The night had settled again by the time Lina slipped back outside.
She thought he was gone. Thought she'd imagined half of what had just happened. Her skin still tingled where the air had felt heavier where his presence had pressed too close without ever touching her.
She walked quickly. Not quite running. Her bag hugged tight against her side as if it could shield her from whatever strange current still hummed through the campus air.
The path back to her studio felt colder now. Emptier. But just as she reached the courtyard behind the art wing, a flicker of movement stopped her.
He was there.
As if the dark itself had reshaped and stepped forward.
She froze.
He had circled quite literally. Came full loop around the building and now stood before her again. The same unreadable expression. The same unnatural stillness. And still, he hadn't touched her. Hadn't even taken a real step closer.
They just stood there.
Face to face in the moonlit courtyard, framed by silence.
His eyes hadn't changed. Still those bottomless, solid black-purple orbs. Not a speck of white. They seemed to drink in the moonlight without reflecting a thing.
Lina held her ground, barely. She lifted her chin slightly and met his gaze head-on.
If you're going to kill me, fine, she thought. But I'm not going to look away first.
A small shred of dignity. Pride in the face of the unknown.
Until he moved.
Not a lunge. Not a leap.
He just smiled.
Or what passed for a smile.
It wasn't human. Not even close. A flash of teeth too white, too sharp, too deliberate. Like something that had practiced the expression without ever really understanding it. Combined with those eyes and the still-present growl vibrating from somewhere in his chest it made him look like something pulled from myth.
A demon.
A beast.
Lina blinked, surprised to feel something else creeping in under the fear disappointment?
Where were the fangs? Shouldn't he have fangs?
According to Blood, vampires were kind of overrated. The real power was in wizards or immortals who dealt in blood rituals. The kind that bound. The kind that claimed.
Then came the sound again.
A low, gritty rumble from deep within his chest that rose and rolled through the space between them like thunder. It made her breath hitch for the second time.
He's laughing?
She narrowed her eyes. Seriously?
It wasn't loud. It wasn't cruel. It was more like... something finding amusement where no one else would. Like a wolf grinning before it decided what to do with its prey.
He stopped just as abruptly as he'd started. And then, without warning, his eyes locked onto hers again, and he spoke.
"Mine."
Just one word. But the weight behind it dropped into her stomach like lead.
Lina's brain stuttered. Her breath caught. She tried to piece together the storm of emotions that flickered across his otherwise stoic face relief, joy, regret, frustration. All of it in an instant. Then gone.
Her mind scrambled to interpret it. That voice, low and rough and too calm, replayed in her ears again and again.
Mine.
And then came the rage.
What the actual hell?
Mine? Who even says that? What was she, a lost puppy? A sandwich?
She straightened, her voice shaky but fierce. "What's that supposed to mean?"
His answer was to lean down until his face was just inches from hers. She caught the heat from his skin again, too warm, like a fever. His expression was blank, but his eyes; they burned.
"It means exactly what I say," he said, voice low and drawn-out, each word carefully enunciated like a ritual. "You. Are. Mine."
Lina's heart thudded so hard in her chest she was sure he could hear it.
So much for being a caveman. The way he spoke was slow, deliberate, his accent rich and strange lilting at the ends, but edged with something hard. She couldn't place it. Couldn't place him.
Her thoughts scrambled for logic. Was this some cult thing? A prank? Some elaborate performance art?
He smiled again.
Too close.
He leaned in further; no space left between them and then his lips brushed the curve of her neck, so light she almost questioned if it even happened. A slow inhale followed, and she felt the breath against her skin like a brand.
It wasn't sexual.
It was claiming.
Like he was memorizing her.
Scent. Pulse. Presence.
The way an animal might when it marked its mate.
Her body froze, but her mind didn't. Her thoughts spun faster than her heartbeat.
No. No, no, no. This isn't happening. This is not some twisted bloodmate fantasy.
But even as she resisted the idea her body didn't pull away.
And she had no idea what that meant.
Not in the literal sense; she understood the mechanics. The symbolism. The implications of what he was doing. But emotionally?
She was lost.
Because no one had ever wanted her before.
Not like this.
Not with this primal certainty. Not with this terrifying, silent gravity that didn't ask it declared.
"You are mine."
It echoed in her head like a heartbeat. And maybe that's why hers stuttered beneath it.
She didn't even believe in that kind of thing. Bonding. Fated anything. Soulmates, blood ties, past lives; it was all fantasy. Fiction. Something safe to read about, not live. And yet... here she stood. Her skin burning from where his breath had ghosted across her neck, every hair standing on end.
And for the first time in a long time maybe ever Lina didn't know how she was supposed to feel.
She was shaken.
Deep down, somewhere past the fear, past the confusion, past the tiny treacherous spark of awe; there was a kind of grieving. Like something in her had shifted without permission. Like she'd lost something she didn't even know she was holding.
Control.
Distance.
The armor she had spent her entire life forging around her body, her voice, her silence.
She had spent so long becoming invisible. And now he was staring at her like she was the only thing in the world that had ever mattered.
And that should have pissed her off.
But it didn't.
It scared her.
Because if she mattered that much to something like him what did that make her?
Her breath came shallow now. Not panic. Not yet. Just... uncertainty. Raw and sharp and too big to process.
She took a tiny step back, and he let her.
That, more than anything, stunned her. Not his words. Not his teeth. Not his voice, or his eyes, or the heat still pulsing from his skin.
But the fact that he let her move.
The fact that he chose not to follow.
She looked at him again really looked.
There was still no expression on his face. No softness. No warmth.
And yet... his gaze wasn't hungry. Not exactly. It wasn't lust or obsession or even power she saw there.
It was recognition.
Like he already knew her. Like he'd found her after searching for too long.
And that terrified her in a way nothing else had.
Because what if he had?
What if she wasn't imagining it?
What if, in some twisted corner of the universe, something like this had been waiting for her all along?