(FREE TO READ) Bad Moon

chapter 64; good people

Jaylin didn't call or text. It wasn't that he hadn't tried, but fear coiled around him every time he scrolled to Quentin's name in his contact list. Fear that he wouldn't answer, fear that he would. Fear that he'd have to acknowledge the kiss while he was already so haunted by the electricity behind it.

Two—nearly three months had passed and still, he felt the current sometimes. The buzz in his blood that hit him like a fever every time he laid awake at night. That phantom tongue against his own, burning him up so unfairly hot beneath his sheets.

Alex kept him updated on most things in Quentin's absence. Lisa had taken up a job as a wedding coordinator—said the house felt too empty without Quentin in it. Too quiet without his wolves around. When he asked about Felix, Alex said he'd never lived in any of the Sigvard's surfeit of rooms. He came and went as he pleased. Slept in the beds from time to time, but never claimed one as his own. And since Quentin's departure, his visits had stopped. Alex didn't know where he went or what he called home. No one did.

As far as Quentin himself, Alex heard from him sparsely. Brief calls to check in, he'd said.

He's always too tired to talk for long. He does ask about you. I just never know what to tell him. You should call him yourself sometime.

He should have called, he should have asked all those questions he had about what he was and what it meant—hell, he should have hit the call button the moment he received that acceptance letter. He should have thanked him for that—for somehow pulling all the right strings. For giving him one last reason to make his mother proud. But he didn't. He should have asked his questions, but he didn't. And because of that, he was starting to feel blind to everything he was. Everything that was coming to him.

But Jaylin had forgotten how deeply integrated wolves were in the human society. He'd been attending his biochem lectures for a week before he finally spotted a head of red hair and two brilliant blue eyes in the back row.

Izzy was more than thrilled to fill him in on all she knew. She said Qamar had returned home to talk to her council. She was deciding whether or not Ziya's treachery was worth raising her flags of war. Jaylin didn't understand what her council was or why she needed one. He wondered if Ziya had a council too, or if she did whatever she pleased. It couldn't have been too handy, that council, because Qamar still had yet to make a move. "She doesn't seem in a hurry, that's for sure," Izzy had said. "She's called a meeting at the next Exposition. I guess we'll know her decision then."

It was excruciating to know that Ziya was still out there somewhere. To know that she could come back at any time, that she could steal him away and lock him behind glass walls again. And this time, Quentin wouldn't be here to protect him from all her wicked intentions. From the very beginning, that was all he'd ever tried to do.

Now it was his family that he was protecting, and as much as Jaylin wanted to spite him for leaving, he could never hate him for that.

"We'd know," Izzy promised him. "You can feel the presence of a queen from miles away. We've all been instructed to send out an alert if we catch so much as a whiff of her or her wolves. Don't worry, Jay. If you haven't noticed by now, we're everywhere."

He hadn't noticed. Not until she said it. But over time, Jaylin felt a sixth sense slither up every so often. It was a cold breeze, like a bad karma. He'd started to feel it every time he approached Izzy. He felt it when he brushed by the buzz-cut blond in his physics class and the quiet Korean woman who walked her dog across campus every day at noon. Even the barista at the coffee place nearby. He was innocent enough, with a friendly smile and a dimpled chin, but Jaylin felt that cold crawl up his flesh every time he stepped foot inside. The fact that he knew his name without ever asking—the way his head shot up and his eyes found the door each time Jaylin walked through it. He was a wolf. He and so many others.