Page 24 of Born into Madness
“Why are you calling me that? I’m not yours.”
He cocks his head to the side again and watches me for a few quiet seconds. “I think maybe you are.” He says the words like he’s just as surprised to say them as I am to hear them.
Not wanting to anger the crazy, masked guy with a knife, I let it go and instead ask, “How long are you staying here?”
“How long do you want me to?”
I almost laugh at how surreal this all feels. I’m sitting on my bed in my dorm with a large dog in my lap, while a very large man squats in front of me while wearing the scariest mask I’ve ever seen and gently fondling my hair. He may not be holding a weapon at the moment, but I know he has one because I just watched him use it to kill three men.
“No offense,” I finally say, “but I’m going to have a hard enough time sleeping tonight, and I’m not looking forward to whatever nightmares are waiting for me on the other side of consciousness. There’s no way in hell I’ll ever be able to sleep with this mask anywhere near me, especially if you’re going to do what you’re doing right now.”
“What am I doing right now?”
“Staring at me.”
He doesn’t move, just keeps watching me through the mask, and it’s all kinds of unsettling to be on the receiving end of his icy-blue stare. His fingers continue lightly stroking the lock of hair he’s still holding.
He ignores everything I’ve said and asks, “What were you doing tonight? Why were you walking alone? Were you at the party?”
“Were you?” I ask, stunned at the possibility that he might be a student here. I just assumed he wasn’t, but I’m pretty sure I’m still in shock and my brain is not at its finest right now. “Are you an Alpha?”
“Not in the way you’re thinking,” he says, and when he sees the confusion on my face, he says, “Just tell me what you were doing tonight. You don’t need to worry about who I am.”
“My best friend is a Kappa. She had to go to the party tonight, and I went with her so we could watch each other’s backs. We left early because she had a headache. I walked her back to the sorority house and then headed back to my dorm.”
“She let you go off all by yourself?”
Not caring that he’s all kinds of dangerous, I straighten up and defend my friend. “She gets really bad migraines sometimes. Even if she could’ve walked with me, I never would’ve let her because then she’d have to walk back all by herself. I have pepper spray, and I have my cell phone. I told you I could’ve gotten away from those guys.”
“And why didn’t you use either of those things then?”
Feeling like an idiot, I lower my eyes and say, “Because I thought maybe I was wrong. I didn’t want to spray someone in the face or call campus security if it was just three guys acting like assholes. They could’ve been harmless, that’s what I kept telling myself. Maybe I’m wrong. Maybe they’ve just had too much to drink and don’t realize they’re scaring me. I don’t know.”
I run my fingers through Chort’s fur, feeling like a dumbass and wondering if I just got three men killed tonight. If I’d sprayed them, then he wouldn’t have had a reason to kill them.
As if he can read my mind, he says, “I would’ve still killed them.”
Lifting my head, I ask, “Why?”
He shrugs one broad shoulder and says, “That’s a complicated question, Cyn, and it has an even more complicated answer.” Before I can pry, he adds, “Next time spray them in the fucking face and run. Trust your instincts, and even if you’re wrong, at least you’ll be safe, but if it makes you feel any better, you weren’t wrong tonight. Those men were going to hurt you.”
“How can you be so sure?”
He gives my hair a gentle tug. “I just am.”
When he brushes his thumb along my cheek again, the room suddenly feels even smaller than usual, and it has nothing to do with the small space we’re in. I have the distinct impression he’d be a dominating presence no matter where he was. Mask or no mask, weapon or no weapon—it wouldn’t matter. It’s justhim.His very existence demands you take notice and sit back in either awe or fear.
“What are you going to do to me?” I whisper the question, unable to make the words come out any louder.
“I’m going to leave so you can get some sleep.”
“That’s it? You’re just going to let me go after everything I saw you do tonight?” My inner voice screams at me to shut the hell up, because it sounds an awful lot like I’m trying to convince him his plan of letting me go is a bad one. I’m not, though. I’m just having a hard time believing it.
“We both know there’s nothing you can do, and like I said, my little Cyn, I know where you live.”
“So I’m just supposed to pretend none of this happened, just forget everything I saw tonight and go about my life like normal?”
He hears the disbelief in my voice but nods his head anyway, making the bloodstained mask move up and down as he keeps his eyes on mine.
