Surreptitious

Chapter 16: Jealousy

Josie woke up with a start, gasping and breathless. She could almost feel the ache in her muscles. She could almost still smell the rich earth beneath her paws.

Her brow creased as she stared off unfocused into space.

Paws?

She sat up in her bed and slowly lifted her hands in front of her as if to make sure that she was, indeed, human. She turned them over and over again, struggling to comprehend the very tangible experience she had had during the night.

She could remember it all – stalking through the woods until she found the most beautiful clearing. Then she saw her – she saw her twin flame – and her heart felt like it could burst from joy. She remembered the bonding moment between them and marking Hope in the same way Hope had marked her. She remembered them running and being free together, then curling up into a hot mess of fur and limbs to sleep off their exhaustion.

It was the best night of her life.

Yet here she was, unaltered, and no indication that it had really happened. Could it all just have been a dream? Or was there more to it?

All Josie knew was that it didn’t feel like it was just some fleeting fantasy. It was all just far too intense to have been a mere flight of fancy.

(…)

It was only first period and Hope was already over it.

No matter how much she tried she just simply could not focus on her schoolwork. Who cared about Shakespeare when you felt like you had spent the whole night before entangling yourself in the most significant relationship that could ever exist? The flashes of her and Josie running together as if nothing else mattered were still fresh in the tribrid’s mind. The memory of the moment Josie had marked her and claimed her in such a corporeal way still caused her heart to flutter and her stomach to do loops.

“Miss Mikaelson?” Hope’s eyes snapped to the front of the class. Mr. Crane, the English teacher, was asking her some sort of question about thematic jealousy in Othello, but she honestly had no idea what he had even said.

“What was that, sir?” She gulped and tried not to notice all the curious eyes cast her way from the rest of the class.

“Pardon me, miss Mikaelson, but is there somewhere else you desperately need to be at the current moment?” Mr. Crane cocked his head to the one side in that annoying habitual way he did when he was about to make some snarky comment. Hope simply shook her head, demurely, and waited for it.

“Then could I perhaps suggest being more present during my lesson? I don’t much enjoy teaching inanimate objects.” He huffed and turned back to the board, then started a discourse on how unfounded jealousy bred a sort of monstrous paranoia that would continue to feed the growth of the jealous feeling itself. In other words, Iago was a dick and Othello was an idiot. She already knew that.

From the corner of her eye, Hope could spy Jade and Wendy sitting on the other side of the classroom. How annoying that Mr. Crane would embarrass her for being distracted when the other two girls were having a full-blown gossip session in their corner of the room with no reproach from the teacher. Hope narrowed her eyes as she watched Jade’s steely pair sparkle like someone had shattered the stars and sprinkled their dust within those orbs.

Wendy spoke a few words and Jade grinned like the cat that got cream.

Hope raked her nails down her desk. Hard.

She had to know what they were talking about.

If only she had her vamp hearing. Unfortunately, her hearing was only as keen as the average wolf’s. It did help, however, having a vampire friend nearby.