Bitten

22 #2

But I can’t find evidence for that. I can’t find evidence of anything .

I look under her bed, roam my gaze over her open wardrobe.

There are jewels, and wings fluttering on the backs of beautiful gowns, and more pictures of Nettie framed above her vanity, but it’s not evidence .

There is nothing from the beach. No threatening letters or bombs.

A low growl rumbles in my throat, and the axe freezes in midair, then angles itself slightly toward me.

I glare at it. Only once I’m good and frozen and silent does it resume its guarding waltz from wall to wall.

I need to leave.

This idea was ridiculous. I’m not getting anywhere, and Anthony could have alerted the whole castle to my crime by now. I spin around on my belly for the door—but my gaze snags on that vanity again. On a bottle of congealed scarlet in front of it.

It would almost resemble a liquor bottle if I hadn’t seen the contents before.

Glancing briefly at the axe, I begin to army crawl toward it.

Slowly. Surely. And when the axe is floating in the opposite direction, I snag the bottle and turn it over in my hand.

Though the glass remains steady and firm outside, the contents inside slosh and release a gory burst of perfume.

It smells like blood.

I swallow hard, dripping a single bead of red onto my finger.

This could doom me, or confirm my every fear. But nothing happens.

It continues streaming down, down, as any other liquid would. No. No no no. It has to be evidence. This has to be proof. I watch the droplet slide over my wrist, and—my heart leaps into my throat. It sinks into my skin. And vanishes.

Holy shit.

I stare at the bottle, remembering those words that’d been scrawled on me: GET OUT BITCH. It was Evie. She’d done it. This is her fault. The threats, the beach… It all points to Celeste’s death.

Claws explode from my hands. The bottle rolls from my grasp, and the axe spots it—swoops down to shatter the glass.

I don’t care. Not about the axe or Evie’s stupid unfilled maps or even her friendship with Nettie.

Rage whips through me, enthralling and vicious as always, but this time—this time I don’t stop it.

I will wait here for her to return, and then I will pounce. I will fight . Even if I lose, I will make her bleed. I know I can make her bleed. That’s all I want right now. To make her hurt. To make her pay.

But right as I stand, ready to rip the axe from the air and snap it over my knee, someone yanks open the door and grabs me by my shoulders, hauling me out into the hall.

Evie.

My fangs descend.

Evie.

I don’t think; I react. That uncontrollable rage explodes inside me, and I can’t control it.

I don’t want to control it. Snarling, I snap my teeth at whatever body part I can.

There’s a low, masculine hiss, and then I’m thrown into an adjacent room.

Tossed onto the ground. The door slams shut, and Calix steps in front of it.

“What the fuck is wrong with you?” he growls, clutching his shoulder.

Blood seeps between his fingers from where I bit him, but that’s less surprising than the sight of his bare chest. The towel wrapped around his waist. The dampness of a bath clinging to his skin, and a scar on his side that only serves to further emphasize his muscles.

Eight abs, more defined than any I’ve seen before.

I seethe on his charcoal-gray rug, forcing my gaze back to his face.

“You bit me,” he says.

I lick my fangs, willing to bite him again.

“Hart. Snap out of it.”

But rage has consumed me. I am no longer myself. I don’t remember my own name, let alone that I should be frightened of this version of me.

“I. Can’t.”

I climb onto my knees. My breath throttles me until my lungs feel like bombs set to detonate.

My knuckles break—snap. And my head… It pounds .

I want to kill Evie. I must kill Evie. I shut my eyes.

The smallest, quietest part of my brain, the part that remains human, begs me to stop.

I’ll get myself hung. I’ll miss any chance I have at revenge if I lose it here.

In front of Calix. This isn’t me. I am better than this.

But—I’m not. I am rage. I am vengeance. I want Evie to bleed.

Calix drops into a crouch beside me, golden gaze burning as he studies me. I can’t meet his eyes. I can hardly breathe. My bones crunch. I cry out from the brute force of unimaginable pain and hunch over, pressing my twisting palms to the floor.

Calix sets a hand on my back. “Let it out,” he says. “You’re past the point of containing the wolf.”

