Chapter 3 : The Wolf and the Lady

Dawn’s POV

I tried to move on and reassure myself that Craig would indeed handle the bad guys in the alley. But, I couldn't stop thinking about what happened in the alley throughout the rest of orientation. I couldn't stop thinking about Craig.

He saved my life.

Also, Craig seemed to have… grown up since the last time I saw him, especially after he had managed to subdue three men without so much as breaking a sweat.

Plus, his eyes. They were glowing.

“Oh, hello,” Candice’s voice broke me out of my thoughts as I moved with the crowd, headed to our dorm assignments.

But when I looked up to greet her I realized it wasn’t me at all that she had greeted. Instead, it was someone behind me.

When I turned around, Craig was there. When had he gotten there? How had I not heard him? And was he following me? Was he trying to make sure I got back to the crowd safely?

“Hey,” Craig said in response, standing still in front of the two of us until Candice spoke again.

“Heading to bed?” There was a lilt of something in Candice’s voice that I immediately recognized as flirting. She held her arms behind her back as she leaned forward slightly, directing all of her baby blue eyes on him.

“To take a shower, actually,” Craig said as he moved forward with us, walking on Candice’s side with her between us. “I heard the day isn’t over for us just yet, though.”

“You don’t say…” Candice mumbled absent mindedly as she stared at him. Craig coughed out a slight laugh at her response, before he scratched the back of his neck and turned to look at her. I caught his eye momentarily before he looked away from me and back to my friend.

“I meant for us and the welcoming program,” he clarified, and Candice nodded her head just as absentmindedly. “It goes pretty late, I heard. What about you?”

“Me? I could definitely go for a shower, too,” Candice told him.

Craig only laughed at her suggestive tone, and turned back from her to continue walking towards the dorm rooms with us. We walked the rest of the way in awkward silence.

“You’re horrible,” I laughed as soon as Candice and I made our way inside of the room she had gotten assigned to the two of us.

“God, he’s even more delectable in person,” Candice swooned as she fell onto her bed. I shook my head at her, opting to sit down on my own as well and rest my feet for a bit before I went to shower or do anything else. The day had been long and tiring, and I could do with some rest.

“You don’t think he’s pretty, Dawn?” she asked me when I didn’t respond and I shrugged.

“I think he’s… different from what I thought.”

Candice was quiet for a second as she regarded me, and then she sat up with a pillow in her arms as she looked at me. “Do you know him or something? I didn’t miss the way you two came from the same direction. If you have something going on with him I didn’t mean to—”

“No, no,” I immediately began to reply. “God, no. I barely know him… He is the other representative from my school… My partner for the competition.”

I didn’t want to tell Candice about the vicious way he’d rejected me and seemed to not even remember. It wasn’t like I was angry at him for rejecting me, I was a big girl—I could handle rejection. But he was so abrupt about it that I couldn’t help the slight ill will I still harbored against him.

“So you don’t mind if I take a shot at it? Will you put in a good word for me?” I rolled my eyes as I picked up one of the smaller towels placed on my bed and threw it at her. She caught it with a laugh as she fell back onto the bed.

“Oh, he’s so… soooo—” Candice’s words were cut off when a knock sounded on our door. I moved towards it as I shot Candice a questioning look, but she only shrugged her shoulders at me.

When I opened the door I came face to face with a pretty blonde girl I had seen earlier around the welcoming area.

“Hi, we’re all getting ready to leave now. Are you done yet?” she greeted me.

“Done?” I asked with a tilt of my head.

“Who are you?” I heard Candice ask from behind me. The pretty blonde girl with a beauty mark at the corner of her top lip smiled at us before she introduced herself.

“My name’s Sam, I'm one of your mentors during your stay here. We’re going to the first exhibition of your art now.”

Candice and I freshened up and followed Sam out to the art exhibition. It was being held in one of the many galleries on campus and once we arrived at the tall building it was clear to see that everyone was excited about seeing their work on display.

It wasn’t only open to the international students competing in the competition, but there were various local students and even some professors and onlookers littered about the place.

