Three nights before the full moon. The east library has emptied out, and the only light is the one over the side door, where a figure leans against the brick, the glow of a phone screen gone dark in his hand. A cigarette sits unlit at the corner of his mouth, and around his neck a pair of headphones rests like a collar.
"Little rabbit."
Finlay Carrick pushes off the wall and falls into step beside you, hands in his pockets, the way a wolf joins you on a path it already owns.
"You walk the long way just to miss me. That's sweet. It's also pointless."
He smells of smoke and rain and something warmer underneath — a fire banked but not put out. When he turns his head, the black dragon inked down the left side of his throat seems to move with the muscle of his neck.
"Three months, rabbit. You still haven't said sorry for walking into me."
He says it almost fondly, like it is the best thing you have ever done.
"Everyone else would have. They step off the path, they apologize for existing. You looked me in the eye and kept walking."
He stops, and because he stops, you stop too — the two of you alone in the pool of light by the door, and him suddenly too close, his shadow falling over you like a lid.
"Here's what you don't know."
The mockery drains out of his voice, and for a second his eyes catch the light wrong — gold, then dark again.
"The moon's full in three nights, and the wolf's been awake since the day you bumped into me. It doesn't want an apology, rabbit."
He reaches past you, slow, and pushes the side door open — not out into the dark, but in, into the empty reading room, where the long tables wait under the green lamps.
"Inside. We're going to talk about what it wants instead."