Wild Blood

Chapter Four

Tiago

I didn’t mean to follow her. That was the lie I told my feet for about thirty seconds after she left the quad. Library, I told them. You have an essay.

My feet took me to the art wing instead.

Bullshit. I could see his canines in my mind. My wolf’s wide, toothy grin.

I’d smelled her going this way. Wolfsbane drowned most of her, that bitter chemical burn, but stress-sweat and the copper tang of blood from her bitten lip cut through it like a flare. I could’ve tracked her through hell.

My head said let her breathe. My chest said make sure she was still breathing. My feet were already at her door before I’d decided who to listen to.

The art wing was old, the kind of place schools forgot to renovate. Cinderblock walls painted over a dozen times, one large frosted window per room, floors with paint ground into the cracks from twenty years of bad projects. It smelled like turpentine and gesso and old paper, and underneath all of that — anxiety.

Hers.

Then I heard it. Humming, thin and off-key, leaking through the wall. Tuneless. The same song my Mãe used to hum when the bills were late and she didn’t want us to know.

That gutted me.

She felt safe enough to make noise.

Logic said leave. She wanted space. My wolf said she's alone.

I compromised with stepping to the door and looking through the narrow window.

Her back was to me, at an easel. Her hair had come loose again since the bench, a wild halo of curls that caught the gray light. The sleeves of her hoodie were shoved up to her elbows revealing a few scars on her left wrist; thin, white, old. A bite? My jaw ticked before I could stop it.

She was painting a treeline. Black bars dragged over it. No sky. No moon. No break. Just a cage.

I’d seen that painting before. In my head. I'd dreamt it weeks before ever meeting her. I remembered waking up with my chest tight and no name for the girl behind the bars.

Suddenly, her fingers tightened on the brush and her shoulders locked. She didn’t turn, but the air changed. She knew I was watching.

I ducked left, back to the wall, my heart kicking once against my ribs. Not from fear but from being caught.

My wolf preened. Mate is strong.

I gave a small amused breath before I could stop it. She’s good.

She heard.

I looked back through the glass and she was gone. Just the easel sat there and the radiator with her book steaming on top of it, pages warping from the heat.

There was only one door, one exit, and I hadn’t heard it open.

I tried the knob but it was locked with a deadbolt from the inside. A human would need a key or a boot but I wasn't human.

I rolled my wrist and tested the give in the frame, putting my palm flat to the wood and pushed. The frame groaned low and the lock popped out clean with no splinters, no broken metal. Just open. I smiled. I could do quiet when I wanted.

I stepped in, closing the door behind me and the room hit me all at once. Turpentine and damp paper and blood — hers, old, from her lip — and her. Under the wolfsbane. Lightning and orange blossom and fear, sharper now, closer.

There were two closets on opposite sides of the room. The left one smelled like coal and hot dust, a kiln, banked but still warm. The right one reeked of acrylics and mineral spirits. I stopped in front of the easel.

Black bars. Treeline. No wolf. No escape.

My throat closed. She painted the prison she was in, not knowing it had a name. Not knowing I was on the other side of it.

“I promise I wasn’t following you,” I called out. Voice even. Not loud.

But there was only silence.

Then I heard it, her trying to sneak for the door. Footsteps, too careful. To human ears she was quiet but to me, each step was a shout.

I turned, catching her wrist as she passed and the electricity between us surprised us both.

She whirled, shock flashing across her face, and slapped my hand away like it burned.

She didn’t like to be touched. Noted.

She sneered at me, chin up. “Okay, you’ve found me. What is it you want?”

Did she seriously not know?

“Whatever you think you want, you don’t.”

“I just want to get to know you.” I said, keeping my hands where she could see them.

Her expression went confused, then flat. “I’m good. Thanks. Maybe get to know Kelsey. She seems to like you.”

It angered her to say that. I heard it in her voice and I hoped she knew why.

She tried to leave again and I stepped into her path, hands up in a surrendering motion. “Look, I just—”

“Dude, I said I’m not interested.” Her eyes darted to the exit again, calculating.

“Please, let me explain,” I tried not to seem like a complete dunce and stepped into her space again.

