Blood and Biochemistry

Chapter13

Adrian

By one forty-two, I had checked the front door often enough to admit I wasn’t reading anymore.

The book lay open in my lap, untouched for the better part of twenty minutes. Every few pages I caught myself looking toward the entrance instead, listening for footsteps that never came.

Evangeline Carter was many things.

Late was not one of them.

She arrived early to class. She clocked in to work before her shifts. She apologized when professors kept her after lectures, as though their schedules mattered more than hers. When we’d agreed on one forty-five, she would be outside at one forty-five.

Probably one forty-three.

At one forty-four, I unlocked the truck.

At one forty-five, I shut off the engine.

By one forty-six, the unease I’d been refusing to acknowledge settled heavily in my chest.

Most people would have sent a text.

Oliver would have.

Mason would have assumed she’d lost track of time.

Instead, I got out of the truck.

The bass from inside the house reached me before I climbed the porch steps, vibrating through weathered floorboards that had survived one too many college parties. Laughter spilled through the open front door along with stale beer, cigarette smoke, cheap liquor, and enough competing perfumes to overwhelm a human nose.

Mine sorted through them automatically.

Hundreds of scents layered over one another. Hundreds of heartbeats filled the house with an endless, uneven rhythm.

None of them belonged to her.

I stepped inside without announcing myself.

No one noticed.

A few students glanced my way before returning to their conversations. Others were too occupied with plastic cups and terrible dancing to care that another stranger had walked through the door.

I searched the living room first.

Nothing.

The kitchen.

Nothing.

A hallway crowded with people trying to shout over the music.

Still nothing.

I was halfway toward the staircase when it reached me.

Lavender.

The scent threaded effortlessly through alcohol and sweat, clean enough that I would have recognized it anywhere.

My feet changed direction before I consciously decided to follow it.

She was sitting near the back of the living room, tucked against one arm of an old couch that had seen better decades. The crowd hid most of her from view, but not enough.

She’d worn the green shirt.

Of course she had.

I remembered disliking it the moment Chloe pulled it from that ridiculous duffel bag. Not because it was revealing—it wasn’t, not compared to the rest—but because it drew the eye.

Apparently, I hadn’t been the only one to notice.

A blond man occupied the space beside her. Too close. Close enough that their knees nearly touched. His body angled toward hers while Evie’s angled toward the room, as though she’d been trying to leave for some time.

She smiled at something he said.

The expression barely lasted a second.

Most people would have called it polite.

I knew better.

I’d seen that smile every morning she apologized for existing in our apartment. She wore it whenever she believed someone else’s comfort mattered more than her own.

It wasn’t happiness.

It was surrender disguised as good manners.

The man’s hand rested against her hip.

Every muscle in my body locked.

She spoke.

I couldn’t hear her over the music, but I watched her gently lift his hand away before folding both of hers around the plastic cup in her lap.

For a moment, I thought that would be the end of it.

Then he smiled.

Said something else.

And placed his hand right back where she’d removed it.

The room became impossibly quiet.

Not around me.

Inside me.

Mine.

The word hit with all the subtlety of a gunshot.

I hated it.

I had hated it from the first instant it had appeared three days earlier, whispered by instincts older than civilization itself. The Claim was nothing noble. Humans dressed it up with words like destiny and soulmates, but vampires knew exactly what it was.

Possession.

Ownership.

The ugly certainty that another life belonged to you.

I had spent decades refusing it.

Watching fledglings mistake obsession for love had been enough to convince me that surrendering to the Claim was simply another way to become a monster.

I would never do that to her.

Never.

Then the blond man’s thumb brushed slowly across the fabric covering her hip.

Evie’s shoulders stiffened.

She laughed.

Not because anything was funny.

Because she was uncomfortable.

Because she was trying to soften a rejection into something easier for him to accept.

My vision sharpened.

Every heartbeat in the room faded except two.

His.

Quick. Strong. Oblivious.

Hers.

Faster than normal.

Uneven.

She wasn’t frightened.

Not yet.

She was trying to convince herself she had no reason to be.

I watched her glance toward the front door.

She wanted to leave.

He didn’t move.

She said something else, quieter this time.

He leaned closer.

She tried to stand.

His hand tightened just enough to keep her where she was.

That was enough.

I crossed the room.

People shifted out of my way before they seemed to understand why. Some ancient instinct warned prey when a predator entered the space, and every human around me obeyed it without realizing they had.

The blond man never looked away from Evie.

“Come on,” he said with an easy laugh. “You’re overthinking it.”

“I really need to go.”

“So go.”

His hand remained exactly where it was.

Evie’s smile disappeared.

“Please let go.”

The words were quiet.

Almost apologetic.

As though inconveniencing him was somehow worse than what he was doing to her.

I stopped beside the couch and wrapped my hand around his wrist.

Not hard.

Not enough to hurt him.

Only enough that he couldn’t pretend I wasn’t there.

He looked up, annoyance flashing across his face before surprise replaced it.

“Dude.”

My voice stayed level.

“Remove your hand.”

He laughed, though it sounded less certain now.

“Relax.”

“I am relaxed.”

He tried to pull free.

Nothing happened.

Confusion flickered across his face first.

Then concern.

He looked from my hand to my expression, searching for some explanation that made sense.

There wasn’t one.

“You were asked to let her go.”

“I’m talking to her.”

“No.”

I tightened my grip just enough for him to understand how easily I could tighten it further.

“You were.”

For the first time that evening, he listened.

His fingers slipped away from Evie’s waist.

I released him immediately.

He rubbed his wrist, staring at me with a confusion I doubted he would ever fully explain to himself.

I turned to Evie.

She was already standing.

Her eyes searched my face for a long moment before she let out a slow breath I wasn’t sure she’d realized she’d been holding.

“You ready to go?”

She nodded before I finished asking.

No hesitation.

No argument.

Just relief.

She stepped beside me, close enough that our shoulders nearly brushed.

Only then did I allow myself to look back at Jasper.

He’d already decided I wasn’t worth challenging.

A wise decision.

Because another excuse—one more reason to forget myself—and I wasn’t entirely certain I would have remembered how to stop being the thing I’d spent two centuries trying not to become.