Skye
A network of skybridges and elevators leads to a handful of warming rooms and airlocks directly on the surface of the ice. The main one is quite large and houses a row of lockers, as well as changing rooms for men and women, and separate outdoor entrances for both. I hang my coat in a locker, fiddling with my padlock, then walk into the women’s changing room, where steam creeps across the floor, and several shower nooks spray warm, wet air, the entire space almost suffocated with humidity. I change out of my clothes and fold my pants and sweater neatly before donning the robe I brought from my condo. It took me an hour to find it, seeing as I’ve barely started the process of organizing my clothing after moving into my new place, but now it’s almost midnight, and I knew I wasn’t going to be able to sleep until I burned off some energy.
It’s a balmy negative sixty when I shove open the door to the airlock and close it with a crunch behind me. Wind rattles the thick, frosted glass room as I drape my robe on a hook and roll my neck and wrists, debating letting the bracelet stay behind as well, but the timer on the clock above the door begins to beep in warning that the doors to a frozen wasteland are about to open.
“Wait! Oh, my Goddess, Katrina! Hurry up! It’s about to open!”
I whirl, covering my exposed skin as two women scurry out of the door leading back into the women’s locker room, both equally as bare as I am. My shift happens almost involuntarily, my body bending into my wolf form before they can catch a glimpse of me in all my naked glory, and I suppose that’s a blessing, seeing as my neck is still tinged a soft greenish yellow where Alex bit me and changed my entire outlook on life.
I try not to think of him and his obvious rejection because I sound insane. I’m aware of it. The sudden, overwhelming obsession–the feeling I want to chase. I’ve been ruminating over it for days now, basking in the memories during his absence while I let my mind do what it does best–put a mathematical stamp of approval on my feelings. I’ve deduced one thing. Just one, minimal, oversimplified reason that my mind and body craves Alex–a vampire. Wolves and vampires have one thing in common–we bite. Hard. Biting for pleasure? That’s definitely a shifter thing, and so, here I am, wanting to be bitten again. Overthinking it. Confusing his bite with something else.
The doors to the ice crunch open before the second woman is ready. She screeches from the blast of bone-cracking cold air, giggling frantically before her body blurs into her wolf form, and the three of us wait until the doors open wide enough to allow us to pass through. It’s pitch black beyond the ever-present glow of the campus above, which creates a halo of silver, fluorescent light for nearly a half-mile all around campus, and while the other wolves sprint into the wind, weaving under the glassy pillars holding the university off the ground, I step out into the frigid, icy wasteland and slowly turn toward a pocket of darkness.
I want a real run tonight. Something quick and aggressive that makes my heart thunder. I’ve been so far gone in my mind that I can’t think properly anymore, and it has been weeks, at least, since I’ve shifted. I take off in a sprint, my paws aching at first at the cold bite of the windblown ice, but after a few minutes spent skirting around the back side of campus, my paws begin to numb, and the warm rush of my blood heats my body like a built-in furnace. As I move into the shadows, I see the Pillars and my condo rising like glass spires against a blanket of starlight in the distance. It’s easy to forget how beautiful this campus is, especially after weeks spent inside under the glow of fake light and gray walls. Out here, every building looks like it was carved out of the very ice beneath my feet, glimmering against the ribbons of aurora dancing vertically above my head in columns of green and the deepest purple.
I only run into another group of wolves once I’ve traveled three miles away from campus, our bodies shrouded in wind-beaten moonlight, separated by gusts that pick up ice crystals. I’m coated in frost when I come to a rough stop as a group of eight wolves cuts past me at a slow, almost casual pace, several of them dragging sleds packed with rolled furs and tents.
They don’t even look at me. We can’t mind-link. Their leader follows behind the group, his dense but strong wolf frame so different from the shifters I know back home in Moonrise. The nomadic wolves here, even the males, are smaller than me. Their leader passes me, stopping for a few seconds to eye me skeptically, trying to sense whether I’m a threat, and then moves on.