“No.” No no no. Fire blisters my veins. Boils my blood. “I c-can’t.…”

“Have you fully transformed since the Drowning?”

I shake my head. I’ve managed to avoid it for weeks now. Every single time we’re expected to transform, I’ve slipped away and escaped. I don’t want to be this . I don’t want to be a monster.

Calix curses. “You need to. All your emotions are building and building, and if you don’t release them, you’ll shatter. You will implode .” He leans closer. “It’s like steam, Hart. You have to release it.”

“I want to kill ,” I gasp.

My spine splits. My skin starts to flay. A sob rips from my throat. It feels like death. Like hell.

No no no no no no.

“I know you do,” he says, and his voice sounds sad. “But I’ll stop you before you can. That’s my job.”

My neck snaps up, and I look at him with that red haze clouding his perfect, bare skin. “You don’t even spar.”

His lips twitch in an almost smile. “That you’ve seen.”

I shred the rug with ten claws, grappling for restraint with a soft whine. He understands immediately. “I can take you, Hart. Change. I won’t let you out of this room.”

I can’t contain it anymore. The anguish, the pain, the fury—it bursts from me like a geyser. I explode into a wolf, and Calix does the same. Though his transformation is faster, and he doesn’t scream.

Any human reservations I had before fall from me instantly.

Calix blocks the doorway, nearly the height of the door and double the width of it, and I growl at him, still tasting his blood on my tongue, while his hackles rise to meet the sound. He shakes his midnight fur. His lips curl into a morbid grin. His body language challenges, Try me .

I tilt my head. Observing. Calix is bigger than me.

Wider. But his stance is wider too, and heavy things are often slower.

I’ll be quick. I won’t fight fair. I launch myself at him with a sudden surge of movement.

If I blow through him, or if I trick him into moving from the door, I can get to Evelyn.

I can rend her head from her neck.

Calix doesn’t move. He also doesn’t react to the collision of fangs and bones. A wall of adamant, he stands perfectly still with a low, bloodcurdling snarl even as I swipe at him. As I draw blood. Move. I throw myself into his side. Hit him like a sack of bricks. Just move.

But he won’t. He won’t even buckle.

It’s my turn to snarl. I snap at his wolfish neck with my fangs in warning, and he only gazes at me. Through me. His eyes flash gold. And then—red. Only for a moment. Only for long enough that I lose my breath, my footing, and stumble a step.

Fuck.

I right myself, but it’s too late. He’s too cold and calculated to miss the blunder. With an easy pounce of his monstrous body, he slams me to the ground. Gold eyes now. Still gold. He leaps atop me, pressing me harder into the floor.

I stare up at him, and he glares back. Immovable. Unfazed.

I don’t know how long we remain like that.

Him baring down on me, holding me in place even as I buck and scratch.

Riding out the storm of my emotions as they rattle us both.

But after minutes—or maybe hours—the emotions begin to ebb and flow.

Like the tides of the beach, they retreat.

And it’s nice. Peaceful even. My claws retract.

But this isn’t the smoldering, enraged explosion of transforming into the wolf.

It’s a slow melting. A painful restoration.

I cry out—a howl into a shriek—and Calix throws himself off me.

Grabbing his bedding with his fangs, he tosses a thin sheet over me as my body shudders back into its bare, human form.

The remnants of my combat clothes litter the ground around us.

God. I shiver beneath the thin sheet and grab my aching skull as the remainders of my rage subside. I’m an idiot.

Calix changes in a split second without even a groan, and I hear the rustling of pants and a shirt. I try so very hard not to remember what his body looked like when I’d come in. When I’d bitten him. What have I done? “Calix—”

“Don’t,” he says, sounding gruff as ever. “Not transforming was stupid of you.”

“I didn’t know that; no one told me. But—”

“We don’t need to discuss this further.”

I peek out from under the sheet. He buttons his shirt slowly, fingers deft as they crest over his abs and up to his chest. Sinclair might be an angel, but Calix is a devil.

A brutal, handsome beast. The muscles in his back ripple with his every movement.

He holds my fate in his hands, and he knows it.

I’m not above begging. For Celeste, I would get on my knees and sob.

“Evie has been threatening me,” I blurt out. “I found proof in her room. She exploded glass on me this morning.”

