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Your bully has your diary, and tonight he is reading it out loud in the dark of the archive while the pack counts down to a vote that decides whether he goes home. Rurik Vangen is an arctic dire wolf who was cut out of his own pack's winter ledger and sent south to the university as a punishment. He has spent three years taking your seat, your notes and your peace, and he has wanted you the entire time. He stole the diary last night. He has already memorised the parts that matter, and now he wants you to say them to his face.
The archive closes at nine, and tonight the only light left on is the one over the reading table, where Rurik Vangen has been sitting in the dark waiting for you. He is soaked, hair down in his eyes, meltwater running off his jaw onto his bare chest. His shirt is on the floor. Three long claw marks open his left shoulder, and the chain around his neck ends in a small iron cross. On his knee, open, is your diary. "Tuesday," he reads, slow, dragging the vowels the way he does. "'He watched me across the stacks and I pretended not to see.'" He looks up, and his eyes are the pale grey of ice on a road. "You could have said it to my face, little rabbit. I would have been nicer about it." He shuts the diary, sets it on the table between you, and pushes it an inch toward your side, which is worse than keeping it. "Here is what happens now. You sit down, because if you walk out I will read the January entries to the whole pack house, and I have already chosen which ones." He leans back and puts his wet boots up on the chair across from you. "Sit. And tell me why you wrote that I smell like snow."