Her Human His Lycan

New Girl

Clay POV

Booming music rattled the walls and pounded against my skull as I sank deeper into the sagging couch. Some kind of cheap liquor sloshed in the cup in my hand. I didn't care what it was—just that it burned enough to blur the day.

College.

Of all places to end up, I was stuck in a community college on the outskirts of a city, pretending to be a student while my real life—the only life that mattered—was miles away in the war I wasn’t allowed to fight in. The head of my hunter unit wanted recruits, said the schools were full of “potential assets.”

All I saw were distractions.

Humans laughed and shouted around me, oblivious to the monsters hiding in their shadows. Werewolves, Lycans, vampires—everyone else pretended they were myths. I knew better. They were real. And they’d torn my world apart.

My father. My mother. My little sister. Five years old.

Blood. Screams. Teeth.

Me, only alive because a hunter dragged me out of the m******e and raised me as his own.

Every day since, I’d trained to kill the things that killed them.

We were finally making progress—close to finding a way into the werewolf realm—when I got yanked out and dumped here with a fake name and a class schedule.

A head brushed my shoulder, snapping me back. The girl next to me leaned into my side, her breath warm and heavy with alcohol.

“I’m bored,” she whined. “Take me to your place.”

I stared at her, numb. She’d been hanging around for weeks, convinced she could wear me down. “So I can ‘have my way with you,’ right?” I said dryly.

She’d already shoved her tongue down my throat earlier. It hadn’t helped.

The girls here were all the same—quick distraction, quick release, then boredom. They came and went like the music: loud, temporary, and gone by morning.

“If you want me so bad, I could just take you here,” I murmured, sliding my hand under her shirt, lips ghosting along her neck.

“Clay,” she breathed, drunk and pliant.

“Fine,” I said. “You want my place? Then you follow my lead.”

She nodded eagerly, and I stood, steering her out of the packed room. The air outside bit at our skin, the night cutting through the haze of heat and sweat.

“So cold,” she complained, clutching my arm.

“You wore a scrap of fabric and called it an outfit,” I said, lengthening my stride.

“You’re mean,” she muttered, half stumbling.

“Then why are you still following me?” I asked.

She laughed. “You’re hot.”

I snorted. “Real high standards, sweetheart.”

The party noise faded behind us. In its place came distant traffic, the hiss of a bus braking, someone shouting across the parking lot. The scent of spilled beer and cigarette smoke hung thick in the air.

My building came into view—two structures over from the party house—and that’s when I saw her.

A girl stood on the second-floor patio, framed in silver moonlight. Her hair shimmered like liquid metal, catching every stray beam and tossing it back like a challenge. She wasn’t on her phone. Wasn’t drunk. Just standing there, looking up at the moon as if it actually meant something.

New. Definitely new.

“Clay, slow down!” the girl beside me huffed.

I stopped walking.

I didn’t want this one. Didn’t want any of them. Not tonight.

“Go home,” I said.

She blinked at me. “What?”

“I’m not interested. Go. Home.”

Anger flashed in her eyes. “Are you serious right now?”

“Dead serious.”

She started ranting, offended, insulted, throwing accusations like punches. I just watched her, mildly entertained.

“You really think you’re something?” I asked, voice going flat. “You and I? We’re nothing. We hooked up. That’s it. End of story.”

I didn’t sugarcoat it. I never did. If people wanted to drown themselves in parties and self-destruction, that was their choice. But I refused to pretend any of it meant more than it did.

She stormed off, heels clacking like gunshots against the pavement, and I knew she’d be replaced by another face at the next party. They always were.

My gaze drifted back to the balcony.

The new girl was still there, bathed in moonlight, alone while everyone else chased chaos. Something about that stuck with me. Someone choosing silence over noise. Stillness over the swarm.

Maybe there were still a few people in this world who weren’t rotting from the inside out.

I headed inside, climbed to my unit, and shut the door behind me. The stale air smelled like old whisky and cheap detergent. I grabbed the half-finished bottle from the nightstand and collapsed onto the bed, flicking the TV on for background noise.

I told myself I didn’t care about tomorrow’s class. But I needed to stay enrolled to keep my cover. That meant not getting kicked out.

The screen blurred, the sounds of the night and the party and that girl on the balcony tangling in the back of my mind as sleep finally dragged me under.

---

My alarm screamed into the silence, an obnoxious beeping that tore me out of a shallow sleep. My head pounded. The room smelled like whiskey and regret.

The empty bottle lay on its side beside me, a dark ring staining the bedside table.

I groaned and dragged myself up, stumbling into the bathroom. The shower roared to life, steam clouding the mirror as I stepped under the hot water. It beat against my skin, loosening muscles, rinsing off the stench of last night.

