Xan Andrew Higgins and Otto Montgomery

Xan Andrew Higgins and Otto Montgomery were close friends for decades, a bond that crossed the distrust between werewolves and Huntsmen and ultimately entangled their private loyalty with the danger threatening Otto’s pack. Their friendship began in college, endured under the pressure of keeping it secret, and became central to the investigation that exposed Brody Harrison’s role in the spread of newly turned wolves.

An Unlikely College Friendship

Otto and Xan met as freshmen at a bonfire near the Charles River. Their kinds were separated by strong social lines: Huntsmen were trained and equipped to kill rogue shifters, while werewolves had good reason to be wary of them. Yet the two men hit it off, and their friendship grew through the four years they spent causing trouble together. The account presents their closeness not as a brief exception but as a durable connection that survived the transition from student life into adult responsibilities.

That bond was unusual in practical as well as personal terms. Huntsmen’s strength, speed, and senses made them dangerous opponents for rogue werewolves, and their soul-bonded blades made them still harder to kill once trained. A Huntsman did not age while bonded to a blade, though he could die in battle. The differences between the two communities therefore carried real stakes, not merely inherited prejudice. Otto nevertheless refused to let those divisions determine whom he could trust; Xan later recalls that Otto was never concerned with the prejudices between their races.

A Friendship Kept Secret

Otto and Xan concealed their relationship from most people over the years. Xan explains that neither wanted to stir up conflict between their communities, and that Otto worried the werewolf council would object to a pack joining forces with a Huntsman. Their secrecy was thus both a response to broader suspicion and a way of protecting a friendship that crossed organizational boundaries. Their private bond did not mean that the dangers between their peoples had disappeared; rather, it let them cooperate despite those dangers.

The friendship also reached into Otto’s family life. Xan had been present when Otto and Lina Montgomery met and had served as Otto’s best man. He was also Kash Montgomery’s godfather, though Kash had been told that his godfather was his father’s college friend Andrew. The revelation makes clear how deeply Xan belonged to Otto’s personal world, even while his identity and relationship to the family had been kept out of view. For Kash, the discovery complicates an investigation already charged with suspicion: the man who had been among the last to see his father alive was not a stranger, but a trusted friend with a long history in the family.

The Investigation That Joined Them Again

Xan says he had spent the previous couple of months investigating what might have happened to Otto. Before Otto’s death, the friends had met several times, and their conversations concerned a dangerous change in the local werewolf population. The area’s wolves were ordinarily born rather than bitten, and nearly all belonged to Kash’s pack; occasional lone wolves passed through, but the region near Somerville lands was usually clear of newcomers. Xan instead found an abundance of newly turned, bitten wolves, a development neither he nor Otto believed Kash’s pack would permit.

Otto tried to track the new wolves himself, but they disappeared whenever he got close. He also took the matter to the council and was dismissed for lack of sufficient evidence. Faced with that failure, he asked Xan to investigate. Xan’s Huntsman training gave him an exceptional ability to track werewolves, making him a useful ally precisely because his skills came from a community that werewolves often feared. Their collaboration turned an old friendship into a channel for pursuing a threat that the usual authorities had failed to address.

The trail led Xan toward magic and a witch, but the address he found had already been abandoned, with nothing identifiable or magical left behind. He did find an abandoned truck registered to Brody Harrison. Xan sent Otto a note asking him to meet so he could give him Brody’s name. Otto never arrived. At first Xan assumed pack business had kept him away; only days later did he learn that Otto had been killed. The missed meeting gives their final cooperation a stark shape: Xan had information that might have mattered, but the warning never reached Otto in person.

Loss, Loyalty, and the Aftermath

When Xan explains his history to Kash and Romy, he acknowledges that he had met Otto before Otto was killed, but insists that Otto was his best friend and that he did not murder him. His account of their shared past, including the college bonfire, their concealed alliance, and his role in Otto’s family, establishes the emotional cost behind that denial. Xan is not simply a source of clues; he is a bereaved friend trying to complete the work Otto began.

The evidence he brings helps connect the newly turned wolves to Brody and gives Kash and Romy a concrete lead in the wider conflict. Xan cannot provide the witch they had hoped to find, but he offers his help, says he loved Otto like a brother, and gives Kash his business card. Their friendship therefore continues to shape events after Otto’s death: it supplies investigative knowledge, bridges a divide between Huntsmen and werewolves, and leaves Xan carrying forward a warning that Otto did not live to deliver.