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 was smooth, freckles free and soft. 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. But instead she looked at me like she wanted me. Like she needed to scratch me off her back.

I didn’t know I was going to see her at the ball. The ball I had been reluctant to attend but had to to show people I was very much capable of leading my pack. Her scent hit me so hard my wolf threatened to attack. I didn’t know when I walked over to her and took her hands. She was even more beautiful up close. So beautiful she looked unreal. And her voice…

Gods. That voice.

It was like silk wrapped around a dagger. Smooth, and strong.

I was watching her at the ball. When she was speaking to Lady Reina. I watched. When she moved, I moved. I didn’t think she was going to go to where the body was, curious and smart.

When I touched her, it was reflective. Everything that happened with Lydia wasn’t thought out or orchestrated. The way I usually do things.

It was unconscious and uncontrollable. She was appetizing, which made my plan difficult. I didn’t think I was going to want her this much. I didn’t think I was going to feel a different emotion other than hate for the enemy. And want was the most dangerous thing a monster like me could feel for a her kind.

—-Lydia’s POV——

He shouldn't be in my head.

But he is.

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

That stranger in the alley. That wolf.

That strange, yet familiar man.

Leonidas.

The way he looked at me, deeply, intensely. The way he touched me. The burning sensation still lingers across my stomach. My heart still skips when I think about it.

The hunger to thirst for him had subsided, but it still lingered, it still haunted me.

Reminded me of something I couldn’t have.

The air in my apartment felt too still.

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

I couldn’t shake the question he asked me last night, the innuendo in his voice, the hunger in his eyes. What did it mean? And why did he ask me?

It felt like he knew me long before the ball, yet I knew nothing about him. He felt familiar, but different. Dangerous, but appetizing.

Never in my life had a man left such an impact on me. Men always gravitated toward me like flies, but they never gave me what I needed.

Half the time, once my fangs or claws slipped during sex, they’d stop halfway and run. Especially the human ones.

But Leonidas was different. And not different in the way that leads down a romantic road like in the novels, different in the sense that this path could destroy me.

Rina poked her head into my room, no doubt to check if I was ready for the umpteenth time.

I wasn’t. I zoned out most of the time thinking about random shit.

But this time, it was about Leonidas.

“I can handle you just fine, Lydia. The question is... will you let me?”

Ughhh... What the hell did that even mean?

“What are you mumbling about, you psycho?”

Rina asked as she snatched the curling iron from my hand and took over.

“I can’t stop thinking about him,” I muttered, agitated, not bothering to hide it.

Rina smiled, that knowing smile. Of course she would. She was a romance fanatic, so naturally, she’d think this was something straight out of her paperback fantasies.

“Well, that’s a good thing, isn’t it? Lord knows you needed a new thing to obsess about anyway.”

I rolled my eyes at her through the mirror. “It’s not like that, you creep.”

“You don’t even know what it’s like, bloody. So how do you know what it is like?”

She smirked as she curled another section of my hair.

“He just gives off a dangerous vibe, Ree. I swear. I’m a vampire, even I know to stay away from him.”

“But you won’t, right?” she asked, wiggling her brows at me. Was this girl not listening?

“Rina!!” I groaned.

“What? It’s obvious you want to fuck him, Lyds. And from what you told me, he wants to fuck you too.”

“I see absolutely no harm.”

I rubbed my hands down my face in agony.

But her words sent warmth to the pit of my stomach. The idea of fucking Leonidas made me warm. I shifted in my seat as heat spread across my cheeks.

“I just have a bad feeling about him, Ree.”

I sighed one last time, hoping I’d finally get through to her.

“Okay, fine. Lay it out for me,” she said, dropping the curling iron and pulling another chair closer.

I glanced at the mirror. She did a good job.

“Okay. Out of everyone at the ball… he sought me out.”

“And?”

“And?! Rina, there were hundreds of well-sought-after ladies at that ball. Why me?”

I almost screamed.

Rina looked like she was having the time of her life watching my outburst.

I didn’t blame her. For weeks now, all I’ve done is lay on my bed and stare at that damn crack in the ceiling.

This was the most I’d said to her in days.

Rina shrugged.

