Chapter 3: The rival's wrath
The library was supposed to be a sanctuary. The hushed whispers and the soft, rhythmic thud of books being reshelved usually calmed her. Today, the silence felt accusatory. Naomi sat in a isolated study carrel tucked away in the history section, a fortress of books piled around her like a defensive wall. She stared at the same paragraph about post-war economic policies for the tenth time, the words swimming into a blur of black and white.
Her body still felt different. Aching in places that had nothing to do with the walk back to her dorm. Every time she shifted in the hard wooden chair, a phantom sensation bloomed—the rough press of bark against her stomach, the crushing weight of him holding her in place. She could still smell the pine and cold stream water if she breathed deep enough, a scent that had woven itself into her own, no matter how hard she’d scrubbed.
A flicker of movement at the edge of her vision. She didn’t need to look up to know who it was. The air changed, thickening with the cloying sweetness of expensive perfume.
Trish.
Naomi kept her eyes glued to her textbook, her heart starting a slow, heavy thud against her ribs. Maybe if she didn’t move, didn’t breathe, she’d become invisible.
“Well, look what the cat dragged in.” Trish’s voice was a sugary venom, designed to carry just between them. She leaned against the carrel, blocking the light from the old-fashioned lamp. Her manicured nails, painted a shell pink, tapped a patient rhythm on the wood. “Or should I say, what the wolf dragged in. You look like hell, island girl. Rough night?”
Naomi willed her hand not to shake as she turned a page. The sound was deafening in the quiet. “I’m studying, Trish.”
“I can see that.” Trish’s smile was all teeth. She slid into the carrel opposite, the space suddenly feeling claustrophobic. Her gaze was a physical weight, crawling over Naomi’s face, her neck, her hands. “Thorn was in a real mood last night. After he left that pathetic party, he wouldn’t answer my calls. Disappeared for hours.”
Naomi’s blood ran cold. She focused on the grain of the wooden desk, tracing the lines with her eyes.
“Then he shows up this morning,” Trish continued, her voice dropping to a conspiratorial whisper. “He smells… off. Agitated. Like he’d been running all night. And he wouldn’t look me in the eye.” She leaned forward, her blonde hair falling over her shoulder. “You wouldn’t know anything about that, would you?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” The lie felt brittle, ready to shatter.
Trish’s eyes narrowed. Her nostrils flared, just slightly. A predator testing the wind. The polite, vicious mask slipped for a fraction of a second, revealing something raw and ugly beneath.
Then it happened. A subtle, almost imperceptible shift in the air. Trish’s head tilted. Her tapping fingers stilled. Her pleasant, poisonous smile vanished, replaced by a blank, terrifying stillness.
Her eyes locked onto Naomi’s throat.
Naomi instinctively brought a hand up, covering the unmarked skin.
“No,” Trish breathed, the word barely audible. Her gaze was no longer on Naomi’s face, but devouring her whole—the messy bun, the tired slope of her shoulders, the way she held herself, trying to make her curvy frame seem smaller. She was reading a story written in the language of scent and posture, and she was finally understanding it.
Trish’s hand shot out, her fingers clamping around Naomi’s wrist. Her grip was shockingly strong, the perfectly filed nails digging deep into the soft flesh. “You,” she hissed, her voice trembling with a fury so pure it seemed to vibrate the air between them. “You little bitch.”
Naomi tried to pull back, but Trish held fast, her knuckles white. “Let go of me.”
“I can smell him on you.” The words were a ragged whisper, ripped from some deep, wounded place. “All over you. You reek of him. You let him… you let him touch you.” Her eyes, a sharp, icy blue, widened with dawning, horrific comprehension. “He fucked you.”
“Trish, stop—”
“He’s mine!” The whisper shattered into something loud and sharp. A few students at a distant table looked up. Trish didn’t seem to notice. Her composure was gone, eroded in an instant by a tidal wave of jealousy. Her face was a twisted mask of rage and betrayal. “He has always been mine! You don’t get to come here with your island dirt and your outsider stink and put your hands on what belongs to me!”
She released Naomi’s wrist with a violent shove, stumbling back from the carrel as if Naomi were contagious. Her chest heaved. Her eyes darted around, wild, unfocused, landing on the metal supply cart left by a librarian. Without a word, without a sound, she stalked over to it.
The snick of the scissors being pulled from the cup was unnaturally loud.
She turned, the long, sharp blades glinting in the warm lamplight. Her breathing was a harsh rasp. “I’m going to cut that pretty hair off,” she whispered, advancing. “Every last strand. Then everyone will see what you really are. Nothing. A little, dirty, nothing.”
Naomi scrambled to her feet, her chair screeching against the floor. The world narrowed to the points of those blades and the deranged sheen in Trish’s eyes. Pages from an open book fluttered to the floor, settling around their feet like wounded birds.
