CHAPTER 3: Aftertaste of a Wolf

Leonidas’s POV

I smelled vampire the moment the wind shifted.

It was sweet. Too sweet. Like rotting flowers drenched in perfume and spiked with venom. That scent always made my skin crawl. It reminded me of battlefields, of soldiers turned lovers, then corpses. Of betrayal sealed with a kiss.

But this one... she smelled different.

She smelled alive. She smelled like a remedy for disaster.

The second I laid eyes on her, I knew she wasn’t like the others.

She was pale, deathly pale,  but not fragile. Her skin looked like carved porcelain left out in a snowstorm. Her hair spilled down her back in loose waves, black as midnight. And her eyes; blue, icy, unbothered,  locked on mine without fear.

She should’ve been afraid.

I pinned her to the pillar before I could even think.

Not because I wanted to hurt her.

Because I needed to see her up close. I needed to prove she was just another cold-hearted leech.

But she didn’t flinch.

She smirked.

“Disappointed it’s not?” she said when I asked if the blood was hers.

Gods. That voice.

Silk wrapped around a dagger. Sharp. Smooth. Mocking.

She tried to knee me. Reflexive. Bold. I respected it, even as I caught her leg and held it like a trophy.

Her body was lean. Too still and too calm.

She was watching me like she knew something I didn’t. Like she could see me for who I truly was, a man masking pain and resentment. I hated it.

Lydia.

The name sank into me like a scar being carved fresh.

I’d heard of her. A vampire who lived among humans. A white-haired freak who hated her kind as much as mine. Untouchable. Unclaimed. Dangerous.

And beautiful.

Too beautiful.

She mocked me, of course. Called me a mutt. A runaway. A soldier who fled.

She had no idea what I’d seen. What I’d done.

But it didn’t matter.

Because when she walked past me, brushing my chest like it meant nothing, I knew something I didn’t want to admit.

I was going to see her again.

I was going to fight her again.

And if I wasn’t careful…

I might want her.

And want is the most dangerous thing a monster can feel for a her kind.

Lydia’s POV

He shouldn't be in my head.

But he is.

Like smoke that clings to the lungs, like old blood under fingernails, no matter how many times I wash my thoughts clean, he's still there.

That stranger in the alley.

That wolf.

The strange yet familiar man.

The way he looked at me like I was both the sin and the salvation.

The way he stalked toward me, slow and sure, like he already knew what I was.

And then that moment, frozen in time, his eyes on mine, rage curling behind them like a leash barely held.

I can’t stop seeing him.

The air in my apartment is too still.

The ceiling fan buzzes overhead in its usual dying rhythm, but even that familiar annoyance can’t drown out the memory of him. Of it.

Of the body I found.

The rogue, mangled beyond dignity, slumped like garbage in an alley I took every night without thinking. And then, him, materializing from the shadows like the ghost of something too powerful to die.

I was supposed to run.

But I didn’t.

I stood there.

Frozen and Staring. Drawn.

Not to the body.

Not to the blood.

But to him.

I can still feel the way his presence made the night feel smaller,  like I was the only thing he could see, and he didn’t know whether to tear into me or ask me a question I wasn’t ready to answer.

His scent won’t leave me either.

Earth. Fire. Something feral.

It hit the back of my throat like a sin and a secret.

And it stayed. Lingering.

Burned into the lining of my memory like an aftertaste I didn’t ask for.

It’s disgusting.

It’s maddening.

And it’s still there.

I try to distract myself, a hot shower that scalds, cold coffee that barely touches my nerves, even reruns on TV while Rina curls up beside me, ranting about Marcus (again).

But I’m not here.

Not really.

My mind keeps drifting back to that alley.

To that man.

To the way his eyes raked over me like he was stripping down something far deeper than flesh.

He didn’t speak a word.

Didn’t need to.

His stare said everything:

"I know what you are."

"I don’t trust it."

"But gods, I want to."

And maybe worse, it asked:

"Do you want to be wanted?"

I hate him for it.

Hate that he unsettled me.

Hate that he saw me when I’ve spent years mastering invisibility.

Hate that my first real pulse of adrenaline in months wasn’t from bloodlust or fear; but from him.

Leonidas.

The name shouldn’t taste the way it does, like heat and warning and something meant to be whispered, not spoken aloud.

But I keep saying it, like I’m daring the word to burn me.

Leonidas.

Leonidas.

It doesn’t help.

If anything, it gets worse.

Like I’m feeding something I shouldn’t be feeding, something buried too deep to starve now.

I haven’t fed properly since.

I don’t know if I’m scared I’ll taste him in someone else’s blood, or worse…

That I won’t.