“This seems intense,” I breathed out as I looked out at the crowd. “Is it always like this?”

Sam laughed at my question as she nodded. “This isn’t even half of what Coaliton usually pulls for these sorts of functions. But yeah, it’s usually like this.”

Sam turned to us before she left, and gave us some parting words. “It’ll be good to mingle with some of the other students you’re competing against and get a feel for their work, plus creating connections is also a big part of the industry, so friendly smiles and good luck.”

Candice grumbled from beside me. “I am way too tired to even try to begin a conversation right now.”

I nodded my head in agreement. Despite how exciting everything was that was happening around me, I couldn’t deny the heavy pull of sleep that was slowly creeping up on me. Not only that, but there was a lot I had to think about from today.

Apart from the humiliating experience of not only seeing Craig again, but also having him not fully remember me or who I was, there was also the aspect of the competition. There was no way I was going to be able to win with him as my partner, he wasn’t an art student at all!

Unless he planned to create a collage of photos of himself to show off, there was really no way I could see us winning this thing. And even if that were to happen, I highly doubt a bunch of selfies were going to win us the top prize at Coaliton University. I felt majorly disappointed as I thought about all this, walking through the aisles of art pieces that surrounded us with Candice.

I had worked so hard to get here and come this far only for my dreams to be defendant on—

“Woah,” Candice pulled to an abrupt stop in front of me. I felt my chest collide with her back for a moment before I turned to her and saw what she was staring at.

I looked at Candice first, her expression was shocked, eyes wide and lips parted as she stared at the artwork in front of her. I followed her line of sight and saw a sculpture that took my breath away.

It was a metal sculpture of a wolf and a woman. But it wasn’t that simple at all. The woman’s structure was made from a thin metal, it seemed so soft and delicate despite being metal, and it was polished to shine so cleanly that the light reflected off of it and we could see pieces of our own reflection.

The wolf on the other hand, was made from a distressed metal. It was burnt and black at spots, rusted and crooked at others, but it still formed a clean shape of a wolf. The two creatures stood back to back, facing away from one another, but at the bottom where the wolf’s hind legs and the woman’s legs met, its tail wrapped around her calf.

That wasn’t the only thing that seemed to join them though. Throughout the open areas of the structures, where the metal didn’t fully connect to other pieces and instead turned into one another, there was in place of metal a red satin ribbon. It connected all throughout the insides of the hollow sculptures, cascading down the woman’s ribs and around her body to the tail of the wolf and into its own body as well.

It was beautiful and haunting and breathtaking.

I stayed there for a long time as other people began to gather around it as well, and my eyes fell to the plaque that stood in front of it that held details of the piece. It was labeled, ‘The Wolf Among Us’, and it was made by… no way.

I felt him before I saw him as his tall frame loomed over mine. His scent surrounded me as his arm brushed against mine slightly. I didn’t dare take my eyes away from the piece in front of me, too afraid that I might miss the wolf staring back at me with its fiery gaze, too afraid I might miss it if it said something to me, despite it being an inanimate object.

Craig Blackstone didn’t dare to move either, his figure standing securely beside me as he too admired his artwork, as though the piece hadn’t been wrung from his very own hands. He didn’t move to stand beside it, either. He didn’t want to claim any of the attention away from the piece to himself.

“This is yours?” I asked without looking at him, my eyes still glued on the pieces of metal and satin in front of me. It was like nothing I had ever seen before. This… this was something haunting.

Craig didn’t reply to my question, but he didn’t need to. It was more to affirm rather than to question, the name on the plate in front of the piece already told me that it was his. And for some reason it… felt like him, too. The little I did know about him seemed to leak its own aura from the depiction in front of me.

I shouldn't have been able to even begin to understand what it was that he was trying to say, and yet for some reason I felt as though I understood it all at the same time. Craig moved from beside me, but I stood rooted there as I contemplated the piece over and over again. Surely the college back home couldn’t have taught this.

How did he learn to make something like this?