“You healed,” he says, sounding uncaring as ever. “Didn’t you?”

“Yes, but what if next time I don’t ?”

He doesn’t respond for a moment, and silence itches like a rash. “Evelyn Lee is the future queen of this court and a princess in her own right. If we want proof of her wrongdoings, it will have to be concrete and undeniable. You are nobody, Hart.”

The truth behind his words lessens their sting, but the way he says them… As if he’s sizing me up, as if I’m the threat here and she isn’t, worries me. “Are you going to tell them?” I whisper. “The rest of court? The… the prince?”

Oh god. After the moment Sin and I shared—however wrong it was—I can’t bear to think he’ll see me like this. Can’t bear to imagine him watching me gutted.

Calix’s brows furrow. His Adam’s apple bobs as he swallows.

Please. Please don’t turn me in , I think. He speaks before I can beg. “No. I won’t tell them. This time.”

He glances at me, running a hand through his hair, and though his predatory nature has vanished, that strength remains in his coiled muscles, in the tension of his jaw.

I think back to that moment in the hallway again, with him and Sin.

With the people whispering about us both and the mystery of his lineage forever lingering in the air.

The maids avoid him. People seem frightened of him. But why?

“Wh-who are you, Calix?” I manage to ask, rising onto my feet with his sheet wrapped around me. “Who are you really?”

I don’t know if he answers because he wants to shut me up, or because he’s finally ready to explain. But he leans against his door and says, “I am Calix Severi, son of Cora Severi, Sybil’s sister and blood traitor to the court.”

Blood traitor. Blood traitor.

“Wh—”

“You remember the laws of our court?” he asks and waits for me to list them.

Once I do, he nods. “My mother broke every single one. She fell in love—and exposed our court—to a human. She bit him in order to turn him without permission. And… when she was caught…” His gaze drops.

Pain narrows his eyes. “She killed everyone she could reach. Friends. Werewolves. Cora Severi was the ultimate traitor. And—she was my mother. Her human lover was my father.”

Oh.

I… I don’t know what to say, and suddenly it’s as if I’m back in my high school, standing in front of my English class and trying to deliver a soliloquy. I can’t remember words. I can’t think . “Calix, I’m… I’m so sorry.”

He scoffs, plunging a hand into one of his drawers and pulling out a huge black shirt.

“Don’t be. She deserved what she got.” He hands me the clothing and turns around, and I’m left to assume that I should wear it.

So I do. Only once I’m clothed—when the rest of me is hidden under his shirt—do I clear my throat.

“What was her punishment?”

“Are you dressed?”

“Yes.”

Calix turns again, and his gaze lingers for a second too long on my bare legs.

I cross my arms, and he blinks rapidly, as though remembering himself.

“They stripped her of any remaining titles and banished her. Made her a Lone Wolf,” he says.

“She was left to die, but before she could, she had me. Queen Sybil took me in as a guard to her son. Protector of the crown prince—it’s my life duty to keep Sinclair safe.

A light punishment for my mother’s crimes. ”

Sin’s guard. A punishment. I hate his honesty now. That he believes what he’s saying. “You’re not your mother, Calix.”

“No. I’m not.” He steps toward me. “Because I work every day to do the right thing. I obey orders. I follow the law. I take this court seriously, and so should you. You’re at two strikes.

You almost lost it in Combat, and you lost it here.

” That predatory gaze scorches through mine.

“If it happens again, if you can’t control your rage, I’ll take you out.

No questions asked. You’re a threat, Vanessa, and my job is to dispose of threats. ”

The statement flickers in my belly, hot and violent, even as his honesty soothes my chest. Heat ripples off him. Danger. “O-okay,” I stutter. “Two strikes.”

He ruffles his black hair, and an uncomfortable silence stretches between us.

Perhaps it’s because he’s inches away from me, and the only thing on my body is his shirt.

Or perhaps it’s because he could still change his mind.

He could turn me in right now and watch me flayed like the duke and duchess Sin told me about.

Their tongues ripped out, their hands torn off, and their skin peeled from their bones.

I wonder which is worse. That punishment or banishment. Wonder still which one I’ll receive when all is said and done.