Beacon Hills High School looms ahead, all brick and glass and sprawling parking lot. Students spill from cars and buses, a river of denim, backpacks, and loud, beating hearts. The sound is a constant, overwhelming drumbeat against the unnatural silence in your own chest.

You get out of the car. The door shuts with a solid thunk that feels too final. Stefan doesn’t drive away. He watches as you merge with the flow of students, a solitary, still point in the chaotic current.

The main hallway is a cacophony of slamming lockers, shouted greetings, and the thrumming symphony of a thousand pulses. You move through it like a ghost, your steps silent on the linoleum. You find your locker—assigned, impersonal—and work the combination.

That’s when you feel it. A gaze, steady and assessing, cutting through the noise. You look up.

Across the hall, leaning against a bank of lockers, is a boy with warm brown eyes and a worried crease between his brows. Scott McCall. He’s talking to another boy—all frantic gestures and sharp intelligence—Stiles Stilinski. But Scott’s eyes aren’t on his friend. They’re on you.

His head tilts, just slightly. A predator catching a scent. Or the absence of one. His nostrils flare. For a fraction of a second, his easy expression tightens into something focused, alert. He hears the silence where your heartbeat should be.