I’m left with the taste of someone else’s blood and the certainty that the next time I touch her, I won’t stop until the whole damn university wears my fingerprints.
She thinks she’s not affected.
She thinks she can starve the bond out.
Sweet little liar.
Keep pretending, baby.
I can wait an hour.
Maybe two.
The silence stretches thin as wire, and I realize I’m still standing here like some lovesick fool, breathing the air she leftbehind. Pathetic. I rake a hand through my hair and turn toward the east wing, where my room waits with its four walls and the kind of quiet that used to feel like peace.
Now it just feels like waiting.
My footsteps echo wrong in the empty corridor, and the bond writhes under my skin like a Lycan who hasn’t had a meal in weeks.
I know sleep won’t come easily tonight. It hasn’t since I brought her back. My mind is weighted, like a cloud of demonic smoke settled there, pressing against my conscience.
Suddenly too tired to call a portal, I reach the tapestry that hides one to my chambers. I press my palm against the woven threads, recognizing the royal blood that flows in my veins.
The portal opens, a mouth of darkness that tastes like home, but now there’s this pit of emptiness that follows.
I step through, let the magic fold around me like a familiar coat, and emerge into my bedroom where moonlight cuts silver bars across the floor. The portal seals behind me with a whisper that sounds almost like her laugh.
I strip off my jacket, let it fall where it wants, and sink onto the edge of my bed. The mattress dips under my weight, and I can still taste her defiance on my tongue, still feel the ghost of her shoulder against mine.
Dawn is hours away.
Too many hours.
I lie back and stare at the ceiling, where shadows dance like memories of what I almost had. What I will have. What she can’t run from forever.
The bond purrs in my chest, patient as a lion for once.
Let her sleep.
Let her dream.
Let her pretend she doesn’t feel this thing between us clawing at her ribs the way it claws at mine. That it doesn’t leave anabsence in her she can’t name even when she’s near.
Chapter Thirteen
Haide
Roomie doesn’t stop fucking talking.
As if waking into a horror scene this week wasn’t enough, I’m stuck with a roommate who won’t shut the fuck up.
Roomie stares at me, eyes wide, mouth slightly parted. Did she ask me something?
“What?”
She rolls her eyes and goes back to applying the color over her lips. “I said, you’re coming to a party.”
Part of me wants to throw her against the wall to see if her head splits on impact for thinking she can tell me what I’m going to do. But the other…
