The analog clock wound down the hour, and his students rose, grappling with their books and backpacks and putting out hands to introduce themselves to one another. Kira Bentley didn't take part in the overtures, and instead moved along the back wall in an attempt to slip quietly out the door.
He was half-tempted to ignore her. He should just let her go, and figure things out on her own the way he had. He could be lenient with her attendance, even her grades, to help make navigating her newfound shifterhood easier; he could remain a removed presence all the while. He should just stay out of it.
But he couldn't. He had pursued a career as an educator because he believed in taking a positive, active role in the development of his students' lives. He couldn't let the one who might need him most slip out of reach because confronting her would be uncomfortable.
He put up a hand to her, and Bentley froze in the doorway as if she had been expecting it. He feigned interest with his seating chart as she approached his desk.
"Miss Bentley, I believe I mentioned my policy on tardiness?"
"It won't happen again, professor." She cast her eyes from him and looked longingly toward the exit. Donovan sat back and removed his glasses, retiring them to the far corner of his desk.
"Rough night?" he asked her.
The girl bristled, before shooting a quick glance around her to see if anyone had heard him. With the exception of a few stragglers, the classroom had nearly completely emptied by this point. "Excuse me?"
"I'm intimating that you were out all night," he said patiently. Kira Bentley's eyes narrowed, flashing at him like twin burnished coins, and he thought he could see some of the wolf rearing up inside her.
"I don't smoke. I don't drink. And I would appreciate it if you kept your baseless accusations to yourself," she said. She was more articulate than he had expected for a freshman, and completely justified in making her preferences known; her confidence was on par with that of other, older gorgeous women he had met, but he knew what she was feeling on the inside. She was terrified. English 101 was a core requirement, and she needed to do well in his estimation for him to open the door for her to more advances courses.
"Let's not start this semester off on the wrong foot," Donovan suggested. He rose from behind his desk to collect his things; Kira Bentley didn't budge from where she stood, evidently waiting for him to show her where to put the right foot. "Come by my office tomorrow with lunch and I'll forget all about it."
"Excuse me?" Bentley demanded again.
He could almost find it in him to feel sorry for the additional toll this interview was taking on an already sick and stressed-out young woman, but he alone knew how necessary it was. He needed to establish a connection with her immediately, and the only way he was going to manage it was outside of a classroom. His office was the perfect place: it wasn't as off-putting as suggesting some place outside of campus, and he was almost always in there, anyway. They needed a scene change to get familiar, and fast, if he stood a chance of helping her at all before her next full moon phase. They had less than a month.
"See you at noon. Don't be late," he added as he brushed past her. While his hearing was preternatural, Donovan couldn't claim to have heard the internal scream that Kira Bentley was surely emitting. He contented himself with imagining it all the same.
If his occupation prevented him from flirting with the pretty girl, making her life miserable would have to be second best.
CHAPTER 2
"This isn't quaint or quirky. This is blackmail."
Kira Bentley was standing in the doorway of her least favorite professor's office. While she wanted to make her opinion clear, she was also holding a takeaway bag from one of the sandwich vendors in the quad.
Professor Donovan—as if she knew, or cared to know, his first name—glanced up from grading a stack of papers, although she couldn't shake the distinct impression that he had known she was there all along. She supposed it was possible he had heard her coming down the hallway. He was wearing his glasses, although he never seemed to wear them when he was addressing the glass, leading her to believe that he was farsighted. Kira hadn't been farsighted herself until very recently, but she was afraid to go to the optometrist to get a prescription. She didn't know what an eye doctor might do if he suspected she could now see half a mile in every direction.
With or without glasses, Professor Donovan was incredibly good-looking. His hair was that silver-brown color that his cherished literature would have described as "mouse-brown", although that wasn't quite right to Kira's mind. It matured him without giving him any indication of the early onset of gray hair. He might have stood a better chance at fitting in with his older colleagues if he wore it shorter, but it reached to his strong jawline, and he kept it swept back behind slightly-pronounced ears. The aforementioned jawline, the one that drove Kira's fellow freshman females crazy upon sight, was overshadowed by a deliberately-maintained stubble that accentuated his disaffected image.
The pale eyes that regarded her from behind the glasses were deep-set, and probably a breathtaking gray, but Kira had only ever seen them look at her with an infuriating twinkle reflected in their depths. As if they shared some great secret or joke, when the reality was that she was the punchline. No wonder girls of every age made themselves crazy about him; the amused, carefully-guarded look on his face gave him the distinct appearance of flirting, when in reality that impression couldn't have been further from the truth.
"You're not helping your case, Bentley. Well, maybe you are," he amended when she moved to his desk and deposited his sack lunch. "How did you know roast beef was my favorite?"
