Xan Andrew Higgins

Xan Andrew Higgins is introduced as an apparently ordinary, well-liked college professor, but his significance lies in the layered identity beneath that public role. Known to students as Professor Higgins and to Kash Montgomery’s family as Andrew, he is secretly a huntsman: a protector of humans from rogue shifters, an investigator of werewolf crimes, and a hidden ally of Otto Montgomery. His knowledge, personal loyalties, and access to networks outside the Somerville pack allow him to connect the murder of Otto, the sudden appearance of bitten wolves, Brody Harrison’s conspiracy, and the wider conflict among werewolves, witches, and hunters.

Identity and Public Persona

Xan first appears in Valkyrie on a Sunday morning, rising from a brown leather couch to greet Romy Cartelli. The encounter is disorienting because he looks so normal in a setting where Romy expects a dangerous revelation. As Professor Higgins, he is young, approximately thirty, stylish, socially current, and recognizable for his social-media-themed T-shirts and carefully styled hair. He rides a motorcycle every day regardless of the weather, a habit that places him in an unexpected parallel with Talia DuPont, whose own motorcycle riding marks her as unusually fearless and capable. His students regard him as attractive, approachable, and intelligent; Talia had called him Professor Hottie before meeting Lynch Foster, and Romy considers his class the only one she genuinely enjoyed.

That approachable persona intensifies the shock of his connection to a werewolf murder investigation. Romy regards him as the last teacher she would have suspected of involvement in such a plot, precisely because his visible identity is composed of normality, kindness, and competence. Yet Xan is not presented as a simple disguise. His teaching position gives him access to the campus world, while his concealed work gives him knowledge unavailable to ordinary investigators. When he tells Romy and Kash to call him Xan, the name marks a movement from institutional familiarity toward a more personal and dangerous truth.

Huntsman Background and Connection to Kash

Xan tells Romy that he is not a werewolf but “more what you’d call pest control.” The euphemism initially conceals the extent of his role, but he soon identifies himself as a werewolf hunter. Huntsmen are not automatically enemies of werewolves. Their stated purpose is to protect humans from shifters who become rogue, although werewolves remain wary of them because their strength, speed, and senses make them particularly effective at killing dangerous wolves. This position places Xan inside a separate power structure governed by its own treaties and suspicions rather than inside Kash Montgomery’s pack.

His connection to Kash is far older and more intimate than either Romy or Kash initially realizes. Xan knew Otto and Lina Montgomery, was present when they met, and served as Otto’s best man. He is also Kash’s godfather. Kash had been told that his godfather was his father’s college friend named Andrew, and Xan reveals that Andrew is his middle name: Xan Andrew Higgins. The disclosure transforms him from a suspicious professor into a concealed family connection, while also explaining why his sympathy toward Kash’s grief is informed by personal knowledge rather than professional curiosity alone.

Xan and Otto kept their friendship secret because werewolves were naturally distrustful of huntsmen, and neither man wanted to provoke conflict between their communities. Their secrecy therefore reflects the wider rule of werewolf secrecy and the prejudice surrounding interspecies cooperation. Xan’s relationship with Otto demonstrates that those boundaries are not absolute, but it also shows the cost of crossing them: even a friendship strong enough to include a wedding role and godparenthood must remain hidden from most of the people around them.

Investigation into the New Wolves

Xan has spent months investigating what happened to Otto Montgomery. His work becomes central because he was the last person known to see Otto alive and had been corresponding with him about a developing threat. The immediate problem was the appearance of an abundance of newly turned, bitten wolves in an area where werewolves were normally born and where most belonged to the Somerville pack. Lone wolves occasionally passed through, but the sudden concentration of newly turned wolves did not fit the established pattern and would not have been tolerated by the Somerville pack.

Otto had already tried to track the new wolves, but they disappeared whenever he approached. He also sought help from the werewolf council and was dismissed for lacking sufficient evidence. Xan then took over the investigation, using the huntsman ability to track werewolves that he describes as unparalleled. He and Otto understood that magic had to be involved, which meant that a witch was likely assisting the operation. Xan came close to finding the witch and located an address, but the site had already been abandoned. Nothing identifiable or magical remained there, except for a crucial material clue: an abandoned truck registered to Brody Harrison.

Xan sent Otto a note asking him to meet at Valkyrie so he could provide Brody’s name. Otto never arrived. Xan initially assumed that Otto had been delayed by pack business, but several days later learned that Otto had died. The sequence gives his investigation a double function. It is an attempt to solve his friend’s murder, but it is also the first documented trail linking the unexplained bitten wolves to Brody’s operation. His evidence helps transform Brody from a troubling possibility into a concrete suspect.

Alliance Against Brody Harrison

Xan’s usefulness continues after Brody’s activities become unmistakable. The Somerville pack learns that women were held in an underground bunker inside an abandoned clinic, turned against their will, and forced to mate with Brody’s pack members. Kash explains the crime to others as an organized act of captivity, forced transformation, and breeding rather than an isolated assault. Because Xan already understands the significance of newly turned wolves and the magical concealment surrounding them, he is a natural ally in the effort to stop Brody.

Kash tells Xan that the Somerville pack is prepared to act but hopes not to stand alone. He asks Xan to use his connections to help track Brody after Brody clears out of the Delta house and his trail goes cold. Xan agrees immediately, promising to help however he can. His value is therefore not limited to the facts he has already uncovered: he can mobilize a separate network whose skills and jurisdiction differ from those of the pack and the ineffective council.

The larger conflict is shaped by overlapping systems of authority. Human police have failed to take the disappearances seriously, the werewolf council has hesitated, and the Old Law permits a larger true-born pack to challenge the ruling pack’s territory. Against that background, Xan represents neither ordinary human law nor pack rule. He embodies an external enforcement tradition that can recognize rogue werewolves, investigate supernatural crimes, and act when political institutions delay. His alliance with the Somerville pack is consequently both practical and symbolically significant, because it turns a concealed personal friendship into open cooperation against a common threat.

Confrontation with Regina and Narrative Significance

Xan’s most forceful intervention comes during the confrontation with Regina. When Romy is injured and barely conscious, Xan appears beside her and faces Regina. His voice carries an authority and power Romy has never heard from him before. He declares that Regina’s actions violate treaties governing her kind, that her assistance to the pack is unsanctioned and despicable, and that she must answer for her crimes. Regina refuses to recognize his authority, insisting that she answers neither to treaties nor to him, but the exchange reveals that Xan has standing within a broader supernatural legal order.

The scene completes the contrast established at his introduction. The fashionable professor who drinks beer in Valkyrie becomes an enforcer capable of invoking treaties and demanding accountability from a witch. His authority is not merely physical; it is institutional, moral, and backed by a community whose rules prohibit unauthorized intervention. That power also carries tension, since the hunters’ treaties and the werewolves’ pack laws do not automatically align. Xan’s intervention shows both the possibility of cooperation and the friction produced when multiple supernatural legal systems claim the right to judge the same act.

Xan’s role in the narrative is thus that of a hidden bridge, investigator, mentor-like ally, and threshold figure. He opens Romy and Kash’s understanding of the world beyond the pack by revealing magic, huntsmen, treaties, and the concealed history of Otto’s friendships. He also turns private grief into organized resistance: Otto’s death leads to investigation, the investigation exposes Brody’s trail, and that trail helps the Somerville pack prepare for war. Even when the werewolf council hesitates and Brody’s forces threaten to overwhelm Kash’s people, Xan remains part of the network of resistance that makes the final defense possible. His importance comes not from ruling the pack, but from connecting worlds that distrust one another and converting hidden knowledge into protection, evidence, and action.