Alex
I’m rarely in my office in the spires above the ice but was forced to make an exception today. After my lecture this afternoon, I had a meeting with a few of the other biology professors, which the dean did not attend, and found myself in the gray confines of this dusty little box of a room, which is home to bound copies of the research I’ve done over the years.
Laney blinks up at me expectantly while I look over the lab report on the blood samples the Beta asked for.
“Interesting. Was this confirmed?” I ask, pointing to a line of text.
She nods, so owlish I wonder if she’s even breathing. She can’t be more than twenty, and even then, she looks more like a terrified, socially awkward twelve-year-old girl in the blue scrubs the clinic volunteers have to wear during their clinicals. “It’s a foreign substance, but there was a lot of it in the second sample–the one we weren’t able to pull a profile from. It’s foreign in nature, possibly an animal?”
“An animal on illicit drugs?” I arch a brow, and she cowers. Poor thing. She’s brilliant, but I can already tell this girl is on an academic track. She’d never make it in industry. Yeah, the quiet, secluded nature of academia will lure her in and get her hooked by the time she’s done with her master’s degree.
“Abby tested it against all the animal profiles we have in the lab, and every match was negative. Whatever killed this woman wasn’t like us but isn’t an animal commonly seen in Aurorium, either.”
I heave a breath and lean back in my chair with the results in my hands, skeptically eyeing the young researcher. “This is a massive amount of foreign substances in both samples.”
Laney shuffles her feet. “Trace in the victim’s, but the attacker’s… yeah. We just don’t have anything to test it against. If we knew what it was, that might explain why we’ve had such a hard time making it match genetically to everything we’ve tested it against.”
“This is enough to give to the Beta. It’s all he asked us to do, and we’ve done it to the best of our ability.”
“But we… we have a second profile. The attacker–”
“And their profile is incomplete because we don’t have enough information, and that’s okay.” A knock sounds on the door, and I rise. Laney glances in the direction of the exit but remains, nervously twiddling her thumbs. “Laney, is there anything else–”
“Are we safe?”
“Yes,” I tell her, even though my stomach twists as she looks up at me with those doe eyes. “This campus is incredibly safe.”
I edge toward the door, opening it wide, and Laney gathers her things and shuffles toward me just as Skye steps into my office.
I haven’t seen her for two days, which is probably for the best after what happened.
“Oh, sorry, I didn’t think you’d even be here, but I had to–” She steps out of Laney’s way with a smile.
I wait until Laney turns the corner in the hallway before grabbing her wrist and dragging her over the threshold, shutting and locking the door behind us.
“Hey!” Skye laughs, her eyes alight in a different way than they were in her office in the spire I can see clearly from the view beyond the windows.
“Are you feeling well?” I ask.
She rubs her wrist, brows furrowing. “I am. Are you? You nearly tossed me across the room.”
“I’m sorry. I’m also sorry for running out of your office like I did.”
She looks down at her hands. “I suppose that was kind of weird, Alex. In your defense, I definitely freaked you out.”
“You didn’t. Not–not with the magic thing.” I lean my weight against the door. “Look, I have a thing.”
“A thing?” She narrows her eyes.
“About blood.”
“Oh.” She glances at the bandage on her thumb, the same bandage I’ve been trying not to stare at since I let her into my office. “But… you’re a biologist? That would be like me being afraid of… the dark. Or heights.”
I kick off the door and move closer to her. “Are you making fun of me, Dr. Abbot?”
“Uh, yes, I am.” She laughs, and it’s… magical. A sound that abruptly rewires something ancient and tangled in my brain. Her smile is like honey, and I realize with a start that I’ve never seen it. This is a first, something I don’t think she does very often, and I’m the one to witness it–at my expense. “You have a thing about blood. Yet, you work as a biologist. You have to handle blood samples all the time.”
“I’m a paleomicrobiologist,” I correct tartly, taking another step toward her. “I study genetics in the minuscule samples of flora and fauna we’re able to find in the ice. And blood samples don’t bother me. It’s the… act of bleeding that…” Heat blooms through my body as her cheeks flush. Her blush is a soft pink, like a rose petal. I bet her skin is just as warm as she looks.
I resist the urge to take another step toward her while alarm bells ping through my skull. This isn’t right. This warmth I feel in her presence. I can’t allow it.
“People bleeding in your presence grosses you out?”
“Something like that.”
“Well, I’ll try not to do it again.”
I hold her gaze for several seconds and only look away when she blinks, breaking what I’m sure is a spell.
I’m not a weak man. I’ve spent the last decade and a half fighting for what I have now, and that meant keeping everyone at arm’s length. For their safety and mine.
I haven’t felt, nor wanted, to be this close to someone before. There wasn’t room for it. When Skye brushes her arm against mine, stepping past me toward the door, I fight the urge to turn into her touch.
