I couldn’t let him see what I was working on. If I’d been hanging out in the hard sciences, his eyes would’ve glazed over within seconds, and he’d never have known if I was curing cancer in toads or homebrewing my own LSD. But stacks of books on ancient werewolf lore…that he’d notice. I needed to stall him until I could tell him something more thanOh yeah, I called Greenwald and totally failed to get rid of him, and now I’m working for him. But I’m thinking about making a plan!
I ended up parking him at the door from the stairwell into the supernatural collection on the third floor of the library’s east wing, where he could monitor anyone coming in or out without actually dogging every one of my steps. Fiona had texted me earlier about how bored she was at home, and I fobbed Colin off with the excuse of looking for books about female alphas for her.
With Colin ensconced in a dusty old reading chair, I headed down the aisle between the wall of windows looking out over the forest and the perpendicular rows of shelves. On the Tuesday morning of midterm week, I had the whole place to myself, especially since the sun had come out that morning after a few days of gloom and intermittent rain, and anyone not actively taking an exam had fled outdoors. Sun filtered in through the tinted windows, casting a weird yellow-gray glow in long rectangles stretching along the spaces between shelves. I’d already picked some likely call numbers, and I turned into an aisle halfway down.
I trailed my fingers along the shelf as I went, browsing titles.Compendium of North American Shifters.Werewolf and Werefox: Relations Among Homocaninae, Past and Present. Given the state of the leather binding on the latter, I thought ‘present’ probably referred to sometime in the nineteenth century.
I grabbed it anyway. It might have info on interbreeding between the two varieties of were, which could offer some genetic insights.
By the time I’d finished combing through the section, I had a teetering pile that even an alpha might’ve found challenging to lift and balance all at once. I carried it to one of the study rooms at the side of the floor, a tiny space containing a desk, a chair, and a power outlet.
And then I settled in, laptop and pen-and-paper at the ready.
When a rap of knuckles on the doorframe startled me out of my fugue, I had to blink a few times to refocus my eyes on something more than a foot from my face. I’d had the foresight to pull a couple of books on female alphas after all, and put them in plain sight at the edge of the desk. I still had to fight the urge to fling myself on top of the books in front of me to hide them from Colin’s keen vision.
“What’s up?” My voice came out rusty. I glanced down at the corner of my laptop screen. Nearly two? I’d been at it for four hours.
“Food,” Colin said, with force. “Food, Newt. It’s a thing people have a few times a day.”
“You’re not allowed to eat in the library.” My gaze strayed back down to the book open in my lap. I’d had a thought, an insight, and the interruption had driven it away, it was right on the tip of my brain…
“Newt!” Colin snapped his fingers. “Focus! I know we can’t have food in here. That’s why we’re leaving. For a while,” he added, as I started to protest. “We can come back. Even though I don’t really understand why you can’t just check this stuff out and go home?”
I shook my head at him, trying not to laugh at his mournful tone and the wistful gleam in those dark eyes. He sounded like a kid whose mom had spent the whole morning at the mall.
“I need to be here so I can pull more books as I find references. And some of these they might not even let me check out, they’re so old and fragile. Besides, I like the library.”
Colin made a sound that might have been uncharitably classified as a whine. “Food. Lunch. Or I’m not going to make it.”
“You don’t have to stay,” I tried, even though I knew what reaction that would get. I knew I’d be safe if he left me alone, even if not necessarily tenured, damn it. Greenwald didn’t even need to send anyone to intimidate me. He’d already accomplished that, the son of a bitch.
But it wasn’t like I could tell Colin any of that.
Colin’s jaw firmed, and it had been plenty firm to begin with. “Don’t even,” he said flatly. “Lunch. Leave voluntarily, or I’m putting you over my shoulder and carrying you out of here.”
I winced. It wouldn’t have been the first time, so I knew it wasn’t an empty threat. Being ‘that professor, I think he’s Fiona McEwen’s brother’? Crappy. Being ‘that professor, the one that super hot alpha werewolf carried kicking and screaming out of the library, oh my God, have you seen the video’? I’d have to grow a mustache, start wearing sunglasses and a baseball cap everywhere, and teach wastewater management at a community college. In Nebraska.
“I’m not hungry. Can you go grab lunch and leave me here? It’d only be for a little bit! And I promise I’ll finish up in a couple of hours, check out what I can, and go home for dinner. Pinky swear, okay? Deal?” Colin frowned at me, his eyebrows drawing together in a way that meant trouble. “Look, this door locks. I had the door open so you’d be able to find me, but I can close it, lock it, and have your contact info on my screen so I can speed-dial you if there’s any trouble.”
“That lock’s not worth shit. Anyone could just rip the door open.”
“I couldn’t,” I managed through gritted teeth. Dammit. My temples had stopped throbbing after a decent night’s sleep, but Colin had always had special talents.
“Yeah, anyone who worked out, dude. You need to get out of the lab and into the gym a little more.”
I knew he was teasing, and his concern for the door’s security focused on supernatural beings who might be after me—but that was it. Red flooded my vision, and I launched myself to my feet.
“You,” I growled, “are going to go get lunch.” I stalked toward him, not easy in such a small space—but I got two steps’ worth of stalking. “AndIam going to lock the door and keep working.”
We stood precisely eye to eye, and I leaned in until we were almost nose to nose, too. I could feel Colin’s breath on my face and clearly see the faint kindling of the alpha glow in his irises, gold bleeding through the coffee-brown.
His jaw worked, and the glow got brighter. If we hadn’t been such good friends, I knew he’d have been popping claws by now. I stood my ground. My bizarre reaction to him in the car the other day notwithstanding, if I had confidence in anything in this world, it was that Colin would never, ever hurt me. Alpha or not. Angry or not. No one else could’ve gotten in his face like this without consequences—but I could.
Well, consequences beyond being carried out of the library while half the university filmed it on their phones, anyway.
Slowly, the glow faded, and some of the tension in his body bled away.
He didn’t hurt me, and he didn’t follow through on his threat.