The Last Lycan System

Chapter 9: Adrian's Silence

"What do you mean, next?" Noah pulled his arm free, pulse roaring. "Who took him? Why?"

"Not here." The man's eyes darted toward the dormitory windows, the same nervous check he'd done in the courtyard. "There are eyes everywhere on this campus, and I've already…"

He stopped mid-sentence, going rigid, staring past Noah's shoulder at something in the distance. Noah turned to look. Two campus security officers were crossing the quad, unhurried, probably on a routine patrol that had nothing to do with either of them.

When Noah turned back, the man was already walking away, fast, melting into the crowd of students heading toward the dining hall like he'd never been there at all.

"Wait!" Noah started after him, but by the time he'd pushed through the same crowd, there was no sign of the gray coat or the frightened eyes anywhere. Gone, the same way he'd gone twice before.

Noah stood there, breathing hard, the failed assessment and the missing teacher and the vanished stranger all crashing into each other in his head until he couldn't tell which fear belonged to which fact anymore.

Dax caught up to him a moment later, out of breath. "Hey, I saw you take off. What was that about? That guy looked like he'd seen a ghost."

"He's grabbed me twice now. Won't say who he is."

"You okay? You've had a seriously rough week."

"I need to go talk to Adrian."

"Now? You look like you haven't slept in days."

"I haven't. Doesn't matter."

Dax didn't try to stop him, just watched him go with an expression that mixed worry with something close to helplessness.

He needed answers. He needed them from someone who might actually have them.

He went to find Adrian.

Adrian kept a small house near the edge of campus, separate from the dormitories, the kind of privilege reserved for senior Alphas who trained students but didn't technically live among them. Noah had a key. He'd had one for years, though he used it less and less the older he got, mostly because showing up uninvited rarely earned him anything but the same tired silence he got everywhere else.

He used it today anyway.

Adrian was at the kitchen table when Noah let himself in, a stack of paperwork spread out in front of him, a mug of something long gone cold at his elbow. The house was quiet in the way it always was … clean, orderly, almost nothing on the walls, like a man who'd never quite decided to actually live there. He looked up, and whatever he saw on Noah's face made him set his pen down slowly.

"What happened?"

"Corvin's gone. Someone took him last night." The words tumbled out faster than Noah meant them to. "And there's a man on campus, someone who says he knew my mother, and he just told me I'm next, and I don't know what any of that means, and I need you to actually tell me something for once instead of…"

"Slow down." Adrian's voice was even, controlled, the same voice he used correcting stances on the elite field. "Corvin's on medical leave. I heard this morning."

"That's not what I heard."

"Then you heard wrong." Adrian picked his pen back up, like the conversation was already closing. "Rumors move fast at this school. You know that better than most."

"This wasn't a rumor. A man grabbed my arm and told me they took him."

"What man?"

"I don't know his name. I've seen him twice now. He said he knew Mom."

Something flickered across Adrian's face at that word … small, quickly controlled, but Noah had spent nineteen years learning to read every crack in Adrian's expression, and this one he recognized instantly. Fear.

"Describe him," Adrian said, too carefully.

"Older. Gray coat. He keeps disappearing before he finishes talking." Noah leaned forward. "You know him, don't you? You know exactly who I'm talking about."

"I don't know every stranger who wanders onto campus grounds."

"You're lying."

"Watch your tone."

"I failed my assessment today. Worst score in the school's history, apparently. Do you even care about that? Or is that just another thing that doesn't matter because it's happening to me?"

Adrian's jaw tightened. For one second, Noah thought something might actually crack open … some honest answer, finally, after years of half-sentences and silences. Adrian's hand even moved like he might reach across the table.

Then it stopped.

"Go back to the dorms, Noah."

"That's it? That's all you have?"

"I have paperwork. I have a class in an hour. I don't have time for campus gossip about strangers who probably wandered in from Frostvale looking for a handout." Adrian's voice had gone flat again, the wall sliding back into place so fast it was like the crack had never happened at all. "Corvin is on leave. There is no man. Go back to your room."

"There is a man, Adrian. I'm not imagining this."

"I said go back to your room."

Noah stood there, fists clenched at his sides, that same tight pressure building behind his ribs … sharper this time, hotter, like something under his skin was finally getting tired of being ignored right along with him.

"You're supposed to be my family," Noah said quietly. "The only family I have. And you can't even give me five honest minutes when I tell you I think I'm in danger."

Adrian didn't look up from his paperwork. "You're not in danger. You're tired, and you failed a test, and you're looking for something to blame that isn't yourself. I understand that. I don't have the patience for it today."

The words landed harder than any of Ferris's taunts ever had, because Ferris didn't matter and Adrian was supposed to.

Noah turned and left without another word, slamming the door harder than he meant to, and stood on the porch for a long moment just breathing, trying to get his pulse back under control before he did something he couldn't take back.

He was almost halfway down the path when he heard it … muffled through the closed door behind him, but unmistakable.

Adrian's voice. On a call. Urgent, low, pitched in a register Noah had never once heard him use in nineteen years of silence and half-sentences.

"He knows about the man in the gray coat," Adrian said. "No … no, he doesn't know who he is. But if Corvin's actually gone, we don't have as much time as I thought we did."

Noah froze on the path, every hair on his arms standing straight up.

*We don't have as much time as I thought we did.*

Adrian had lied to his face not thirty seconds ago. Told him there was no man. Told him Corvin was on leave. And now, the second the door closed, he was saying the exact opposite to someone else entirely … someone who apparently already knew far more about all of this than Noah had ever been allowed to.