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“Don’t change the subject.” The door slammed, and I flinched. Immediately I hated myself for showing such weakness. I might as well have rolled over onto my back and exposed my throat.

“You’re in my office, last I checked. I can do whatever the hells I want.”

He exhaled loudly, annoyance on his face. He didn’t approach me, but leaned against the door, arms crossed, steam practically coming out of his ears. “The bite marks … how long ago?”

“I am not answering any more of your questions.”

“Alright, do you want me to bring it to the Ministry then?”

I steepled my fingers together on my desk and faced him with all the bravery I could fake. “Go ahead,” I said. “Tell them. But know this: I am the only one researching a cure for this disease. Everyone else has aimed to get rid of it by eradicating a massive fraction of your kind and isolating the rest.”

“Our kind, I suppose.”

Heat flared in my entire body. “I’m not one of you.”

To my surprise, he laughed so hard his head thudded against the door when he threw it back. “Oh, Aura. So elitist, so entitled, so …self-loathing. You, my vixen, are in denial.”

“I— your— what?” There was so much to unpack in what he’d just said. Did he call me his vixen? What the actual fuck?

His long legs carried him to my desk, his hands pressing against it as he leaned over. “Let me help,” he said.

“I don’t need your help.”

“Don’t you, though? You’re practically a ticking bomb. Besides, I’m already doing research here. We might as well work together.”

The scoff that flew out of my mouth was far from pretty. “That’s the last thing I want to do.”

“Yes, well you’re not exactly a trot through the forest, either. In the first few encounters we’ve had, you’ve poisoned me”—he straightened to count on his fingers—“threw a dagger at me, and tried to impale me with a fully loaded needle.”

“It was a letter opener, not a dagger.”

“It wouldn’t have mattered once it was in my skull. But if you can be civil, so can I. If we put our minds together⁠—”

Another scoff flew out of my mouth, but I sat up straighter as he folded his arms.

“I may not be a genius, Professor Nygaard, but I’m no imbecile.”

“If you’re trying to prove that a brute like you has what it takes in an academic setting, you’re wasting your time. Now, get out of my office.”

He didn’t so much as blink. I stood and strutted to the door, holding it open for him. I didn’t say anything. I only waited for him to take his leave. As he was about to step past me into the hallway, he turned and pressed his forearm against the doorjamb, right above my head. I started to protest, but he inched so close that my heart nearly flopped out of my chest.

I didn’t know what to expect. I certainly didn’t expect the next words that came out of his mouth.

“As slumber danced just beyond my grasp, came a voice, a calling, a pitying rasp. Out from the depths of despair and ceaseless memories— While I queried, ever so weary, there came another whisper, grating, provoking my deepest fears— ‘Tis just my imagination,’ I thought, ‘whispering into my mind.’ Only that, if life is kind.”

His voice was like silk. It slid over my skin, sending shivers down my spine and warmth pouring into my core. A sensation I could only describe as thirst climbed up my throat, simultaneously tightening and loosening, my fangs threatening to lengthen as if desperate for a drink. Every part of my body constricted at the realization I was gaping at him, my breath held as if I’d forgotten how to breathe.

His nostrils flared. Clearly, he’d caught a whiff of the desire that spread low in my belly.

All over a morbid poem?

What. The. Fuck? I forced an unperturbed glower at him and said, “So what if you can quote depressing poetry? That doesn’t prove your academic prowess for research.” My breathless voice betrayed me, and his smirk couldn’t have exuded more arrogance than it did.

He tipped his head lower, heat radiating off his body. “Oh, I can do so much more than you know, Aurelia.”

My toes curled in my shoes.

He stepped away before I could question my body’s reactions, turning in the hallway to face me. “See you tomorrow,” he said.