I don’t know what to say to that, don’t even know how I feel about what I just said. So I do the only thing I can do in this situation—I ignore his question completely.
“Come on, Macy. We need to get to the cafeteria. Jaxon’s going to think I forgot about him—again.”
“I’m ready,” my cousin answers. She grins. “I’ve just been waiting for you and Hudson to stop tearing into each other. I gotta say, your face was priceless.”
“How did I look?” I ask as we close the door behind us and start walking down the hallway.
“Like you wanted to murder a small village. Or, you know, a major metropolitan area.”
“Now you’re talking my kind of fun,” Hudson joins in. “Just tell me when and where and I’m there.”
“Wouldn’t you be there anyway? Considering we are currently attached?” I raise my brows at the fact that the worst seems to be over—at least for now.
“It was a figure of speech. You know what those are, right?”
“You mean like verbs? Nouns? Adjectives?” I tease him, because of course I know what a figure of speech is. I also know what colloquial phrases are, which is what he actually threw at me.
Hudson rubs his eyes. “You scare me sometimes, you know that? You really do.”
I laugh, then throw him a colloquial phrase right back. “Baby, you haven’t seen anything yet.”
He sighs. “Don’t I know it.”
47
Are you Bloodstoned?
“So I have a question,” I tell Macy as we walk to the cafeteria.
“Sure.” She looks at me quizzically.
“How obvious was it that I was fighting with Hudson back in our dorm room? Because if people can tell, I’m sure they’re thinking there’s something seriously wrong with me.”
“Umm, too late for that,” she teases. But when I shoot her an exasperated look, she relents. “I think you forget where you are. Last year, a witch turned herself invisible for almost six months. People spent a semester walking around looking like they were talking to the walls. Weird shit happens here every day. Nobody even blinks most of the time.”
“Yeah, well, they blink at me. All the time.”
“We’ve been through this. Dating Jaxon means half the school hates you and the other half wants to be you. That’s just how it is. Add in the gargoyle thing and it’s not the talking to Hudson that’s going to make people stare at you. So relax, okay?”
I turn her words over in my head. “Yeah, okay.”
Jaxon is walking into the cafeteria just as we get there—and at least half of the Order is with him: Mekhi, whom I haven’t seen since he brought me Jaxon’s jacket, and Luca and Rafael.
All three grin at me like I’m Christmas—or at least Halloween. “About time you decided to show your face down here,” Mekhi tells me as he wraps me up in a huge, ocean-scented hug. “We’ve been bugging Jaxon about when we were going to get the chance to see you.”
Luca’s and Rafael’s hugs are more restrained—we don’t know each other as well—but they both welcome me back enthusiastically.
Jaxon gives them a couple of minutes, then elbows his way through the group to pull me out and get things moving. “Hungry?” he asks as we walk toward the main cafeteria line.
“I am, actually.” I’m a little surprised by the fact that I’m starving again. Either fighting with Hudson burns a ton of calories or I’m still making up for the fact that I went fifteen weeks without food.
I grab a tray, pile it high with eggs, toast, and hash browns. Jaxon adds a packet of cherry Pop-Tarts with a wink, then heads off to get his own breakfast while I pour myself two of the world’s largest cups of coffee.
Macy—who is a self-proclaimed caffeine addict—gives me a wide-eyed look when I reach for the second cup, but she doesn’t say anything. A girl’s got to do what a girl’s got to do, after all.
It’s not long before we’re seated at a table. Jaxon and the other vamps are all drinking their breakfast out of stainless-steel tumblers—a concession to the fact that I’m new to watching the whole blood-drinking thing, I’m sure—while Macy and I drink our coffee like we’re mainlining it.
My bizarre life is definitely catching up with me, and right now I feel like there’s not enough caffeine in the world. Jaxon must feel the same way, because he’s looking a little haggard, too.
“You okay?” I whisper, sliding my hand into his as the others laugh and joke around us.
“Yeah.” He smiles back. “This is the first time I’ve fed in a couple of days, and I think it’s wearing on me. Especially after the trip to the Bloodletter.”
“Jaxon, you can’t do that! I know you’ve been worried about me, but you need to take care of yourself, too.”
I burrow into him, and as I do, I feel that same warmth glowing inside me…and between us. The mating bond? I wonder. Most of the time I barely notice it—maybe because I still don’t know as much about it as I should—but right now I can feel a connection between us, bright and lovely.
I lean into it a little, loving the way it feels. Loving even more the way Jaxon feels at the other end of it—warm and welcoming and strong and steady.
I don’t know what I’m doing, don’t know, even, how to interact with the bond. But Jaxon looks so soft and sleepy and unlike himself that I can’t help reaching out. Can’t help closing my eyes and putting a hand across his heart, on this space where it feels like something exists between us, and smiling at him warmly.
Jaxon’s cheeks start to have a little more color in them, and his eyes look more alert, so I pull back even as I squeeze the hand I’m still holding in my own.
His midnight eyes heat up at the connection between us, his brows quirking in a sexy way that has me burrowing even deeper into his side and whispering, “Later,” into his ear.
As I relinquish the last of my hold on the bond, Hudson flops down in an empty spot at the table and snarls, “At least warn me the next time you’re going to do something so completely nauseating,” he orders. “I can go look out a window or something.”
He’s my mate. I’m allowed to fawn all over him if I want to.
Hudson’s only response is a narrowing of his eyes and a growl so intense that it actually sends a shiver down my spine.
“You’re really going to spend the afternoon jumping off the castle?” Macy is asking the vamp contingent at the table.