Chapter 10 Late Night Encounters
Malia's POV
Sleep won't come.
I've been lying on my back for two hours, warm ceiling staring at cold, dorm sounds at peace, toward home.
But it’s not the only noise that has me awake.
Footsteps.
Back and forth.
Back and forth.
Aiden is pacing.
He's been at it a good 30 minutes restlessly pacing, walking, on our small room. Each step intent, reserved, but filled with anxiety.
I try to ignore it.
Really, I do.
But the pacing isn’t over and I’m virtually overtired with frustration. Finally I sit up and wrap the blanket up around my shoulders.
"Aiden."
The pace stops.
Silence.
“What,” he says flatly from somewhere in the darkness.
"Can you… not?"
"Not what?"
"Pace. You've been pacing for half an hour. We’re trying to catch some sleep here."
More silence.
Then: "Go back to sleep, Malia."
"I can't. You're waking me up."
I hear him exhale—sharp, frustrated. “That’s not my problem.”
"Actually, it is. We share this room, remember?”
"Unfortunately."
The word stings more than it should. I throw off my blanket, and stand as my eyes adjust to the wan light streaming through the window. Aiden is standing near his desk, hands braced against it, his shoulders rigid.
I can sense the tension emanating from him, even in the dark.
“Blindsided? What's wrong,” I ask softer this time.
“Nothing.”
“You terrible liar!”
He swivels his head just a bit, barely enough to let me see his profile. “Mind your own business.”
“Fine.” I cross my arms. “But you can mind it some other place? Go take a walk or something.”
For a split second I think he’s going to object.
But instead, he takes his jacket from the chair and leaves.
“Where are you going?” I say to him, before I can stop myself.
He hesitates, a hand on the doorknob.
“Out,” he says coldly. “Clearly, I have no right to be in my own room.”
The door slides shut behind him.
Not a slam.
And that muted stillness has somehow become worse.
I stand there for a while, guilt and frustration battling inside me. Then I grab my own jacket.
Because now I’m dressed, and the room is too small, too filled with whatever Aiden left behind.
—--
The campus, it must be said, is nighttime-hastenatingly-glorious.
Molten light pools upon the stone paths, hiding all in silver and shadow. The temperature is cool, and there is a smell of flower that blooms by night and woody smell of pine from afar. Most students are in their dorms – curfew is officially midnight, though the rules are relaxed for upperclassmen.
I drift around without purpose at first, all I need is to get moving, to breathe some air that doesn’t smell like anxiety and complicated boys.
Then I remember what July said: the secret courtyard behind the athletics building. I spend fifteen minutes looking for it.
The entrance is a narrow archway almost concealed by overhanging ivy. I press through cautiously and jam on the brakes.
It's beautiful.
A tiny courtyard walled in by ancient stone walls, with a fountain in the middle—silent now, yet still charming. There are benches strewn about, and the moonlight cascades like molten silver.
And on one of those benches, sitting perfectly still, is Cian Moonfall.
I freeze.
He’s drawing in a notebook, his hand skimming leisurely but with intent across the page. He is dressed in dark clothing that camouflages him in the darkness, giving him the look of being one with the night.
I should leave.
This is obviously his place—his private, isolated place. But I don’t even have a chance to retreat, before he says, without looking up.
"You can stay."
His voice is soft, not quite a whisper, yet hushed enough to the atmosphere.
I hesitate. "I don’t want to intrude—"
“You’re not.”
He hasn’t even glanced my way, just keeps drawing.
Slowly, I tiptoe toward the ever expanding yard.
Cian shifts slightly on the bench—not getting up, just moving a fraction over, making space.
An invitation.
I sit down cautiously, at a respectful distance from him. Neither of us says anything for a few minutes.
He draws. I watch the fountain, the way the moonlight plays on the stone. It should be awkward.
But in some way, it isn't.
Cian's presence is unlike his brothers'. Where Aiden fills a room with cold dominance and Rowan with warm energy, Cian just……exists. Quietly. Peacefully.
Like he doesn't have to prove anything to anybody.
“Can’t sleep?” he asks at length as he’s still working on his sketch.
“Something like that.”
He nods once, a quietly understood affirmation.
“You come here often?” I say.
“Almost every night," he said.
“It’s beautiful.”
“It’s quiet,” he corrects, as if that’s more necessary than beauty.
Fair enough.
I sat back on the bench and looked up at the stars peaked across the sky.
“What are you drawing?” I ask after a while.
Cian looks at me for the first time. His gray eyes glisten in the moonlight, which makes them seem blinding.
Then he rotates the journal toward me.
It is a sketch of the courtyard—but not just the courtyard in a physical sense. He’s got something else. I’m saying the feeling of it. The solitude. The peace.
I’m breathless. “It’s incredible,” I breathe.
He takes the journal back, and there is an expression on his face—a very brief one, like the flicker of a flame—that may be satisfaction or perhaps embarrassment.
“You’re good at finding hidden places,” he says.
“Lucky I suppose.”
“Luck is just pattern recognition we don’t understand yet.”
I smile at that. “Do you always get so deep in thought?”
“I’m not sleeping anyway.”
It’s kind of a joke. From Cian Moonfall.
We sink back into the easy silence.
By and by, sleep comes on my eyelids. My eyelids Already droop. The cool air, the stillness, Cian’s calm aura — it’s comforting in a way I never saw coming.
“Thank you,” I say quietly.
“For what?”
“For not telling me to leave."
He's silent for a moment. Then — “Everyone should have something where they can breathe.”
Simple words.
But they settle something inside me.
We remain there for another hour or so, not speaking too much, just being in the same space.
When I really get up to leave, Cian nods once — consent, comprehension, whatever that sense of the identification just beginning between us.
"Goodnight, Cian."
"Goodnight, Malia."
Something in my chest feels lighter as I head back to the dorm. The room is dark as I slide back inside.
I advance stealthily, not wanting to stir Aiden if he’s come back.
But as I get used to the light, I find him.
He's in bed, facing the wall, perfectly still.
Feigning to be sleeping.
I know he’s pretending, because his breathing is all wrong — too controlled, too measured.
As I head to my own bed, I get a whiff of something that was not there before.
Smoke.
Not cigarette smoke — something else. Burning wood, perhaps. Like he’d been near a fire.
And in the thin moonlight coming in the window, I see the hand over the end of the bed.
His knuckles are bruised.
Raw and dark, like he’d punched something.
Or someone. I gasp for air.
What happened tonight?
Where did he go?
But I don't ask.
Because to ask would be to admit to caring, and I'm not ready to admit that — not even to myself.
I get in bed silently, wrapping my blanket up.
Our breathing is the only sound in the room — his still tautly regulated mine slowly relaxing.
“Malia,” he says suddenly, his voice growling in the dark.
I freeze. “Yeah?”
A long pause.
“Nothing at all,” he finally says. “Just…be careful.”
“Of what?”
But he doesn’t reply.
The silence stretched.
After a while, his breath evens out—real sleep this time, I think.
About Cian in the courtyard, sketching peace into existence. On Rowan's kindness in Werewolf Studies. About Aiden’s hands catching me on the stairs.
About three brothers who are the polar opposites, yet they somehow keep revolving around me.
My wolf stirs lightly, baffled by the intricate weave of scents and feelings.
What's happening to us? I seem to read her mind.
She has no answer.
Me neither.
But as sleep at last envelopes me, my dream is of moonlight and battered knuckles and steely eyes that see everything and yet never judge.
And in between those dreams are three wolves running in a silver forest. Waiting for me to follow…