Three nights after Warin’s last visit, he called me again to see if I had time to meet. And, too excited to pause to think, I happily agreed.
It was undoubtedly pretty pathetic, but after our few interactions and how little we truly knew each other, he already felt like the best friend I’d ever had.
He knocked on my front door not twenty minutes after sundown, and I opened it with a cheerful, “Hey!”
Only instead of responding, Warin grabbed me by the shoulders with his cold, strong hands, eyes scanning me with clear worry. “Liv, are you hurt?”
“What? No, I’m fine?” I squawked, alarm rising in my throat at his obvious concern. “Warin, what’s—?”
Without warning, his nostrils flared wide and his body went rigid as his gaze locked on my abdomen, pupils blown.
I squeaked, the sudden change in his demeanor sending flashes of the time I’d been bleeding in the cage in that creepy basement to the forefront of my mind. But before I managed to do anything else, he’d released me, the air around us swooshing. When I turned with a blink, he stood at the other end of my living room, clearly holding his breath.
“I’m very sorry,” he blurted before I could open my mouth to ask what the hell was going on. “It… caught me by surprise.”
“What caught you by surprise? Warin, what the hell—?” I blinked when his gaze flickered down to the level of my crotch, then swiftly up again. He might not have been capable of blushing, but he managed to look mortified nonetheless.
“Oh!” And just like that, it dawned on me that inviting your vampire buddy over when you’re on your period was probably not the best idea in the world.
I slapped both hands up to cover my face, too embarrassed to look at the poor vampire still holding his breath.
“I’m sorry. I didn’t think,” I said, still hiding behind my hands.
“No, I should have…” He didn’t finish the sentence, but the discomfort in his voice was unmistakable.
Pulling on every ounce of willpower I possessed, I lowered my hands. “You gonna be okay?”
Warin nodded once without looking at me.
* * *
The next hour was fantastically awkward.
Warin sat pressed as far back into the couch as he could get, looking like the epitome of the word “tense.”
I tried to pretend like nothing was amiss, but it was pretty damn hard to keep a conversation going when one party refused to breathe, let alone answer with anything longer than one-syllable.
One hour after he’d arrived, after I’d given up trying to get a conversation started and we’d sat in silence for a good fifteen minutes, Warin made up some excuse about work and left as swiftly as he could without actually running for the door.
* * *
After a week of complete silence, it was pretty obvious that Warin wasn’t planning on calling me again. I wasn’t entirely sure why it was such a big deal, embarrassing as it was that he could smell what was going on in my downstairs department, but it was pretty damn hurtful that I’d apparently been tossed to the side. Again.
For the first while, I’d try to tell myself he was probably just busy. But on the eighth day after “the second blood incident,” after I’d had to cover two full shifts because Skye was sick, forgotten my wallet so I hadn’t eaten all day, and my beloved Fiesta then refused to start… I’d officially had enough. Of everything.
Thanks to my lack of wallet, I had to walk all the way home on already tired and sore feet. It was dark, and it was freezing cold. I was in no mood for bullshit, and so more than an hour’s walking later, when I’d made it out of the busy center and into the blessedly quiet park running along a small river not too far from my home—I called Warin.
Because apparently, a certain vampire had been absent from health class the day they went over the female body and its grosser functions, and he was about to get schooled. Thankfully for both os us, only the raven lazily circling above my head would get to overhear me explaining basic female biology.
Warin picked up on the first ring.
“Liv, are you in trouble?” he greeted me.
Okay, so it was the first time I’d called him, but his assumption that I had to be stuck in another damsel-in-distress situation didn’t do much to ease my irritation.
“No, I’m not in trouble,” I snapped. “And just for the record, I’m perfectly capable of taking care of myself, thanks. I was just calling to see if the fact that I’m a woman means you’re now too freaked out to see me again.”
“Oh.”
Fabulous response.
“Because I can’t exactly help that, you know,” I continued, letting my irritation have free rein. “I had no idea it would be such a huge deal—I’m not exactly down with how human-vampire friendships are supposed to be handled around that time of the month, but I would have thought you would. I mean, I can’t be the first human female you’ve been around since you got your fangs.”
His sighed deeply into the phone, and I could practically hear him pinching the bridge of his nose. “Yes, I should have been prepared, and I apologi—"
His voice died when a coyote howled in the bushes not too far off the dirt path I was walking along.
“You’re outside? After dark?”
The urgency in his tone made me frown.
“Yes, I’m walking. My car broke down and I didn’t have money on me for the bus. Now, could we get back to why you’ve been avoiding me, please?”
“This is not the time!” he snapped. “You need to listen to me—" His voice died as another coyote howled, this time much closer.
“Liv, run!”
I blinked. “What?”
“You’re being stalked—I need you to get to the nearest house now.” I could hear from the background noises on his end that he was moving now. Fast.
My steps faltered as I looked around the dark woodland, trying to spot what the hell had him so worked up. The path was quiet, save the rustling from the bushes where the coyotes were hanging out. Even the raven was nowhere to be seen.
“There’s no one here but me and some coyotes. Warin, what—?”
“They’re not coyotes! Run!” His voice was a growl this time, and it made my heart race with fear and my feet pick up speed even if I didn’t know what I was supposedly running from.
“What do you mean ‘not coyotes’?” I insisted as I jogged along the path.
A crash of snapping branches only a few yards away made me jerk my head around, even as I continued running. Bright yellow eyes emerged from the bushes, but they were much too high up to belong to a coyote.
Wolf.
A growl rumbled from the creature, a threatening sound that made every hair on my body stand on end. It was answered with a howl from the other side of the path—from the bushes right by my side.
I squeaked as pure terror finally set in—and I sprinted as fast as I could down the path.
More growls sounded from behind me, as well as breaking foliage, but I didn’t stop to look this time. I ran as fast as I could toward the exit of the park, but even as I did, I knew it was too far away.