Chapter 77: The Lycan at the Door

Chapter 77: Chapter 77: The Lycan at the Door

"What are we gonna do, Iris?"

Zoey’s voice had dropped to abarely more than a whisper, and for once, it was devoid of its usual defensive sarcasm. She stood rigid against the wall of the narrow hallway, her knuckles locked white around the handle of the wooden baseball bat. The shallow hitch in her breathing betrayed a terror she couldn’t quite swallow down.

Iris didn’t answer right away. She had drifted closer, her shoulder pressing firmly against Zoey’s side to anchor them both, her fingers clutching a fistful of gray cotton from the back of her friend’s shirt as if tethering herself to reality.

"I don’t know," Iris whispered.

Her gaze never left the door of the apartment. The sudden, unnatural silence hanging in the hallway was far worse than the sharp chime of the bell had been.

The doorbell had stopped ringing. That somehow made everything more frightening. Neither of them knew who was standing on the other side. Neither of them wanted to find out.

"Should we open it?" Iris murmured, her voice sounding entirely foreign to her own ears.

Zoey turned her head so fast her neck gave a soft pop, her eyes wide with sheer disbelief that Iris had actually suggested it.

"Open the door?" she whispered incredulously, the pitch rising dangerously. "And invite our own execution by something that eats human flesh for breakfast?" Her voice cracked slightly at the end.

"No, thank you, Iris. That is not how I imagined dying, Iris. I have plans. I haven’t even graduated yet, and I have student loans to pay off. If my life is going to be cut short, I at least want it to be because I did something moderately impressive, not because I stood in my own rented apartment clutching abaseball bat while a giant beast rips my spine out."

"Please stop detailing the anatomy of our potential demise," Iris whispered, though the absurdity of it pulled a tight, hysterical knot in her chest that felt terrifyingly close to a laugh.

"I’m coping," Zoey muttered, shifting her weight and planting her feet wider. "I just didn’t expect my twenties to involve an existential crisis about whether a supernatural apex predator is going to use my skull as a chew toy."

Despite everything, Iris almost laughed, almost. Instead, she tightened her grip on Zoey’s shirt, and the absurdity of the situation only made everything worse.

Only hours ago, their biggest concern had been a sepia-toned photograph from 1891 featuring a man who looked identical to Alexander Grant, frozen in time without a day of aging.

Now, the modern world felt paper-thin, easily torn apart to reveal the jagged, terrifying ecosystem hiding just beneath its surface. It’s laughable how they were standing in their hallway wondering whether opening their front door would get them killed by supernatural creatures.

The world had become insane in the space of one afternoon. Both girls remained facing the door, Zoey gripping the baseball bat with both hands now while Iris stayed close enough that their shoulders touched.

Iris glanced at her. "You’re the one who said nobody dies like that in the twenty-first century."

"I was wrong."

"You admitted that very quickly."

"Because we just heard a fucking doorbell after discussing whether supernatural creatures might be coming here to silence us."

Iris opened her mouth, but no answer came. They remained where they were, both staring at the door. The apartment suddenly felt far too small.

There was nowhere to hide. No back door. No secret escape route. And even if there had been one, Iris wasn’t convinced it would have mattered against creatures that could move faster than human eyes could follow.

Her mind kept returning to what she had witnessed earlier in the hallways of professor Whitmore’s office. She could still see the terrifying mechanics of Jason’s transformation—the sickening crunch of bone restructuring, the elongated limbs, the golden fire in eyes that were no longer human. Shawn and Finn had been just as monstrous

But Alexander... Alexander hadn’t needed to shift. The raw, effortless authority he carried had frozen a full-grown werewolf mid-slaughter, lifting him off the pavement with a flick of his wrist.

Iris remembered the way his eyes had changed, brilliant red against the darkness of his face, and the effortless strength with which he had held Jason suspended from the floor. If it’s indeed a supernatural creature at the door, with what she was in school earlier, Iris knew that both she and Zoey didn’t stand a chance against it....at least not with a wooden baseball bat. Her fingers tightened around Zoey’s shirt.