She gasped and took a step back. Fear. I smelled it instantly. It was sharp, bright, like a wounded rabbit and for a second she looked breakable.

Then it was gone. Her face went blank and her stance shifted; feet apart, weight low, shoulders loose. A fighting stance. The same one my father taught pups to take down a rival.

“I said no,” her words were clipped. “How’d you even find me here if you weren’t following me?”

Her eyes flicked from honey to gold and back, wild, uncontrolled. It worried me. Was she so afraid of me that she was on the verge of a shift? I didn’t want that. Not here. Not with wolfsbane in her system.

Mate. He snapped. Tell her.

“I wasn’t trying to follow you. I just… knew you were here. And my body followed blindly.”

Her eyes cut to the door, then to the window, then back to me. Trapped.

“Look, let me explain.” I took a step toward her. “My na–”

Mistake.

She rounded on me but I caught her sleeves, pulling her closer, which seemed to catch her off guard. She struggled, but I knew it wasn’t her full strength because I wasn’t using mine either. She was trying not to hurt me. Like I was human.

She bucked, elbow aiming for my ribs.

“Please calm down,” I said. “I’m just trying to explain.”

She jerked away from me the second time, and this time it was full strength. When I still didn’t release her, only then did I smell it — real fear, sour and deep.

“What are you?” Her face scrunched, like the word tasted bad.

My eyes were already gold pulling strength from my wolf and she saw it, letting out a gasp and a wave of fear that made my nose wrinkle.

Warmth flooded through me then. Sudden, deep, like sunlight hitting bone. A calm that didn’t belong to me, it belonged to us. To the fated-pull. It hit my knees and my spine, commanding me to KNEEL and for a second I almost let her go, almost dropped her just to breathe through it.

I didn’t.

I couldn’t because if I let go, she’d run, and my wolf would lose his mind.

Her eyes flickered wildly with her shock.

Her voice shook. “f**k, is he here too? I’m not going back.”

“What— no. That’s what I was trying to tell you before but—”

Her face set in determination. “I’m not going back.”

The confusion hit me before her knee did and she used it. My grip eased for half a second and she counter-grabbed my wrist, yanking my arms down until her knee nearly slammed into my chest. I yanked my grip from hers to block, knocking her leg aside.

Her left fist came at my face and I caught it, palm to knuckles. “I don’t want to hurt you,” I said, but her right fist was already coming.

I moved. Spun her, pulled her back until she was pressed against my chest, her back to my front. My arms wrapped around her in an awkward hold, one across her collarbone, the other pinning her arms. Not to hurt. To stop her from hurting me.

All my moves had been defensive while hers were quick attacks.

“Let me go,” she hissed, struggling.

“I will if you stop.” There was a smile in my voice I couldn’t help. Someone had taught her well. Maybe her old pack?

“Are you going to let me explain if I do? Or are you going to keep fighting me?”

She was pressed against me in what looked like an embrace with my arms around her, holding, not crushing. Then she bucked, elbow aiming for my ribs.

“Please stop.” I tried again. “I don’t want to fight you.”

“Then let me go!”

She threw her head back and the back of her skull connected with my nose.

Pain exploded white-hot with the sound of the cartilage giving. Blood, instant and warm, poured down my face and my arms went slack on reflex.

She ripped free and spun, fists up, ready to keep going but I was bleeding with my head tipped back, and I didn’t come at her again.

I turned away from her, disgusted with myself.

“f**k,” I muttered, and stopped. “My wolf’s chosen you.”

For some reason, she stopped too.

Did that make her stop? Maybe she was confused.

“No,” she said. Flat. Final.

As soon as I tried to explain — “It’s a mate bond, it means—” I turned back around and she was gone with the door open and the hall empty.

I stood there in the empty art room with blood dripping onto the tile.

Idiot, my wolf snarled. You scared her. You pushed.

I wanted to argue that he pushed but instead I touched my nose, felt the wrong angle, and smiled at her strength despite the wolfsbane, sucking the blood in my teeth. “f**k. Okay.”

To myself. To her. To the room.

I picked up her book, trying to be careful not to damage it any further, and put it in my bag. I’d return it. I owed her that at least.