Between Fangs and Claws
1251 Words
✓✓✓✓✓✓✓ CHAPTER 5 ✓✓✓✓✓✓✓
LIORA DeVOSS
What we never meant to be!
The city burned with chaos, fangs against claws, concrete stained with blood. I faced him in the heart of it all. Aiden. His wolf eyes glowed, body crouched low, snarling.
“Come on then,” I hissed, baring my fangs. “Or are you scared of a girl?”
He lunged. I met him mid-air. We slammed into a wall, rubble falling around us. Growls. Screams. But his claws never sank into me.
I pinned him down. He flipped us.
We clashed again… and again.
And then, I fell. He stood over me, breath ragged.
“Do it,” I spat.
He raised his claws…
And froze.
“No,” he choked. “I can’t.”
Then he turned and ran.
“Coward!” I shouted behind him.
I was trying hard to ignore him the next day in class…
And he was trying just as hard to not let me.
“Liora,” Aiden said from behind me. Again. For the third time.
I kept my eyes on my textbook.
He tried again. “Liora, please.”
“Go away,” I muttered without turning.
“I just want to talk.”
“Well, I don’t.”
“I didn’t know he was going to do that.”
“Oh, now you’re suddenly innocent?”
He sighed. I could hear the frustration in it. “Can you stop pretending like you don’t know me?”
I turned. Finally.
And yeah, I looked at him. Straight in the eyes. That same green-eyed wolf who pulled me off the floor last night. The same one whose pack tried to kill me. The same one I had been meeting in secret like some lovesick i***t.
“Don’t look at me like that,” I said.
“Like what?”
“Like you care.”
“I do care,” he snapped, but quietly… because we were still in class, and the teacher was busy scribbling something on the board.
I stood up, grabbed my book, and walked out without permission.
I didn’t care.
He followed me into the hallway.
“Will you just stop for two seconds?”
I spun around. “Two seconds is all it would have taken for that psycho in your pack to rip my
throat out.”
“I stopped him.”
“He shouldn’t have been there in the first place!”
“I know!” he yelled, then lowered his voice. “I know, okay? You think I’m not angry too?”
“You should be angry at yourself, Aiden.”
“I am.”
We stood there in silence.
The hallway was empty. The air between us felt heavier than usual.
He looked at the ground, then back at me. “Can we just talk? Somewhere no one’s watching?”
I didn’t answer.
“I’ll be at the tunnels tonight,” he said softly. “Same place. Just… come, okay?”
I didn’t say yes.
But I didn’t say no either.
“I know you will. Come alone,” he said and walked away, leaving me looking out of my depth.
It was midnight. The flickering neon sign hummed above us again like it knew all our secrets.
I leaned against the wall and waited.
He came. Quiet. Hands in his pockets. Face tense.
“You came,” he said.
“You said it’d be private.”
He looked down. “I meant it.”
“So talk.”
He hesitated.
Then finally said, “I didn’t send him. I swear. I would never let anyone touch you.”
“Then why did he know where I’d be?”
“Because someone in my pack’s been watching me. Us. I didn’t notice.”
I raised an eyebrow. “You’re supposed to be their leader, aren’t you?”
“That doesn’t mean they all follow.”
I crossed my arms. “What do they follow then?”
He rubbed the back of his neck. “Tradition. Blood. Hate. I don’t know anymore.”
“You do know. You just don’t want to say it.”
He looked up at me, guilt all over his face. “I didn’t come here to fight.”
“Then what did you come for?”
He stepped closer. “To ask you not to shut me out.”
“After what happened?”
“I saved you.”
I looked away.
“I saved you, Liora.”
“I know. And that’s the problem.”
He blinked. “What do you mean?”
“You keep making it hard for me to hate you.”
He smiled faintly. “Maybe because you don’t really want to.”
“Maybe I do,” I said. “Maybe I should.”
We stood there. Again. Caught in that awful place between enemy and… something else.
“Do you ever feel like we’re not supposed to be on opposite sides?” he asked.
“Every time I talk to you.”
“So what do we do?”
I shrugged. “We die or we lie. That’s how this usually ends.”
He took a deep breath. “Do you still want to meet here?”
“I don’t know.”
“Because of him?”
“Because of you. You’re connected to people who want me dead.”
“And you’re connected to people who’d drink my blood without blinking.”
He wasn’t wrong.
But it still hurt.
“I’ll keep coming,” he said. “Even if you don’t.”
“Why?”
“Because talking to you feels like breathing.”
I looked at him. “Then you better start learning how to hold your breath.”
He laughed a little. “There’s that fire again.”
I turned to walk away.
“Liora,” he called.
I stopped.
“I’m sorry.”
I looked over my shoulder.
“Then prove it.”
The next night, I came back.
So did he.
No more fights.
Just talking.
We sat on opposite crates, tossing stones at the tunnel walls, missing every time.
“You know what I hate?” I said.
“What?”
“Being told who I have to become.”
“Same,” he said. “Everyone keeps saying I’m the next Alpha, like I didn’t ask for it.”
“What if I don’t want to be Queen?”
“What if I want to be just… Aiden?”
I looked at him. “What if we weren’t who we are?”
He smiled sadly. “We’d probably still find each other.”
We kept meeting.
Night after night.
I told him I hated how my mom stared at me like I was a glass of wine…pretty and made to be poured.
He told me he hated how his pack treated him like a trophy they hadn’t won yet.
We laughed.
We vented.
We forgot.
And then I almost died.
It was three nights after our last meeting.
I took a wrong turn in the tunnel system, my fault, really. I wasn’t paying attention. Was distracted, probably thinking about his stupid smirk.
I didn’t even hear the whisper of boots behind me.
Until it was too late.
The world spun.
Pain bloomed across my side.
I hit the ground.
And I knew.
This time… I might not make it out.
Death was knocking…
- Writer