Then a man’s voice came from the other side of the door. "Miss Carter!"

The deep baritone cut through the heavy silence of the door, making both girls flinch violently. Zoey raised the bat higher, her muscles locking into a defensive strike, while Iris pressed herself deeper into her friend’s side.

"Who... who is it?" Iris forced the words past the tightness in her throat.

A measured beat of silence passed before the voice returned, unhurried and impossibly calm.

"My name is Oliver Colt," the man answered calmly from the other side. "I’m the Executive Vice President and Chief Operating Officer of Grant Enterprises. I work directly with Mr. Grant."

Iris and Zoey stared at each other.

Zoey arched a single eyebrow in the dim hallway light, her lips moving silently as she mouthed ....COO? at Iris, who offered a fractional, uncertain nod.

The man continued before either of them could respond.

"I’m here with Mr. Grant," Oliver continued, his tone carrying effortlessly through the solid wood. "He’d like to speak with you. I understand this is an unorthodox hour for an unannounced visit, particularly given the events of today, but I can assure you that neither of us is here to cause any harm."

There was a brief pause. Then, almost as if he had heard something through the door, he added, "And before you decide that we’re lying, I should probably mention that Mr. Grant has specifically asked me to reassure you that nobody is here to murder either of you in cold blood.

There was silence, and Zoey’s face went completely blank. Then, slow as molasses, she turned her head to look at Iris, the color draining entirely from her cheeks.

"Oh my God."

"What?" Iris whispered, her heart hammering against her ribs.

"I forgot about the super hearing part." Zoey’s eyes dilated with sheer horror as she stared directly at the front door. "They heard every single word we just said. Oh God, Iris, they heard me planning to cave their skulls in with a Louisville Slugger." She lifted the baseball bat slightly and Iris’s stomach dropped.

Iris closed her eyes briefly, her stomach dropping into her shoes. Of course they had. They hadn’t been whispering because the walls were thin; they had been whispering because they were dealing with creatures whose senses defied every law of biology they had ever been taught in high school. Apparently, that had been pointless.

Iris grabbed her wrist and lowered it again. "Zoey."

"What?"

"Please don’t ever threaten the werewolves with the bat again."

Before Zoey could answer and lower the weapon herself, a second voice drifted through the grain of the wood, softer, lower, and laced with a quiet gravity that sent an involuntary shiver rolling down Iris’s spine.

"Don’t terrify them, Oliver. I’m sure they’re already frightened enough and I also imagine they have quite enough to process."

Iris froze. She knew that voice. She would have recognized it anywhere. Something inside her seemed to loosen before she could stop it.

Her fingers slowly loosened from Zoey’s shirt. The moment she heard Alexander, the strange mark on her neck warmed beneath her hair.

The sensation was subtle at first, spreading across her skin like the lingering warmth of sunlight. And then, strangely, the tightness in her chest began to ease.

Her shoulders lowered without her consciously telling them to. Her breathing became steadier. It made no sense....Not after everything she had seen.

Not after watching Alexander reveal a side of himself that had terrified her. And yet, hearing him now had the opposite effect.

"Iris." His voice came through the door again, and the warmth at her neck deepened.

There was something different about it this time. It wasn’t the commanding tone she had heard at the university. There was no coldness in it, no trace of the terrifying authority that had made Jason and the others freeze. Instead, he sounded almost... cautious.

"I know how disoriented you must feel right now," Alexander said, his voice calm and stead . "After what you witnessed today, fear is entirely rational. You have been thrown into a world you never knew existed, and I imagine that you’re probably questioning everything you thought you understood about the people around you."

Iris stared at the deadbolt, her fingers slowly uncurling from Zoey’s shirt. His words hit uncomfortably close to the center of her racing thoughts...