I linger for a few minutes, watching the stars blink, listening to the crunch of footsteps and sleds being dragged over the ice. For a moment, I feel a little disoriented and have a sneaking sense that I’m being watched, but when I look at the pack of nomadic wolves–hunters, I presume–their leader is no longer watching me. None of them are.
I’m alone. Like usual. Like I like it. Or at least, I used to–until Alex’s presence made me start to question everything I thought I wanted. Everything I thought I knew.
A vicious gust of wind rips through me like I’m made of paper and effectively numbs my brain, whisking those thoughts away.
I often wonder what it would be like to even spend a single night on the ice with only the protection of tents, furs, and my wolf to keep me warm, but after standing still for several minutes watching the wolves disappear into the icy gusts, I realize why I’ve never attempted that.
My joints are locked up from the cold, and my sleek, almost-black coat is stiff with frost when I arrive back at the airlock. I leap onto my hind legs to slam my front paws against the wide rubber button beside the door to start the countdown, and a minute later, the doors crunch open, and I slip inside, shivering. Warm air blasts the second the doors shut behind me, thawing me from the bones out, and I shift back to my human form, drape my robe over my shoulders, and sit in the sauna until I’m dizzy enough to fall asleep.
The next day is the same. I lecture. I sit in the lab and pore over my equations. I use the telescope. I put in a maintenance request for said telescope and look over my equations again, finding my brain muddier than it’s ever been. My neck loses the pinch of pain left in Alex’s wake, and the bruise fades to the point that I can wear a crewneck sweater again without raising suspicions. I shift, I come home, and I lie in bed wondering what the hell is wrong with me.
It’s almost 10:00 at night. Alex watched my lecture in the observatory, and now I’m in the library, of all places, high in the stacks on the sixth floor, where the bookshelves create little nooks in a maze-like layout. Seating is scarce, making it one of the quieter spots in the library. It’s also where students come to fool around, which I remember when I round a corner and find a couple in a public location and a compromising position. I backtrack before they can see me.
Unfortunately, every volume on advanced calculus, statistics, and logarithms is found up here.
And, unfortunately, so are many of the more technical volumes pertaining to chemistry.
Alex turns from the shelf and spots me before I’ve noticed the tall shadow stretching across the beaten, fraying carpet belongs to him. He slides the book he was eyeing back onto the shelf, catching me by the arm when I try to slide past him. “Wait.”
I jerk to a stop, but he doesn’t let me go. All around us, the library is buzzing with distant sounds: clicking keys on a laptop, the ever humming metal whirl of the furnace, soft voices not so far away, but still. We’re not alone. He has to know that. If he’s… wanting me for… blood….
Gods, I want to stop thinking about this. I shrug out of his hold, yanking my arm free, and meet his eyes in the dim shadows of the stacks. “What, Alex?”
“You left before I could talk to you,” he says, his voice a low whisper and dripping with accusation.
“I think you’ve said enough for me to understand that we can’t do this.”
His jaw flexes, and frustration lights his blue eyes. They’re brighter in the dark. I’ve noticed it before, but every moment I spend in his presence is now a reminder of what he is instead of wondering why he’s so different. In the shadows, he’s almost unnerving. A promise of death. A promise of a long life spent being a killing, bloodsucking machine. His fangs glimmer in the soft light slipping between volumes of books at our side when he looks down at me, catching his lower lip between his teeth.
The movement is like being dropped into a warm pool. I feel oddly boneless but tear my gaze away from his. Prickles of heat skitter over my skin, regardless.
“I don’t want to,” he begins in a hiss, barely audible, leaning down to brush the words over the top of my ear, “use you as a feeder because I care about you, okay?”
I turn ever so slightly to look at him, at his eyes, now glinting with flecks of what I can only describe as anger.
“You’ve said that already,” I retort in the same tone, trying desperately to keep a handle on my feelings.
“You’re not getting it.”
“Then enlighten me–”
He presses me against the bookshelves. I huff in surprise, but the sound is stolen by his mouth on mine, and he’s kissing me.