In the fogged glass, I caught a glimpse of myself. Wet hair. Dark circles. The scars across my chest and ribs—angry white lines against tan skin. One thick, jagged one over my heart, courtesy of a monster that should’ve killed me when I was a kid.

People told me to get surgery, to smooth them out. Hide them.

No chance. They were the only honest thing about me.

I brushed my teeth, threw on clothes, and bolted out the door. As I jogged toward campus, my phone buzzed.

Skade.

“Activity near your school. Investigate tonight,” the message read, followed by a pinned map location.

Finally. Something that mattered.

I pocketed the phone and picked up the pace.

In class, the professor paused as I slipped in. He gave me a tight nod and went back to whatever lecture he was rambling about. I dropped into my seat—

—and saw her.

The girl from the balcony.

She sat a few rows ahead, posture straight, hair pulled back so that strange silver shine caught the fluorescent lights. She glanced my way for half a second, then turned back to the lecture, focused.

Behind me, two guys whispered.

“What’s with her hair? She looks like an old lady.”

“Don’t care. She’s gorgeous.”

“I’ve never seen her. Must be new.”

I tuned them out, but my attention wouldn’t leave her. Something about her didn’t fit this place. Didn’t fit this world.

When class ended, most students rushed for the exit. She didn’t. She walked straight up to the professor.

“Thank you for your lecture today,” she said, voice clear. “I really enjoyed it.”

Who actually said that and meant it?

I was still thinking about it when I stepped into the hallway—and ran into yesterday’s mistake.

“Clay!” she squealed, way too loud.

I muttered, “Was I not clear last night?” under my breath, but she either didn’t hear or pretended not to. She latched onto my arm like nothing had happened.

“We all get moody sometimes,” she chirped, dragging me toward her friends.

They were gathered down the hall—three girls clustered together. One waved the new girl over.

“Emma, right?” she asked.

“Yes,” the new girl said with a small smile. “Emma.”

“We don’t get many new faces around here,” one of them added. “When’s your next class?”

“One o’clock.”

“Perfect,” the girl at my arm said. “Come get coffee with us. We’ll show you around.”

I had zero interest in coffee or company. But I was scouting for recruits… and keeping an eye on new people was part of the job.

“Sure, thanks,” Emma replied.

“Clay, you’re coming too, right?” my clingy shadow asked.

I sighed. “Fine. Not like I have something better to do right now.”

“Don’t mind my boyfriend,” she told Emma with a laugh.

Boyfriend. Right. I didn’t bother correcting her. Let her cling to her fantasy if it kept my cover stable.

“I’m Liz,” she said. “That’s Candice and Kelsey.”

“Nice to meet you,” Emma said politely.

We walked to the campus coffee shop, the smell of espresso and sugar hanging in the air. Baristas shouted orders, machines hissed steam. Liz and her friends ordered drinks that were more dessert than coffee.

Emma and I both ordered black.

Liz wrinkled her nose. “How can you drink it like that?”

“I could ask you the same,” Emma replied.

I almost smiled.

We found a table, the four of them chattering. Kelsey leaned forward. “So, what’s your major?”

“I don’t have one,” Emma said. “I’m just taking a few classes for fun.”

“Just like Clay,” Kelsey said, nodding toward me.

Liz’s grip on my arm tightened possessively.

“Relax, Liz,” Kelsey laughed. “I’m just talking.”

Candice leaned toward Emma. “By the way, don’t suck up to the professors. Telling them their lectures were ‘so good’ makes you look desperate.”

Emma frowned. “I wasn’t sucking up. I liked it.”

Kelsey tilted her head, eyes flicking to Emma’s hair. “Also… you might want to think about a more natural color. Whatever trend that is? This isn’t Halloween.”

I waited for Emma to shrink back.

She didn’t.

“Thanks for the coffee suggestion,” she said calmly, standing. “But I’ll be fine on my own. I’m not going to stop showing respect to the people teaching me. And I’m definitely not going to apologize for my natural hair. You might want to worry about what all that dye is doing to yours.”

She gave them a polite nod. “Enjoy your drinks. Have a good day.”

And walked out.

I watched her leave, something sharp and unexpected twisting in my chest. Finally, someone who didn’t spin herself in circles to impress idiots. Someone who wasn’t fake.

My phone buzzed again.

“More activity. Come now,” Skade wrote.

I pushed back from the table. “I’m out.”

“Party tonight,” Liz said quickly. “Pick me up at ten.”

“Yeah, no. I meant what I said last night,” I replied.

“You can fix that,” she snapped. “Stick with me and you’ll see I’m not—”

“Pass,” I cut in, already heading for the door.

As I stepped out into the open air, one thought pushed past the others:

I’d told myself I came here for recruiting. For the mission.

But if I was being honest?

It was Emma I needed to stay away from.

Because distractions got you killed. And something about her…

felt dangerously impossible to ignore.