Sara’s POV
I’m sitting in the living room sipping a cup of tea when the door opens and Christian appears. It’s sometime past seven o’clock, and Levi is on his phone on the balcony.
Christian is wearing a pair of green scrubs, and I panic when I notice they are spotted with blood stains. I place my tea cup on the table and jump to my feet.
“Are you hurt?” I ask as I head over to meet him. “You are bleeding.”
He frowns and looks down at himself. “That’s not mine. I’ve been helping in the infirmary.”
Relief pours over me. “Oh. How is Kai?”
“He left,” he says, stepping past me and towards the bathroom.
“Left?”
He opens the door to the bathroom. “His parents came to get him earlier.”
“Did he wake up?”
He gives a stiff nod before disappearing into the bathroom. I go back to my seat and pick my tea cup. But all my attention is on the bathroom door, waiting for him to come back out.
About ten minutes later when Levi walks back into the room, he still hasn’t reappeared.
Levi looks around. “I thought I heard Chris?”
“He is in the bathroom,” I tell him.
He nods and drops into the armchair.
“He has been in there for, like, ten minutes,” I tell him. “Maybe you should check up on him.”
Levi looks towards the bathroom, considers for a few seconds, and then gets to his feet. He knocks on the door. “Christian?”
There is no reply. He knocks again and then tries the door. It’s locked. He presses his ear to the door. “It’s quiet,” he mumbles.
My heart jumps to my throat as I head over. Oh no. Ugly scenes rush through my brain. No, it can’t be. I would have felt it.
Levi pounds his fist into the door. “Bro, did you sleep in there or what? I need to go.”
Before my fears can escalate, there’s a click, and then the door opens. And I’m staring at a wet, half-naked Christian, with only a white towel around his hips. My core clenches. I didn’t even think any dirty thoughts!
“All yours,” he says, pushing past Levi and heading towards his room. He is gone from my sight too soon.
It isn’t until I look back at Levi that I realise my reaction to Christian didn’t go unnoticed. His heated crimson gaze is focused on me.
I wait for it. For his outburst and accusations. For the peace we have maintained all day to crumble to the ground like a sand castle in a storm.
But he says nothing. Just turns around and heads towards Christian’s room. He doesn’t bother knocking before opening the door and slipping inside.
I press my palm over my pounding heart. Is he mad? Will he ignore me now?
They don’t leave Christian’s room for half an hour, and I spend that time wondering what they could possibly be talking about. And it occurs to me that the two might be closer than I thought they were. I didn’t think they had a relationship beyond being roommates, but now I think they could actually be friends.
Levi reappears first, and I wait for Christian to follow behind. He doesn’t. Is he avoiding me? I retrace our conversation when he showed up earlier, and his actions.
He didn’t seem particularly interested in me, he didn’t look me in the eyes, and he was in a hurry to get into the bathroom. And when he left the bathroom, it was like I wasn’t standing right there, next to Levi. He didn’t even glance at me.
“Can we talk in my room?” Levi’s voice interrupts my internal assessment of Christian’s attitude towards me.
“Yeah,” I reply, wondering what it’s about. If he wants to talk in his room, that means it’s serious. And personal.
He opens his door and steps aside to let me walk in first. Then he steps in after me and closes the door behind him. My eyes roam over his room. It looks much the same as mine.
“Will you mate with me?”
I turn around to face him, my eyes wide. “What?” That’s the last thing I expected him to say.
“I can protect you from Blood Moon,” he says, “if you come with me to Silver Creek. And I can only keep them from doing anything about it if you are my mate.”
When I just stare at him, he says, “Your infraction was minor. As long as you can sever your ties with them, they can no longer discipline you. The only way to do that is to join another pack.”
He is asking me to be his mate so that he can help me get away from Blood Moon? When he said he would help me with my escape, I didn’t imagine this would be his plan.
“But you don’t want me,” I tell him. He thinks I’m promiscuous, and he made it clear from the first day we met that he cannot stand that.
“Whenever did I say that?” His eyes flash. “You are the one who refused to accept me, over and over again.”
He is right. Sure, I’ve expressed my reluctance to complete our bond before. But that was because I didn’t want to do it blindly, and his controlling nature didn’t help.
But now, he is throwing me a lifeline. A literal lifeline. Alone, I cannot escape before I’m transferred to prison. Even if I did, how long would I be able to hide from Victor?
Would I live my entire life on the run, hiding like a criminal? I didn’t do anything wrong. Why should my entire life get ruined because of some egotistical asshole?
Mating with Levi, going with him to Silver Creek… It’s an express ticket out of my troubles. Anyone in my position would jump at the opportunity.
“You said you wanted to get to know me,” he says. “Fine, let’s do that. We don’t have to formalise our bond until you are sure you want to be with me.”
He is willing to do that? If he really means that, what’s the reason for my hesitance?
“What if I don’t like you?” I ask. Can he give me my freedom but accept getting nothing in return? Why would he go to all this trouble to protect me from Victor if he doesn’t want anything in return? If he found out I have a bond with Christian and Kai, and what I almost did with Christian last night, would he still be making this offer?
He moves close until there’s barely any space between us. “Do you want me? Are you attracted to me?”
His eyes lower to my lips and then lift back to mine. I can barely breathe, and my pulse is going off the charts. And most of that blood my heart is suddenly working too hard to pump seems to be going south. And none of it to my brain.
His nostrils flare, and I know he can smell my arousal. I don’t even have the sense to feel embarrassed.
I swallow. “We have a bond. Of course, I am.”
“Do you hate it? Being attracted to me whether you want it or not?”
Have I thought that it was a nuisance? Many times. But have I hated it? Wished I wasn’t attracted to him? Looked at him and thought he is the kind of guy I would rather not be attracted to if I could help it?
Not once.
“No.” I don’t mean to say it out loud. Saying it feels like showing him all my cards. But I can’t think of a reason I wouldn’t want him to know. Probably because my brain is oxygen-deprived.
“As long as you want me,” he says, getting closer, angling his head, “I can make you like me,” his lips are a hair’s breadth from mine “I can make you forget all others.”
And then he is kissing me.
This should feel wrong. I should be disgusted at myself for wanting this. Or, at least, mortified. It hasn’t been twenty-four hours since I was with Christian, dying for him to do to me everything I want from Levi right now.
And yet, I feel none of those things. It doesn’t feel wrong, I don’t feel like a dirty tramp, and I’m not ashamed of my reaction.
The only things I feel are his lips on mine, his tongue opening me up, his hands on my body. The burning desire coursing throughout my body.
Levi’s lips are strong, demanding, and insistent against mine. They are also amazingly soft, as if they were made for kissing. His tongue sweeps in and teases mine, and then he is twirling it around mine and eliciting sensations I never thought were possible to get from a kiss.
And then he retreats, gives me a less invasive kiss, and separates our lips. He turns his head and trails his lips up my cheek, towards my ear. “I’ll not touch you again,” he says, “until you accept me as your mate.”