He pulls away, breathless after nothing more than an aggressive peck. I’m a champion of the unexpected. At least, I thought I was. I study astrophysics, for Goddess’ sake. Everything is unexpected and constantly changing–always. I’m proven wrong more often than not. I’m being proved wrong right now.
“Stop thinking so hard,” he says under his breath, and I meet his eyes.
“Excuse me?”
“You heard me.”
“Alex–”
He kisses me again, and it’s very different from the last time. He bears his weight into my body, my back flush with the shelves, books rattling with the impact, and I float into a blissful, foreign kind of brainlessness that has my arms weaving around his shoulders and my fingers pressing down into the taut muscles I’ve been thinking about for days–weeks, if I’m honest.
“Turn off your mind for a fucking minute,” he says against my lips.
I pull away to look up at him. “What are you saying?”
“You’re overthinking everything. You’re not hearing me.”
“I–”
“I don’t want to use you again,” he says sternly, and then he’s picking me up, his hands warm and splayed wide under my ass, pressing me against the stacks, “because I like you, Skye. I’d like to explore that without the fact that I’m a fucking vampire getting in the way of it.”
We’re nose to nose now. His lips brush mine, but he’s breathing heavily, like he’s ready to snap. Like he’s been pacing for days, frustrated and angry–with me or himself. Probably both.
“I knew the second you started fussing about me feeding on you again that this would happen, and you’d be obsessed, and I’d feel like I was taking advantage of you, and now all I can think about is you, and Skye, you have no idea how much you’re on my mind. It’s impossible.”
A liquid kind of heat melts down my spine. My breath quivers when I try to take a much-needed breath, but his lips brush mine again, leaving me wanting.
“There are so many reasons for me to stop this,” he whispers, his voice deeper and hungrier than I’ve ever heard it. “This can’t happen between us, but fuck, I want it to happen.”
My heart threatens to burst out of my chest when he dips his head to press his lips against my neck, inhaling deeply.
“I want you for other things,” he says against my skin. “But I want you willing and not under the haze of being a feeder. I can’t have both.”
My brain is useless. I need a full factory reset to feel even remotely normal at this point.
His tongue slides over my neck, and I grip his shoulders for dear life. Fireworks of pleasure burrow deep in my belly, and I can’t take it.
“Please,” I murmur when his mouth meets mine again. “I want both–”
“Dr. Scarlett?” A voice rings out a few stacks over that I don’t recognize. “Shit. I swore I saw him up here.”
Alex slowly, carefully, sets me down but doesn’t pull away. His mouth grazes my forehead in what I think is a kiss, something small, tender, and silently apologetic.
Two undergrad students I recognize from my Physics 101 class during the spring semester step into the light at the end of the aisle, and Alex moves like the wind, like the speed of sound, turning to block me from view.
One moment, my heart is beating out of control, and the next?
I really hate coming back to my senses.
This was too public. Now I have even more questions, more confusing thoughts to unravel. I linger behind Alex, pretending to pick through the volumes of books on chemistry I doubt I’ll ever need to review, until the students walk away with the promise that Alex will join them to discuss some scientific principle they’re struggling with, and Alex turns back to me.
“We’ll talk later,” he says, and when I meet his eyes, I see hints of the same doubts I’m currently feeling.
I watch him walk away. He hesitates at the end of the aisle, running his fingers through his hair. He’s struggling, too. I can sense that. The tension between us is thick enough a knife wouldn’t be able to slice through it, and I know, without a shadow of a doubt, this might not be possible for us.
He’s a vampire. I’m a shifter, and most importantly, a mystic.
But if we’re just having sex? Could that be a bubble of delusion we can stay in, getting what we both want, what we haven’t been able to voice?
Or is this something more?
He doesn’t knock on my door later.
He doesn’t show up at all.
The only presence that graces me is an email sent at 2:00 A.M. to all staff and facility regarding an emergency meeting at 6:00 A.M. sharp.