This isn’t the way of my kind. It’s why everything about her has always felt so confusing, from the moment I met her in that supply closet years ago and touched her then, felt her warmth as she shattered into muffled sobs. I was used to the strict nature of shifters–all senses and heat. Skye was less open, more guarded, keeping those normally outward parts of herself, her kind, tucked away and twisted in an iron embrace.
But now, in my office, she’s open. Smiling. Teasing me.
“I came to ask if I could have a tour of your lab, finally, but you seem rather busy.” She motions to my messy desk and my laptop open to the lecture I was writing when Laney dropped by with the lab results. “Anyway, I have to meet up with Abby.” She checks her watch and unlocks the door but hesitates before opening it.
“Another time,” I tell her with a hint of regret. “Anytime, actually. Later tonight the lab will be empty and…” Being alone with her is probably a bad idea, especially with how tired I am. The past few days have been insanely busy. I’ve been operating outside the parameters of my carefully crafted schedule. I run my fingers through my hair as a wave of hunger and fatigue bites through my body.
Skye opens the door just a crack, bursting our bubble of privacy. “Actually, I’m going out with Abby tonight. I have a few errands I need to run in Aurorium.”
“I see.”
“But… tomorrow?”
Tomorrow is Saturday, right? What’s wrong with my head? “Yes. Tomorrow. I’ll meet up with you in the morning and give you the full tour.”
Her smile sinks into my chest, turning to heat, then hunger I struggle to contain. I don’t breathe again until the door shuts behind her, locking me into a hell of my own making.
I sink behind my desk and pick up my phone. Toby answers on the first ring.
“I need you to call your contact in Aurorium.”
* * *
Skye
I smooth my hands over the fluffy fabric of a sweater in a small boutique in Aurorium. Abby hums beside me, impressed with the velvety soft red fabric, and gives me a nudge with her shoulder when I begin to set it back down on the table. “No, you have to buy that. Red is such a good color on you!”
“It’s very red,” I argue, but I fidget with the sweater. “Like blood.”
“Oh, please, it’s exactly the kind of thing you’d wear. Buy it! Stretch those new tenured dollars, Skye. You deserve it!” She nudges me again and wanders off to continue browsing. I drape the sweater over my arm and move toward the counter, where a shop associate promptly accepts my money, and within minutes, we’re out on the street again with several shopping bags each, wincing against a flurry of ice flecks being picked up by the ever-present breeze.
“Lockers?” Abby asks, tilting her head toward the entrance of the subway, only two shops away.
“Yeah. I’m done shopping. Do we need to go anywhere else or…?” I can already tell by the look on Abby’s face that she has no plans to take the train back to campus after this. She’s staying out, which means I owe her one drink at her favorite club, like usual.
I roll my eyes to the haze of neon light reflecting against the ice crystals fluttering through the air and meet her gaze. “Fine. One drink.”
She squeals and shuffles in her parka to loop her arm around mine, and then we’re off, carefully picking our way across the frozen street to the subway, where lockers lining the cavernous wall will store our things until we’re ready to board the train home.
“Let’s just share,” she says, stuffing her bags in front of mine.
“Only because I actually remembered to bring a padlock,” I counter, and she sticks her tongue out at me.
I scoff. She slams the locker into a closed position and extends her hand to accept the padlock in question, but a shadow moves behind us and comes to a graceful stop.
Prickles of unease ripple over my skin as a tall, lanky man in a hood turns to us, his face cast in shadow. I can only see the outline of a sharp jaw and a wide, full mouth before he asks, “Are you students at Lunaria?”
Abby, ever the social butterfly, whips around to face him. “What’s it to you?” she asks in a near snarl.
“I’m trying to catch the next train to campus. I missed the last one.”
She narrows her eyes, craning her neck to look up into the shadow of his hood, but a group of people push past us, hustling toward the platform.
The man just stands there, still as a statue. All shadows and a strange kind of stillness I find oddly familiar.
For a moment, my brain short-circuits, and I almost say Alex’s name, but this man… his voice is different. Rougher. With a thick, clipped accent similar to Alex’s but less practiced.
“Are you a new student?” I ask, stepping closer to Abby. She turns to put the lock in place.
“No,” he replies, turning his head to look right at me. “I’m looking for someone. An old friend.”
The train arriving from campus speeds into view, sending a gust of air and a screech of metal through the subway. The crowd waiting for the train hustles forward, forcing us to step back and the man to turn away, but he turns, just briefly, to look at us again.
Under the flow of the subway's fluorescent lights, his teeth illuminate, reflected like shards of silver against the shadows covering the upper half of his face.
I rear back.
Abby clutches my arm as the train's horn blares, tugging me back toward the stairs. “Come on! It’s freezing down here, and Toby said he’s already at the club. How lucky is that!”
“Did you–did you see that guy's teeth?”
“What?” she asks, but a crowd departs the train, and the stranger is lost to a sea of bodies.