“You’re a smoking hot vampire with hair blacker than midnight, legs that go on for days, boobs as big as my head, and a face so beautiful I get whiplash just looking at you. Of course he would seek you out.”

I eyed her for a moment before chuckling.

She joined in, and it was refreshing to laugh.

Thank you, Alpha.

“But seriously, Lyds. Don’t overthink it. Just go with the flow. While we’re still waiting for the bracelet guy, this very hot, very tall Alpha is seeking your attention. Please, for the sake of my fantasy life, just fuck him already.”

I rolled my eyes, but I couldn’t deny that she was right.

I had no desire to fall in love or get lost in that kind of nonsense.

It’s not like I was waiting for the boy from my past to swoop in, steal my heart, and ride off into the sunset, well, not the sunset. That would kill me. You get what I mean.

I just had questions I wanted answered.

Things I needed to know.

With Leonidas, I still doubted his intentions.

I didn’t understand why he’d sought me out at the ball.

But I couldn’t deny the insane attraction. The pull.

I didn’t want to know what that familiar feeling meant, just in case it made me spiral.

But I wasn’t going to question it anymore.

Tonight was another ball, this time at another clan’s residence. My stomach felt lighter. My heart skipped. The thought of seeing Leonidas again had me doing all this prep.

And considering how he couldn’t take his eyes off me last time, I planned on dressing even more dangerously tonight.

I arrived at the address in record time.

If people were shocked to see me, they didn’t show it. To think I was attending a ball on my own, without being dragged, was strange.

But I had Leonidas to thank for that.

The party was already in full swing. Guests had arrived and were still arriving. But Leonidas wasn’t there. I was getting irritated and agitated. Angry at myself for coming without any guarantee he’d show.

Angry at Rina for planting stupid ideas in my head.

I stormed off toward the bathroom, huffing as I walked. A small line of vampires were gathered just outside, gossiping.

I ignored their stares as I slipped past them and into the stall, leaning against the door.

Then I heard it.

“Do you think she and Alpha Leonidas are fucking?” one asked.

The other scoffed. “Leonidas would rather ram his heavy dick into a stick than fuck a vampire. You know how much he hates them.”

“He does?”

“Yeah. Rumor has it he’s got bad blood with some of them, specifically Darian Morvain.”

My stomach dropped.

I should leave.

I should stop listening.

But I didn’t. I was familiar with pain and with heartbreak. Familiar with driving the wedge in deeper.

“Then why were they all over each other at the ball last night? He didn’t even glance at the rest of us.”

“I’m sure he just wants to fuck her over. That’s his specialty anyway.”

That was my cue. I’d heard enough.

I moved like a zombie, my body on autopilot. Walked back to the party. Grabbed my purse.

And left.

I couldn’t remember how I got home, just that I was now lying on my bed, mind spinning in endless circles, as more questions rose in my head.

I didn’t know when sleep came. But it did.

And it brought a gift.

A dream I hadn’t had in years.

Or maybe it was a memory, buried under time.

I was standing in a clearing. The air was warm and fireflies blinked lazily through the trees.

The scent of wildflowers and dusk filled the air.

Then I saw him. A boy, maybe just a few years older than I was back then. He was barefoot. The wind was in his dark hair, a grin on his face like he already knew I was never going to forget him.

He called me Little Moon.

Told me I would bloom with time, bloom so much that people wouldn’t recognize me. I hated the nickname at first. But he made it sound like mischief. Like warmth.

We talked. We always talked.

In the dream, his voice was still velvet and moonlight, smooth, gentle.

He listened to me like no one else ever had. Like I mattered. Like I wasn’t just a vampire with strange hands and stranger eyes,

But a girl.

He always asked about me, about my wants, my dreams, the people I wished I could kill.

He gave me the bracelet soon after.

“So you won’t forget me, Little Moon,” he’d said.

I didn’t. I never did.

But then he disappeared. And in the dream, I chased him. Always out of reach.

Then he turned back and he was no longer a boy, he was all man. Muscled and talk.

His eyes were darker, his shoulders broader.

He didn’t smile anymore.

And he looked just like Leonidas.

I jolted awake, the dream clinging to me like silk and smoke, my heart hammering in my chest.