Chapter 16: Forged in Blood: Chapter 14

Ophelia tucks a lock of pink hair behind her ear, her brows pinched together as she peers down at the textbook on her lap. She sits cross-legged on the grass beneath the shade of a tree on the edge of Gaea’s Green. Alone. Friendless. And if I have my way, that’s exactly how she’ll stay. Much easier to sneak into her dorm room and make her life a misery when she has no one else to look out for her.

After we met Ophelia, the professor told us about her intended roommate suffering a nasty case of getting her head trampled by one of the wild colts who roam the mountain ranges near here a few weeks before the semester started. What a way to go. I was trampled by a horse once. It was after I was turned, so I was fine, but it still hurt like a motherfucker. Whatever happened and whether it was an accident or not, it worked out better for us. It’s easier to keep a close eye on a lonely little pyromaniac that nobody cares about.

My lips twitch as I saunter over to her. She keeps her head bent over her book, her painted fingernail running along the lines of text.

“You’re such a fucking nerd, Pyro.” I flop down beside her on the grass.

She glances up and rolls her eyes at me. “What the hell do you want, Axl?”

I look out over the quad in a display of disinterest. “I’m bored.”

“So go be bored somewhere else.” She huffs and refocuses on her book. At least she pretends to, but I don’t miss the spike in her heart rate. And it isn’t fear—Ophelia Hart isn’t afraid of me. Not even a little. And that intrigues the fuck out of me.

“Why do that when I can annoy the hell out of you instead?”

Her pupils are blown wide when she looks up at me. “If you’re not careful, people are going to start thinking you like me.”

I narrow my eyes, allowing them to rake over every inch of her. Her perky-as-fuck tits. The curve of her hips and her thighs that I’ve imagined having wrapped around my neck more than once. “Me … like you?” I snort a laugh. “Nobody is gonna believe that for a second, nerd, and you know it.”

She blinks away tears. Why does hurting her make my cock so hard?

Malachi comes up from behind me and sits beside Ophelia, nudging her shoulder with his. “So this is where you’re hiding.”

Her pulse spikes again, and a faint smile tugs at the corners of her lips when she looks at him. But her smile turns to a groan when Xavier walks up and stands over her with his hands on his hips, and I can’t help but smirk.

“What the fuck are we doing?” Xavier asks.

“Leaving so I can get back to my book.” She holds up her textbook, waving it for emphasis.

“Nah.” I lie back on the grass with my hands behind my head. “I think I’m gonna stay right here. Such a nice spot.”

I close my eyes and smile, aware of Xavier snickering as he lies down beside me.

“Well, I’m going to study.” Ophelia huffs, feigning indignation, but she isn’t fooling anyone. We can all sense the excitement sizzling through her veins. She pretends to hate us as much as we pretend to hate her.

“I’ll just sit right here and watch,” Malachi says, and I open one eye to see him leaning back against the tree beside her.

It really is a nice spot, and we’re all silent for a few minutes before there’s another unexpected spike in Ophelia’s heart rate. I open one eye and check to see if Malachi’s doing something to her, but he’s simply sitting as he was before, his eyes focused ahead of him rather than on Ophelia.

“Why does that always happen when you see that girl?” he asks.

Ophelia startles. “What? Who?”

Malachi turns to face her, and I roll my eyes at the concerned expression on his face. “That girl from your high school. The one you said was mean to you.”

The slender curve of her throat works as she swallows. “Why does what happen?”

“Your pulse spikes. You feel …” His nose wrinkles. “Not scared, but uneasy. Anxious?”

“H-how do you know that? Can you read my mind or something?” She clutches her book to her chest like that might stop him if he could.

Malachi laughs. “Not exactly, sweet girl.”

“So how?”

He sighs. “We can read people. If they’re in close proximity, anyway.”

She puts her book down, angling her body so I can no longer see her face. I close my eyes and listen, not only to the sound of her voice, but her racing heart and that intoxicating life-giving blood pumping through her veins. “How?” she asks him.

“We can hear your heartbeat and feel the vibration of your pulse. And we can sense emotion. Not all emotion, but when someone has a strong reaction to something, it changes their scent. So we can literally smell fear. Anxiety. Excitement.”

“So you can smell my emotions?”

He laughs again. “Kind of. It’s a whole lot of small things added together.”

“But only if I’m close by?”

“Yeah. Unless we bite you.”

I stifle a groan as an image of sinking my fangs into her juicy flesh sears itself in my brain like the negative of a photograph. What I wouldn’t give to bite our little pyro.

“And if you were to bite me?” Her breathing grows faster. “Could you read my mind then?”

“No. But if we bite someone, we can tune into their emotions, their feelings and intentions, wherever they are.”

“Like forever? Like you’re in their head? How many people have you bitten?” Her voice goes up at least two octaves.

“Not in their head exactly. And we have to actively tune into them. Most people we wouldn’t bother with because we have no need, but we could if we wanted to.”

Find out more about the chick from high school, I tell him through our bond.

“And every time you see that girl, Penelope, you have the same intense reaction.”

“Oh,” she murmurs.

“What did she do to you, sweet girl?” His tone is soft, and I can picture him smiling at her in that reassuring way he has about him.

She barks out a harsh laugh. “You don’t want to know.”

“Try me.”

I figure she must glance at Xavier and me because Kai assures her we’ve probably fallen asleep and that we aren’t listening. Whether she believes him or not, she answers. “She was kind of a bully. Scratch that, a lot of a bully.”

“Just to you or to everyone?” Malachi probes.

She pauses, then drops her voice to little more than a whisper. “Mostly to me. I grew up in foster care, so I moved a lot. There were always established friend groups at whatever school I went to. It was hard to fit in, and because I didn’t have cool stuff, I guess it was easier to single me out.”

“Sounds tough.”

“Yeah, but I usually made a friend or two, you know? Except at Caulfield High. It was … I dunno. Penelope took a dislike to me on my first day when I accidentally spilled a smoothie on her new white sneakers. She demanded that I pay for new ones, but my foster parents didn’t have that kind of money. I offered to save up and pay her back, but she said that wasn’t good enough.” She’s quiet for a long moment, but just before I tell Kai to get her to keep going, she continues. “After that, she made it her mission to make my life miserable. She was queen bee, so nobody dared to risk being my friend. And I guess I could have lived with all of that, but …”

She stops talking, and the scent of her despair fills the space around her.

I open my eyes and watch Malachi put a hand on her arm. She shivers at his touch. “But what, Ophelia?” he asks.

“Then I got the part of Lady Macbeth in our high school production, and she wanted it. I guess I didn’t realize how badly until opening night, when she humiliated me in front of the entire school.”

The wave of shame that washes over her is so palpable I can taste it. I glance at Xavier, and he frowns like he felt it too.

“And after that there was a fire and they accused me of starting it and I got expelled and had to go to therapy and live in a group home.” She vomits the words like she can’t wait to be done with it all.

Malachi lets out a low whistle. “No wonder you hate her.”

Ophelia sniffs and swats a tear from her cheek. “I never said I hated her.”

“Then I’ll hate her for you,” Malachi says with a wink.

I roll my eyes before closing them again. He is so fucking soft for her.