"Who said anything about bringing you roast beef?" That had been her selection, of course, but it seemed weird to her that he would know that. Professor Donovan ignored her in favor of opening his spoils. The crinkling of the paper was almost painfully loud to Kira; it was strange, and borderline debilitating, the sounds that could invade her mind and break her concentration now. She couldn't deal with the enhanced hearing in the same way she couldn't deal with her new eyesight. Satisfied that she had delivered on the terms of their agreement, she turned to go.
"Take a seat, Bentley," Professor Donovan invited her in a manner that clearly wasn't an invitation. She turned in the doorway, her mouth set grimly, and crossed once more into the room to deposit herself on the edge of the only other available chair.
"It's Kira," she said in annoyance.
"I've spoken to a few of your other professors about you." The sandwich was unwrapped, but Professor Donovan's were laced, and he was leaning on his desk as if he had already completely forgotten about it. "Several of them haven't even seen you in class. They barely knew who I was talking about."
Kira felt her pale face flush furiously, but she kept a steady grip on the edge of her chair. "You're not my advisor. I don't need to explain myself to you."
"I just find it curious," Donovan continued as he finally sat back and tucked into his sandwich. "From what I'd heard semesters previous, you were a stellar student."
"You heard about me?" It was strange to think that the instructors spoke amongst themselves, especially on the topic of students, but she supposed it was to be expected. Half of them lived out of their offices, if Professor Donovan was any indication, and there was probably little to gossip about amongst themselves. "Look, I… please don't think I don't appreciate what you're trying to do," she said finally. "I get it, and I'm grateful. There aren't a lot of professors at this school who would take notice or really care about how their students are doing. But your concern is completely misplaced. I'm off to a bad start, like you said, but that's all."
Professor Donovan appeared to be considering the contents of his sandwich, and Kira thought he was probably only half-listening to her excuse. She gripped her chair again, before retreating suddenly from doing so; she could feel her nails digging indents into the underside of the metal foldout seat.
"I have to go," she said suddenly as she rose from th
e chair. Professor Donovan surprised her by rising with her. Her eyes darted quickly to the door, even though she knew she wasn't trapped, not really—it was only animal instinct, she thought, rearing up to cloud her judgement of the situation. She shouldered her bag and took a tentative step toward the exit, and her heart sped up when the older man mirrored her.
"You don't have to, you know," Professor Donovan said quietly. "You can stay and talk to me for a while. Look, I'll even share half my sandwich." He indicated his extorted lunch, breaking the momentary spell the unexpected sincerity of his words had worked on her. Kira gazed up at him, sure that all of her dormant fear and barely-checked hysteria was brimming in her eyes, before shaking her head.
"Thanks. I'll keep that in mind."
She could smell him beneath the cable knit sweater he wore. It was the heady spearmint of generic male body wash, and something else, lingering just beneath it…
She didn't want to know, she told herself. Of course Professor Donovan would smell sexy, when everything else about him radiated the same. She took another step to broadcast her intended path to the door, and he moved aside, hands retired amicably into the front pockets of his trousers.
"Don't be late," he advised her as she made her successful escape from his office.
She was late. She was over fifteen minutes tardy to his lecture the next day. The moment she tried to sneak in through the door to his classroom, she knew she had made a mistake. She should have skipped class entirely and just suffered the consequences, but the last forty-eight hours had been absolute hell for her—and despite what Professor Donovan probably thought, Kira loved English. She had even been thinking about pursuing her degree in it until two weeks ago.
Until the bite.
Now it was appearing less and less likely that she would be able to complete school. She couldn't keep most of her food down; the headaches were almost constant; and now she was experiencing spasms and split-second changes that threatened to bring her entire world grinding to a complete halt. She was late today because her friend Marissa had commented that she thought Kira's contacts were "edgy".
"What contacts?" had been her confused reply. When Marissa gave an incredulous laugh and told her to not be such a freak, Kira had nodded and smiled broadly as if the gig was up. Then, as soon as her friend was out of sight, she had run like a hound out of hell to the nearest bathroom.
Her irises were bright gold, the pupils contracted to inhuman slits. Kira pulled her lids down and pawed at them and splashed lukewarm water into her eyes until they were bloodshot; she stared at her own unchanging reflection, crying soundlessly, until she remembered her sunglasses. She fumbled them out of her backpack and slipped them on. She looked utterly ridiculous wearing them indoors, but she had often observed that it was something hungover college students did to disguise their symptoms.
Now, she made her way quietly to her seat at the back of Professor Donovan's classroom, feeling every eye on her. She knew what she must look like: a partier, a careless student. She was watching her pristine reputation on campus spiral down the drain, and there was nothing she could do to stop it. There was nothing she could do to stop any of it.
Professor Donovan had paused in his speech, but he resumed it now. Kira sat, bracing herself for the moment he would call her out, but the moment never came. Eventually, she began to relax back into her chair.
"Your thoughts, Bentley?"
She should have known better.
After a moment, Kira stirred slowly and raised herself up. "I'm sorry, Professor Donovan, but I missed what was said."
