Page 41 of Blood Oath
Nausea curdling my stomach, I rush to the opening, ready to step through the door and find Maven?—
But I promptly step on a box of chocolates.
I scowl and pick up the crushed box. Someone must have left this out here for her.
“Just because there’s no door doesn’t excuse you from knocking.”
Blinking, I realize Maven is watching me through the doorway with her poker face intact. She has a bag slung over her shoulder and shoes on, standing like she was just about to exit before I so gracefully slammed into her magical defenses.
The sight of her melts the tension away from my temples and chest. The ringing is gone. The shadows are empty. I breathe again. Unfortunately, my godsdamned erection returns with a vengeance—even though she doesn’t smell like blood anymore.
She must have showered.
Gods above, the thought of Maven in the shower is not helping with the painful pressure against the fly of my pants.
I clear my throat. “I was just…”
“Stalking me. At night.”
“Yes,” I admit with a sigh, unable to tell anything but the truth. But then I notice she’s dressed in day clothes, about to leave her room well after midnight. That’s…odd.
Some might even say suspicious.
“Were you going somewhere?”
“Not that it’s your business, but yes.”
“Where?” I pry anyway.
An anti-legacy sympathizer meeting, perhaps? voices whisper in the back of my mind.
She doesn’t miss a beat, holding my eye contact with exasperation staining her voice. “In case you didn’t notice, my door is in splinters because the assholes I rejected think they’re entitled to break into my personal space when they don’t know my whereabouts. You try sleeping in a dorm with a gaping hole for all passersby’s viewing pleasure.”
The idea of sleeping where anyone could peek in sets off my paranoia—but the idea of them being able to watch Maven while she’s in a vulnerable sleeping state?
Unacceptable.
“You’ll sleep in our quintet apartment tonight.”
“Hard pass.”
She steps out around me, making her way down the hall, but I keep up easily. “Pass? Where else would you stay so late?”
“Kenzie offered a spare room in her apartment.”
My keeper staying with another quintet? I don’t care how much she trusts her shifter friend. The others might slit her throat in her sleep to get a head start on the quintet rankings next semester.
That thought has me reaching out to grip her arm before I can think better. “Absolutely fucking not.”
Maven halts and faces me slowly, something flaring in her eyes that I haven’t seen before. Something intoxicatingly dark and…unexpectedly dangerous. It’s as if some level of her facade has slipped, and she’s rearing her true personality for the first time.
When she looks pointedly at my hand on her sleeve, I slowly remove it. Baelfire was right. Touch is a trigger for her and yet another thing I need to understand.
“Let’s get something straight, Crane. I give exactly zero fucks if you don’t like where I rest my head. Whatever interrogation you have in mind to try to understand my motives for rejecting all of you, it will wait. This has been a shit day, and I’m exhausted.”
She’s not at all the reserved wallflower we all initially took her for.
But although her tone is savage and her glare could kill, something in my chest softens as I study her. I can tell she truly is tired. That’s not a lie. I can’t stand that she has no place to stay tonight because of those bastards’ reactions to her earlier absence. I’ll take care of her door myself.
