loads of it. I know what knotting is. I just wanted to see you try to explain it with academic diagram-adjacent hand gestures.”
The look he gives me is caught somewhere between mortification and reluctant admiration.
“You’re a menace.”
“I’ve been told.” I’m grinning now, I can’t help it. “Please continue. You were at ‘transfer of’-?”
“Energy.” He’s still red, but he’s regained some composure. “The ritual involves the transfer of the goddess’s blessing between partners. It strengthens both individuals and, through them, the pack.”
“So we’d have to…” I gesture vaguely.
“Yes.”
“And you’d…”
“Yes.”
“Huh.” I sit back down on the bed, suddenly feeling like my legs might not support me. “So you came here on a mission. To find me. To convince me to do… that.”
He’s quiet for a moment. When he speaks, his voice is careful.
“I was given one month to find you and… explain the situation.”
“One month to convince me to let you knot me.”
He flinches at the bluntness. “Yes.”
Something cold settles in my chest. It’s spreading outward, numbing my fingertips, making my stomach drop.
“So everything-” I pull my hand from his. “The library conversations. The notes. The window visits. The almost-kiss. That was all… what? Part of the mission?”
“No.” His eyes flash gold, bright and urgent. “No, Lindsay, listen to me-”
“Because from where I’m sitting, it sounds like you were running a seduction campaign.” My voice is steady, but I can feel the cracks forming underneath. “Target acquired. Deploy charm offensive. Establish emotional connection for optimal ritual compliance-”
“Stop.” He grabs my hands, both of them this time, cradling them between his own as if they might break.
“Why should I?”
“Because it stopped being a mission almost immediately.” His voice is raw, stripped of the careful composure I’ve grown used to. “The first night, when I walked you home - I was supposed to be evaluating you. Determining the best approach. And instead I-”
He breaks off, jaw working.
“I couldn’t stop thinking about you. The way you talk.
The way your mind works. How brave you are, even when you’re terrified.
” His hands tighten on mine. “By the second night, I’d stopped thinking about the ritual at all.
I just wanted to see you. Be near you. Everything since then - every conversation, every moment - it’s been real, Lindsay. I’m real.”
I want to believe him.
God, I want to believe him so badly it’s a physical ache in my chest.
But I’ve been the target of someone’s ulterior motives before. I’ve been the stepping stone, the means to an end. And I swore I’d never let myself be that again.
“I don’t know what to believe.”
The words come out quiet. Defeated.
Something in his expression fractures.
“I know.” He releases my hands slowly, reluctantly. “I know I’ve given you no reason to trust me. I’ve kept secrets. I’ve had an agenda. And I understand if you need time to-”
“I need time.” I wrap my arms around myself. “I need to think. Without you here, looking at me like that.”
“Like what?”
“Like I’m breaking your heart.”
He doesn’t answer right away. Then he stands, shrugging off his cardigan, the forest-green one that smells like pine and autumn and something distinctly him, and draping it around my shoulders.
“Keep this,” he says. “I’ll go.”
“Milo-”
“I meant what I said.” He pauses at the window, his hand on the frame. “I’m not going anywhere. However long you need to decide, I’ll wait. But know that whatever you choose, whatever happens with the ritual - I want you, Lindsay. Not a knotting partner or a checkbox on a divine mandate. You.”
Then he’s gone, slipping into the night with supernatural grace, leaving me alone with his cardigan and his words and the wreckage of everything I thought I knew.
I press the soft wool to my face and breathe in.
It smells like him.
And I have no idea what I’m supposed to do now.