Page 5 of Blue Blood Wolf (Big Wolf on Campus #6)

STACIA

T here was only so long I could mope around, at least that was the rumor.

Okay, so the hottest guy I’d ever met, with the yummiest accent, and who had actually made me see stars last night, and into this morning if we’re being real, might have secretly been a prince, and he just never bothered to tell me.

I mean, I couldn’t blame him after he’d heard me gushing about, well, him. Just remembering how I’d gone on about the royals made me want crawl into a hole and then pull it shut behind me like something out of a cartoon show.

And then he was gone, poof. Sure, I knew he was an exchange student and that we weren’t going to have long together, but that had still been pretty shocking. One second, we’d been cuddling, totally blissed out. The next, the room was full of strangers, one of which might have been Bash’s, sorry, Ruslan’s mother, the queen.

Thank whatever fates were listening that Bash had thought to toss his sweatshirt over us, or every jiggly inch of me would have been on display in a room full of judgy strangers.

A plate clinked against the table, and I lifted my head out of my arms to Charlize putting some drink that seemed to be at least fifty percent chocolate drizzle and whipped cream in front of me. The Moon Bean’s coffee shop was always good for a decadent little pick-me-up.

“Come on, it’s not that bad, is it? I mean, nothing’s official yet, right?”

I blinked at her, confused. No, Bash and I hadn’t been official. I mean, I’d hoped to see him a few more times but… wait, how would Charlize have known that? She hadn’t even seen Bash and I together. “Huh?”

Her face contorted into an ‘oh crap’ expression. “Oh, you, uh, didn’t get the alert? I thought that was why you were in mourning over here in the corner.”

No, no alert. My destroyed phone was still in the pocket of the crown prince of Bashkiria, which was almost enough to make me laugh, but then I just had to remember him being pulled away from me while I was still naked on a pool table under a sweatshirt, and the urge to laugh died pretty thoroughly.

I hadn’t even been home. I meant to, but I just sat in the Wolves’ Den, in shock. For hours, I guess, because as the sun rose, I just dragged myself next door to the Moon Bean for coffee and to lick my wounds.

“What alert?”

“Okay, maybe I shouldn’t tell you. I mean, if you’re already having a bad day and all.”

I glared, not in the mood. “Charlize. Just tell me.”

She winced and pulled out her phone.

I read the campus alerts that there was a good chance that the queen of Bashkiria’s assembly might have to be canceled due to increased crime and violence in the area. Her security team didn’t think it was safe for the royals to come to Bay State University.

Well, on one hand, it sucked that the talk was canceled and that my tickets were useless. But, on the up side, it wasn’t like I was going to be able to go to the talk anymore. There was no way I could ever be in the same room with someone after they saw me naked on a pool table, huddled under a sweatshirt. I wasn’t sure I could be on the same continent, so it was probably for the best that Bash was going back to Europe.

My heart twinged.

I’d thought we were giving each other something, something important. But he’d been lying to me about everything. I guess I couldn’t blame him for that. But it still hurt that the last time I was probably going to see him was being ushered out the door and away from me.

Charlize stepped away and took off her apron before sitting across from me. “So if it wasn’t the talk, then what’s got you so…” She waved a hand, taking in all of me in my moping glory.

“I’m not really up on talking about it right now.” I didn’t want to think about it. I just needed a little distraction, something to get me out of my funk, so that Bash could move into being a delicious memory.

The bell above the door clanged when Hunter sashayed through the door. She smiled, spotting Charlize, and came right over to crash my little pity party table.

“Hey, are you ready? Hi, Stacia. Are you coming too?”

“Coming where?” It might be the distraction I was looking for, but I wasn’t sure my bruised heart was up to hanging out around Hunter and Charlize, both deliriously happy with their gorgeous boyfriends. Hunter was with Ty from work, and Charlize was stupidly in love with her quarterback boyfriend, Eli.

Hunter adjusted her book bag on her shoulder, her curls bouncing around her face. “We’re going to the library to study for the political science exam.”

“Actually, that’s a good point. You should come, Stacia. It would really help. I suck at that class.”

It was one of my better subjects. And at least helping Hunter and Charlize would get my mind off things. It was better than haunting the Moon Bean like I was waiting for Bash to show back up.

“Alright.” I tried not to sigh. “Let’s go.”

As I bent down to grab my bag, I heard Charlize suck in a shocked breath.

I straightened up, looking around. “What? What’s wrong?”

