“Like hell,” Mika crossed her arms. “We’re not leaving you here alone with that window blown out.”
“I’ll be fine. I need to board it up anyway since I live upstairs.”
“Then we’ll help,” Vivi said firmly. “That’s what friends do.”
“No.” I shook my head, already pulling up the cab app on my phone. “There could be more of those things out there. You need to get home safe while the streets are clear.”
“Lina…”
“Please.” I grabbed Mika’s hands, then Vivi’s. “I can’t worry about you two on top of everything else. I’ll be fine. The shop is secure once I board the window, and I have the apartment upstairs. But you two need to get home.”
They argued for five more minutes, but I kept insisting. Finally, I practically shoved them into the cab when it arrived, making the driver promise to take them straight to Vivi’s apartment building.
“Text me when you get there,” I called through the window.
“You’re an idiot,” Mika called back, but there was affection in it. “A noble idiot, but still an idiot.”
I waited until the cab turned the corner before surveying the true extent of the damage.
The front window was completely gone, nothing but jagged edges clinging to the frame. The alley door hung off its hinges at a drunken angle. Books scattered across the floor, their pages soaking up liquids I didn’t want to identify. A few tables had shattered from the impact.
But it was fixable. I’d survived worse, even if that worse hadn’t included actual monsters.
I trudged upstairs to grab supplies, returning with a kitchen knife that probably wouldn’t do much against a werewolf but made me feel better. The irony of fixing my door twice in one week wasn’t lost on me as I began boarding up the window with plastic sheeting and wood salvaged from the broken tables.
My hands worked on autopilot while my mind raced. Those eyes in the black wolf’s face. The way it had protected me, put itself between me and danger with obvious intent. That split-second glance that felt impossibly familiar.
No. I was in shock, seeing connections that weren’t there. Wolves didn’t have human eyes. Wolves didn’t protect random humans. Wolves didn’t...
But I couldn’t stop thinking about Matthias. He’d left just hours before the attack, told me to stay away for my own good. Was he safe? Had he made it to wherever he was going before the sirens started? The worry gnawed at me as I hammered plastic into place, which was stupid. He’d made it crystal clear I was to stay away. His safety wasn’t my concern.
Except I kept remembering that surge of emotions when we’d touched. The protective rage that had felt overwhelming and focused. The desperate want mixed with self-loathing. What if he’d known? What if somehow he’d sensed this coming and that’s why he’d pushed me away?
I was being ridiculous. People didn’t sense werewolf attacks. People didn’t share emotions through touch. People didn’t have connections to giant black wolves that saved them from certain death.
By the time I finished the temporary repairs, exhaustion weighed down every limb. The espresso machine sat unharmed in its corner, because apparently it was too mean to die even when faced with werewolves. Small miracles.
I checked the locks three times before finally accepting I’d done all I could. The shop would survive until morning when I could call proper repair people. I would survive too, even if my brain kept replaying gray eyes in both human and wolf faces.
At midnight, I crawled into bed still wearing my torn jeans because taking them off required energy I didn’t have. My body ached in places I didn’t know could ache. But under the physical pain was a different sensation, a tingling in my hand where Matthias and I had touched hours ago. The ghost of electricity that shouldn’t still be there but was.
Sleep pulled at me, and I let it. My last coherent thought was of gray eyes, both human and wolf, and the impossible feeling that somehow, in ways that defied logic and reason, they were connected.
My hand tingled with phantom electricity as darkness finally claimed me.
6
— • —
Lina
A sound woke me from restless sleep. Not the usual creaks of an old building or the wind rattling windows. This was different. A thump, muffled but distinct, coming from my living room. The kind of sound furniture made when someone bumped into it in the dark.
My digital clock glowed 3:17 AM in angry red numbers. My arm throbbed where I’d scraped it in the alley, and every muscle ached from the adrenaline crash earlier. I grabbed the kitchen knife from my nightstand, because apparently that was my life now, keeping weapons next to my bed in case of round two with monsters.
I padded barefoot toward the living room, knife held in what I hoped was a threatening manner. My heart hammered against my ribs as I reached for the light switch.
I flicked it on and yelped.
