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I sat up, pulling the blanket with me when I realized I was wearing only my navy lace tank top over my matching bra and a pair of unfamiliar sweatpants, also in a darker shade of navy.

Alarik rose from his chair.

“I'm sorry. Your clothes were almost completely soaked.”

I just nodded, more or less successfully pushing aside the thought that he had seen me in my underwear, because that was secondary right now.

If I hadn't been so reckless and run into this forest on a full moon, I would have been spared all this.

“Where am I?” I asked, and something in his expression tensed. His eyes began to glow.

“What were you thinking, going into the woods at night?!” he pressed out with unusual harshness in his voice, and I flinched. “There's a killer on the loose out there. It's freezing cold for you, it's raining... It's a full moon, goddamn it, and...”

Running his fingers through his hair, he began pacing back and forth.

“I’m sorry.” He turned to me, raising both hands as if he needed it to calm himself, his gaze apologetic. “Give me a minute.”

Nodding cautiously, I tried to process everything that had happened...

Alarik stepped to the window, clawing his black-veined hands into the candle-filled windowsill of the huge, pointed arched window, and even though I wanted to continue inspecting the elegant Victorian room, I couldn't take my attention away from him.

Without Alarik, I would now be somewhere in the forest, most likely dead...

Alarik took an audible breath. His chest rose and fell.

“Okay...” he began, turning to me, slowly striding back to the desk, where he sat down on the chair and looked at me. “Tell me one thing. Are you okay?”

It took me a while to answer, unsure what I could tell him, but it felt like Alarik already knew everything. What was the point of keeping secrets from him?

“I had to get out of there... I'm sorry...” My heartbeat quickened, and I tried to breathe more slowly. “I'm not really myself at the moment...”

Saying it out loud hurt, and holding Alarik's gaze hurt even more, because the pity in his eyes was unmistakable.

Had I ever been myself? Who was I anyway?

He ran his fingers through his hair again, black veins pulsing up his neck.

“Why aren't you hunting? Doesn't the moon compel you?”

I moved back to the headboard and pulled the blanket up to just above my chest.

“Wolfsbane,” he explained with a searching look, as if he were worried about me. Unnecessarily so. My life was only half as bad as my friends’, and yet I cried over every little thing.

“And in the forest?”

He hadn't attacked me, had been calm, human. He couldn't possibly have had wolfsbane with him.

“I've learned to control it to some extent, when necessary.”

I nodded before clearing my throat.

“Will you tell me now where I am?”

“In my campus house.”

“Of course you have a campus house.”

And finally, his calm smile returned. The gentle, timeless one that made me want to search for melancholy in his eyes, as if it were hiding there somewhere.