Both Hunter and Charlize were staring at me. Well, at my shoulder. I tried to take a look, craning my head, worried I was having some kind of wardrobe malfunction on top of everything else, because wouldn’t that just be my luck.

They exchanged a look, doing something complicated with their expressions like they were having a conversation that I couldn’t understand.

Hunter’s eyebrows shot up, and she bobbed her head in my direction. Charlize cleared her throat and smoothed her shirt down as she turned back to me.

“So, um, Stacia. Did you get a tattoo?”

“What? No.” Why would they even ask me that? Who had money for tattoos?

Hunter bounced up onto her toes, a wide grin stretching across her face. “Did you meet anyone… special, lately?”

Thoughts of Bash ran through my head. His accent. His beautiful golden eyes. His adorkable glasses, which, come to think of it, were probably part of his ‘not a prince’ disguise. And then my thoughts took a hard right turn into the way he’d touched me last night, the strength in his hands when he’d laid me back over the pool table. The way he’d felt moving inside me. Heat rushed into my cheeks.

Hunter squealed. “I knew it!”

“No, no, it’s nothing like that.” I didn’t want them thinking I’d met some amazing guy, because, yes, okay, I had, but it wasn’t like I got to keep him. “It’s just…”

I couldn’t bring myself to say it was nothing. It hadn’t been nothing. The connection I’d felt between us, that had been real, and amazing, and there was a good chance that I was never going to see him again.

And then I was blinking hard, trying not to cry. But then I’d just feel pathetic and sad, and I didn’t want to be both. “Why did you ask? How did you even know?”

“The claiming mark.” Charlize dropped her voice to a whisper, like she was telling me some secret. “We have them too. Who was it? One of the guys from the team?”

I blinked at her like she’d grown a second head. “The what mark?”

They exchanged worried looks.

“Did he not explain it to you?” Hunter bit her lower lip, looking nervous.

My complete lack of sleep last night meant my brain didn’t even begin to work out what the heck they were talking about. But whatever it was they were talking around, it seemed like it was maybe a bigger deal than they were trying to let on.

“I actually have no idea what you’re talking about. What mark?”

They exchanged another look. Charlize did a little half shrug with one shoulder. “She’s going to notice eventually.”

Now they were just freaking me out. “Notice what?”

Charlize picked up her phone. “Can you just tug your shirt to the side for a sec? Perfect.”

She took a picture and then spun the phone around for me to see.

The skin of my shoulder and neck, which had been bare when I got up yesterday, was suddenly a swirl of ink. A black wolf, howling to the moon and surrounded by a crown, covered the space like the most intricate tattoo I’d ever seen.

“What the hell,” I whispered to myself. I yanked at my shirt, craning my head to the side trying to see it for myself. “Where did that even come from?”

Charlize and Hunter stared at each other and then at me. They looked almost as lost as I did.

I hadn’t even had anything to drink last night. There was no way I just didn’t notice getting a tattoo. I vaguely remembered Bash biting me there, and just the memory of his teeth touching my skin had a warm little shiver running all the way down to my toes.

Okay, cool, cool. New kink unlocked. I hadn’t known biting was a turn on. Something to think about when I wasn’t freaking out.

Charlize got a look on her face like she was thinking really hard about something. Her brows pinched together, and her gaze was unfocused. I was the one having a mentie B. Maybe it was contagious. Because that was my only explanation for what she breaking her brain over.

Hunter took my arm and tugged me to my feet. “Okay,” she said, way too brightly with way too many teeth in her smile. “Let’s go for a walk. We can chat on the way to the library.”

I let myself get towed out of the Moon Bean, because why not. What was even my life anymore? Hidden princes, whirlwind romances, and magic tattoos. Whatever.

I barely heard Hunter hiss to Charlize. “What is going on?”

“I don’t know,” Charlize muttered back. “I’m asking Eli.”

I kind of wanted to snap at them that I was having a panic attack, not deaf. But really, yes, my heart was doing a techno impression, and I was confused, and sad, and mad. I was confusmad.

On top of everything, I missed Bash already.

Stacia .

And great. Now I was hallucinating. Because the day wasn’t quite trash enough.

Stacia, where are you? Please, I can explain. Just tell me where you are.

Sure. Why not? I was hearing voices. Because that might as well happen.

Stacia?

As if Bash would sound that sad and apologetic. He was the one who left me. And didn’t mention that he was a prince.

A lump formed in my throat, and I shook it off, and just let the girls drag me along toward the campus library.