Ash sat on the floor next to her tattered uniform and her mobile phone. Her hands were clasped over her head as she stared hard at the floor in front of her. Her heart was racing in her chest and she was breathing hard just to keep up. With all the anger she felt, she wanted to run outside, find Hunter and take him apart with her bare hands.Ash wasn"t particularly athletic: she didn"t have a sport like her friends did. She wasn"t very strong. She did a lot of manual labor and menial ch.o.r.es at the orphanage but at Saint Blaise"s there was nothing to do but study and there was nothing to clean and no one to clean up after. She wasn"t out of shape since she jogged with her friends every other day, but having good cardio wasn"t the same as having actual combat skill.
While Ash had been involved in a few scuffles growing up at the orphanage, she couldn"t count any of it as real fight experience. They were just skinny kids brawling over broken toys and petty insults.
Hunter was different. He was nearly six feet tall, so he was more than a full head taller than Ash. He was a compet.i.tive athlete so he was definitely in shape. He was taller, bigger, and stronger than her, but one thing Ash had over him was that she was angrier.
It was irrational to even consider that she was capable of hurting Hunter based on the size difference alone, but Ash"s rage had fully clouded her judgment. This man had violated her, and he needed to know that she was not going to stand for it.
"Meet me at the back building," she replied to the unsaved number.
Ash grabbed Hunter"s vest and balled it up. As she laced up her tennis shoes, she counted the seconds going by.
"One, two, three, four, five---"
[If he gets to the back building in five minutes, I"m going to punch him in the face. Less than that, and I"m going to kick him in the nuts]
***
Hunter took his time toweling his hair after he received Ash"s message to meet up. He was eager to meet her, but he wasn"t sure what he was going to say to her. They"d had a delicious make out session at the library that morning and he didn"t want to ruin the nice new connection by broaching the topic of their shared "secret."
[What if she"s not into it? What if she rejects me? She"s the only one of her kind in the world and she"d already tried to run away from me once,] he thought, wavering.
Hunter combed his hair carefully. He was an attractive young man and he knew it. Even if he didn"t think he was attractive, strangers and peers had told him that he was a handsome man.
[You got this, man. You"re a good-looking guy. You already made out with her. She already likes you. Just talk to her,] he a.s.sured himself.
He jumped up and down a few times just to get his blood going.
Ash wasn"t just a girl. She was a werewolf, just like he was. If she agreed to it, they would pair bond and he would be an Alpha. A true Alpha.
Just the thought of it was enough to get him wired.
He was going to win her over. He would do anything to prove himself worthy of her. He would kill anything she wanted and bring it to her feet as an offering.
Little did Hunter know, as he walked to the back building unaware of Ash"s rage against him, he was the kill that she wanted lying at her feet.
***
Ash stood outside the back building, waiting for Hunter to arrive.
"---four hundred twelve, four hundred thirteen, four hundred fifteen---"
She had been standing by the back building for a little over five minutes. She stood with her back to the wall, feet slightly apart. She had balled her hands into fists and she was pounding steadily at the concrete wall behind her with her right hand.
She imagined the same hand bashing itself into Hunter"s skull, making a fist-shaped dent on the side of his pretty head. She wasn"t sure how she was going to do that from a standing position, but if she could push him down, she figured it would be possible. All the while her other fist was balled up and squeezing hard on Hunter"s leather vest.
Hunter took the longer way around and came around on the other side of the back building. He didn"t see her standing by the wall so he walked up to the door and pushed it open.
The back building used to be a small gym, back in the old days when the Academy was a much smaller inst.i.tution. As the Academy grew and more funding became available, larger buildings and facilities were built, leaving the old buildings to be used as storage.
"h.e.l.lo?" Hunter called out into the empty storage room. He fumbled for the light switch on the wall. Just as he felt something on the wall, he was suddenly pushed to the ground.
THUD!
Hunter fell hard on to the floor, his head narrowly missing the ground. He felt a hard kick on his shoulder, causing him to roll on to his back. Then he felt someone pulling him up by the front of his shirt and planting a knee in his stomach. He saw who it was and he stared back in surprise. It was Ash, and she was shoving his leather vest in his face.
"What is this?!" she yelled at him.
"It"s a vest?" he answered, confused.
"Why was this in my room?!"
"Babe, I don"t know---"
Ash felt a renewed surge of anger go through her when she heard Hunter call her "babe."
[This motherf*cker! He violated me and now he thinks he can call me babe?!]
She punched him in the face with her right fist, hard enough to draw blood from his nose. She yelled out as she hit him, screaming in a voice that was half-girl half-wolf.
Hunter felt the pain in his face as his head snapped to one side. Perhaps it was the pain or Ash"s strange guttural yell, but the wolf inside him woke up and quickly took over.
He quickly got up and pushed her off him with one hand. Ash started to fall sideways, but she quickly righted herself. She bared her teeth and growled at him, brown eyes flashing into a golden yellow. Hunter pushed her down and got on top of her, pinning down both of her arms, holding her down by the wrists. He growled back, showing his fangs. He blinked once and his eyes went from blue to amber. Bright red blood ran in a line from his bleeding nose to his lips.
Ash stared hard at him. She looked from his amber eyes to his sharp teeth, and her own growling stopped. Her eyes went from gold back to brown and her fangs regressed into human teeth.
"I . . . wh-what"s happening?" she whimpered.
A dark shadow crept over Hunter"s face.
Hunter shook his head, trying to clear away the shadow in his sight.
As the shadow left his vision, he looked down at Ash again. She was trembling with fear as she looked at his face. She looked like she was about to cry.
Hunter blinked his eyes back from amber to blue and inhaled sharply as he pulled his fangs in to become human teeth. He let go of her wrists and moved off of her.
Sitting sideways beside Ash, he pulled her up and propped her up against his knee, much like he did for her just a few nights before, back when they were in the woods.
Unlike in the woods, Ash curled her body into his, wrapping her hands around his neck, burying her head in his shoulder. And then she began to cry.
"Wh-what are w-we?" she asked, sobbing. Her voice was m.u.f.fled as she buried her face in Hunter"s shoulder.
Hunter didn"t answer. She had asked, but he knew she wasn"t ready for the answer just yet. Quietly, he rubbed her back, holding her gently as she sobbed in his arms. He put a hand up to his face to wipe the blood from his nose, but his hand came away dry. There was no blood on his face.
***
Past the fence, a dark shadow barreled in the wind---a black mist with a bright red streak of werewolf blood.