That it was a one-time thing, that flicker of something real , and I’ll never taste that kind of danger again.

Not in blood.

Not in touch.

Not in anyone.

I lie awake that night, staring at the ceiling, the fan casting crooked shadows across the room like claws stretched across the walls.

I try to remember the face of the rogue.

Try to focus on the body, the evidence, the crime.

But all I see is his face instead.

And for the first time in years, I’m not just lost in a memory.

I’m chained to it.

And when I finally sleep, it returns.

The dream. More like a buried memory.

The one I haven’t had in years, one I told myself was nothing more than leftover fantasy stitched from loneliness.

I’m standing in a clearing.

The air is warm. Summer. Fireflies blinking lazily through the trees. The scent of wildflowers and dusk.

And then I see him; a boy, maybe just a few years older than I was then, or older. Barefoot. Wind in his  darkened hair. A grin on his  beautiful face like he already knew I was going to fall in love with him.

He called me “Little Blood.” Said my blood was as sweet as I looked.

I hated the nickname when he first said it, but he made it sound like mischief and warmth. Not cruelty.

We talked. We always talked. In the dream, his voice is still velvet and moonlight, smooth and gentle. He listened to me like no one ever had. Like I mattered. Like I wasn't just a vampire with strange hands and stranger eyes, but a girl. Just a girl. Always inquired of me, of my wants and dreams. Of things I hated and people I wished I could kill.

And one night, he gave me something.

A bracelet, handmade, fraying at the edges. A tiny silver wolf charm woven into the middle. He pressed it into my palm with a shy kind of reverence and said, “So you won’t forget me, Little Blood.”

I didn’t.

Not even when he disappeared.

In the dream, I still chase him through woods, through memories, always just out of reach.

And then he turns back.

And he’s not a boy anymore.

He’s a man.

His eyes are darker now. Older. He’s taller, his shoulders are broader and he doesn’t smile anymore.

And he looks just like Leonidas’s.

I jolt awake, the dream clinging to me like silk and smoke, my heart hammering against my ribs.

The bracelet is still on my wrist.

It never left me.

But the dream had.

Until now.

The bracelet was cold against my wrist.

I stared at it like it had just appeared, like it hadn’t lived there, snug against my skin, for years. I never took it off, not even when I wanted to forget. It was habit now. Like a scar I chose to keep visible.

But this morning… it ached.

The dream still clung to me like fog, warm and intimate and cruel in how vividly it painted his face. That boy. That stupid boy with the storm-gray eyes and half-moon smile who saw me once, really saw me, and then vanished like a fairytale I wasn’t allowed to finish.

And now he was back.

Why?

Why now?

I sat up slowly, gripping the sheets in my fists like they could ground me. They couldn’t. My room felt off, too sharp at the edges, too quiet. Like the dream had followed me here and was hiding in the corners, waiting to finish its sentence.

The fan creaked. The sun leaked through the cracked blinds like watery gold. I shifted immediately.

I blinked once. Twice.

Then said it, barely above a whisper:

“Little Blood.”

The sound sent a shiver down my spine. I hadn’t heard that name in years. No one had called me that since… him. I didn’t even know if it was real. The nickname, the boy, the woods. Maybe it had always been a fantasy I fed myself to feel something soft amidst all the sharpness.

But it had felt real.

Still did.

And in the dream, when he turned, the way his older self looked at me, the weight of it…

No.

No, it couldn’t be.

My pulse jumped. I jumped.

Leonidas.

The name echoed in my skull, clashing hard with the dream, like puzzle pieces I didn’t want to see fit. It was impossible. It had to be.

Right?

But the eyes. The voice. The familiarity that stabbed through me the moment I saw him in that party, like a string had been pulled inside me, buried deep and forgotten.

What if it wasn’t forgotten?

What if it had been waiting?

I got up, pacing the room like I could walk the feeling out of me. I didn’t know what I was doing. Thinking. Hoping for. I was spiraling, I knew that, but it didn’t stop me.

I opened the drawer in my bedside table and pulled out the one thing I hadn’t looked at in years, a page torn from an old diary, yellowing and smudged. On it, a single sentence I’d written the day he disappeared:

“He said he'd come back for me.”

I laughed bitterly. It sounded strange in the silence of the room, hollow and wrong.

“Yeah?” I muttered to myself. “Took your sweet time, didn't you?”

I hated how my voice cracked.

I stared at the bracelet again.

The silver wolf charm glinted in the light.

And all I could hear in my head was a voice I hadn’t heard since I was thirteen:

“So you won’t forget me, Little Blood.”

I never did.

But I tried. Gods, I tried.

And now I don’t know if I’m remembering…

Or if I’m waking up.