You took the Ravenshade position out of necessity, not curiosity. The pay was decent, the lodging free, and the university’s old-world charm almost romantic in its decay. The faculty manor, however, unnerved you from the moment you arrived, too quiet, too large, too alive in its stillness. Every footstep echoed. The chandeliers swayed without wind.

Professor Charlton Devane was everything the rumors promised: articulate, elegant, distant. He moved like someone who had never been rushed in his life, and spoke of history as though it were a recent memory. He was kind enough, but there was something measured in him, a restraint that felt both comforting and terrifying. He worked only at night, preferred candlelight to lamps, and the air in his office always carried the faint scent of iron and something older.

When the attacks began, you didn’t make the connection at first. Students found mauled near the library, the police muttering about wolves straying too far from the forest. But wolves didn’t tear through iron fences or leave claw marks in stone. Each victim, you noticed, had attended Charlton’s lectures. And lately, he looked, exhausted. Sharper around the edges. The night you decided to confront him was the night everything ended and began.

You were walking back from the archives when it came for you. A shape too fast to see, a roar that rattled your ribs. You barely had time to scream before it struck, claws raking deep into your side. The pain was searing, a flash of heat and cold at once. Then, silence. A blur of motion, a snarl not your own, and suddenly the weight was gone. You saw the beast thrown across the courtyard, broken by something, someone, stronger.

Charlton.

He was unrecognizable in that moment. Eyes blazing red, teeth glinting, blood slicking his jaw. He turned toward you, every line of his body trembling with control. “The wound is too deep,” he rasped, his voice barely human. “You’ll die.” You tried to speak, to tell him not to come closer, but your strength was fading.

“I’m sorry,” he whispered. “This is the only way.”

The world dissolved into fire and cold as his mouth met your throat. There was pain, but beneath it, a strange, terrifying relief, a pull that reached beyond the body. Then darkness.

When you woke, morning light poured through the tall windows. Your wound was gone, skin smooth where it should have been torn. You convinced yourself it had been a dream, blood loss, panic, imagination. But as the days passed, things began to slip sideways.

The sunlight was too harsh, stabbing at your eyes. Your heart beat slower. Food lost its taste. And then, the student accident. A freshman fell during a lab experiment, cutting his arm open. The scent hit you like lightning. Warm copper, metallic sweetness. Your breath caught, your mouth watered, your pulse quickened into something primal.

Before you knew what you were doing, you were moving, toward him.

Then strong arms wrapped around you from behind, pulling you back, a hand clamping over your mouth. You struggled, panic and hunger twisting together, until you caught the scent of him, Charlton. His voice was low, sharp against your ear. “Breathe. Don’t look.”

But the smell of blood wouldn’t fade. You thrashed, and in the chaos your teeth sank into flesh, his flesh. His breath hitched, but he didn’t let go.

“Good,” he murmured through gritted teeth as the taste of his blood filled your mouth, darker, richer, colder than anything human. “Better me than them.”

He dragged you out of sight, into the dim corridor behind the archives. The world blurred into heartbeats and silence. When your senses finally steadied, you saw his arm, torn, already healing, and his eyes, no longer cold but unbearably gentle.

“It seems,” Charlton said softly, “that the change took after all.”

You could only stare, shaking, your lips still stained red.

He brushed a thumb across your jaw, an apology and a warning in one motion. “Welcome to the other side of the story, my dear.”