Several of the students closest to her shifted and snickered. They thought she was being purposefully defiant, even funny. Kira stared straight ahead resolutely. Her face beneath the sunglasses felt hot, and there was a hideous lump forming in her throat. She was thankful for the way her sunglasses screened her against the other occupants of the room, because she felt like crying. She was running on empty.
The only other person in the room who didn't look amused was Professor Donovan, but he didn't look angry, either. He looked like he was trying to puzzle something out. Kira would have thought he almost looked sympathetic, if the very idea of it wasn't so absurd. Clearly the glasses were impairing her vision more than she thought. He was expecting her to crash and burn and they both knew it.
"I asked you if you thought 'Jane Eyre' was a romantic story?"
"No," she said frankly. She sighed mentally with relief at the subject.
"You seem very sure. May I ask why?" Professor Donovan leaned back against the front of his desk and crossed his arms.
"Because there was a complete power imbalance going on between them the whole time. He was the master, and she was his employee. Not to mention he lied to her about the relevant details of his past, and tried to hook up with her without revealing his darkest secret of all, which was…"
"Hey! Spoiler alert!" one of the male students exclaimed indignantly. Kira blinked. It hadn't occurred to her that she could possibly ruin the ending of a nineteenth century classic, but the fact that students like the jock who interrupted her were invested was a testament to Professor Donovan's skills as a teacher.
Kira shrugged, and bit her lips as she lapsed into silence. Professor Donovan was definitely studying her now, and she wondered if his response had been the one he was fishing for or expecting.
"I see you've read this book before," he said finally. "Is that why you thought you could arrive late today?"
Damn.
CHAPTER 3
He could get used to having Kira Bentley in his office.
The girl was currently folded into the chair in the far corner making up the quiz she had missed at the beginning of class; her hood was drawn up. Donovan tried not to look up too often to watch her, but supposed his observation could be excused as him looking for signs of cheating. Not that she needed to: he had been made painfully aware that she knew the material already today in class.
"You misused a semicolon," the girl said grumpily as her pencil scratched along.
"No I didn't."
Aside from the black cloud that hung over her everywhere she went—not to mention the very distinct and very female pheromonal signals he could detect hovering around her at all times—it was a lot less lonely in the office with another body around to occupy space. The roast beef sandwich he had made her bring for him wasn't bad, either. It pleased him more than he could say that it appeared to be homemade today.
"I wish you would have just given me a zero on this," she mentioned. "I heard you graded other people down who didn't do the reading."
"But you did do the reading, Bentley," Donovan pointed out.
"Not this year I didn't. And it's Kira."
He didn't have a ready response to that, so he sat back in his chair and glanced across the room at the calendar posted over her head. The days of the month were crossed off systematically, dates circled and arrows crisscrossing weekly columns like an indecipherable series of football plays. He should have tried to work the dates out in an electronic document, or at least on his chalkboard, where he could erase his work when he arrived at an answer, but he didn't think she would guess what he was trying to figure out.
"Last names keep things professional," he said finally.
"That's easy for you to say," Kira said without glancing up from her test. "No one knows your first name. Everyone just calls you 'the Don'."
"Do they?" Donovan leaned even further back in his chair and crossed arms. "I hadn't heard that. Well, I suppose it's better than 'the Van'."
"Do your jokes just get more and more unfunny once you become a teacher?" Bentley asked without missing a beat. "I used to think it came with age, but you're not that much older than me."
"I'm a lot older than you," he said quickly. He could perceive a dangerous line of thinking when he saw it… especially because he had been starting to think the very same thing himself. "And also, you're an incredibly rude young woman, Miss Bentley."
She was close, now—closer than she had ever allowed herself to be in his presence. She was still wearing her sunglasses, and Donovan raised his hands to either side of her face. Her pale hands flew to stop him, but froze before alighting on his wrists. His touch was gentle as he smoothed her hair back with the pads of his fingers, and extracted the dark frames in one fell swoop.
Startled brown-gold eyes stared back at him. She wouldn't know what he was seeing until it registered in his face, and for a moment he could tell she was terrified. Her fear abated when she saw him studying her in mute disappointment. He knew what symptom had made her late for his class, and he had held out a hope that he could confront her about it now. It would have been the perfect gateway to a real conversation about the girl's lycanthropy.
Her frightened eyes held his for a long moment, and Donovan realized that he had been gazing down at her for several seconds more than was strictly necessary. He recalled the fleeting softness of her hair, and wished that he could stroke it back calmingly from her temple again, but he recovered himself before he could act on the inappropriate impulse.
"Just checking to make sure," he said, angling himself away from her and turning her glasses over in his hands. "You never know. Sometimes students write test answers on the undersides of things. I had one particularly creative gentleman try it with a water bottle once."
"So not only do you think I'm an awful student," Kira growled, but he heard a distinct quaver in her voice. "You think I'm a cheater as well."
Bears of Burden: HUTCH Page 13