“Trish, put it down. This is insane.”
“You’re the one who’s insane if you think you can have him.” She took another step, the scissors held low and ready. “I’m just going to make sure you remember your place.”
Naomi backed into the bookshelf, the solid wood stopping her retreat. There was nowhere to run. The history section was a dead end. Trish moved closer, the scent of her rage a metallic tang in the air.
The first swipe was fast, a silver arc aimed at Naomi’s face. She jerked back, feeling the whisper of air as the blades sliced past her cheek. A few strands of her waist-length black hair drifted down, severed.
Trish smiled, a terrifying, empty thing. “Just the beginning.”
The second lunge was faster, less theatrical. There was no warning snarl, just the efficient motion of someone intent on doing damage. Naomi twisted, throwing an arm up to shield her face. The cold steel bit deep into the soft flesh of her forearm, a sharp, precise line of fire.
A hot wetness immediately soaked through her sleeve. She stared, stunned, at the dark red bloom spreading across the grey fabric.
Trish didn’t pause. She yanked the blades free with a sickening wet sound. Her eyes were vacant, operating on some deep-seated programming of erase and destroy. The scissors came up again, aiming for Naomi’s face this time. Naomi tried to duck, but the world had slowed to a thick, syrupy nightmare.
The point caught her high on the left cheek, dragging down in a ragged tear. It wasn't a clean cut. It felt like a hot poker searing her skin, followed by the warm trickle of blood painting a path to her jaw.
A book tumbled from a shelf, its pages splaying open on the floor. The sight of it, so mundane amidst the violence, broke the strange silence. A strangled gasp finally escaped Naomi’s throat. It was less a cry of pain and more one of pure, undiluted shock.
That small sound seemed to break the spell for everyone else. A girl at a nearby table shrieked, the high-pitched noise slicing through the quiet hum of the library. Chairs scraped back in a frantic, discordant symphony. "She's got a weapon!" someone yelled, their voice cracking with panic.
The history section became a blur of fleeing backs and terrified faces. No one tried to help. They just ran, a stampede of self-preservation leaving a trail of dropped backpacks and overturned chairs in their wake.
Trish stood panting, the bloody scissors held loosely in her hand. She looked from the weapon to Naomi’s bleeding face as if seeing both for the first time. A flicker of something—triumph?—crossed her features. "Now everyone will see my mark on you," she whispered.
The thunder of footsteps echoed from the end of the aisle, too heavy and purposeful to be more students fleeing. Angel burst into the clearing first, her red hair a wild banner, her face a storm of fury. "Get the fuck away from her, Trish!"
Logan was half a step behind, his larger frame moving with a predator's speed. He didn't yell. He didn't need to. His focus was entirely on disarming the immediate threat.
He moved past Naomi in a blur, his hand closing around Trish’s wrist. He squeezed. There was a sharp, cracking sound, like a dry twig snapping. Trish cried out, a short, pained yelp, and the scissors clattered to the wooden floor.
Angel was already at Naomi’s side, her hands hovering, unsure where to touch. "Oh, god, Naomi. Your face. Your arm." She ripped the sleeve of her own flannel shirt, the fabric tearing with a loud rip. "Here, press this on it. Press hard."
Logan forced Trish’s arms behind her back, using his own body to pin her against a bookshelf. She struggled for a moment, a feral, writhing thing, spitting curses that were half-sobs. "He's mine! She stole him! She smells like him!"
"Shut up," Logan growled, his voice low and deadly calm. He wasn't her Alpha, but his command held the weight of immovable stone. She went limp against the shelves, her crying the only sound left in the ravaged quiet.
Naomi pressed the bundled flannel to her cheek. The pain was a bright, throbbing star now that the adrenaline was receding. She could feel the sticky warmth of blood soaking through the cloth, a twin to the stain on her arm. She looked at Angel, whose eyes were wide with a mixture of rage and fear.
"Thorn," Naomi whispered, the name tasting like blood and pine needles. "He... in the forest..."
"I know," Angel said, her voice tight. She wrapped a steadying arm around Naomi’s shoulders. "I fucking know. But right now, we need to get you to the infirmary."
Logan glanced back at them, his grip on Trish unwavering. "Go. I've got this psycho." Trish let out a wet, broken laugh against the books.
Angel guided Naomi forward, stepping over the fallen scissors and the scattered pages. Each step felt unsteady, the world tilting on its axis. The clean, familiar scent of old paper was now layered with the coppery tang of her own blood and the acidic sting of Trish's perfume.
They moved through the wreckage of the study area, past the empty carrels where open laptops still glowed. The fluorescent lights hummed overhead, indifferent to the violence they had just witnessed. Naomi kept the cloth pressed hard against her cheek, the pressure a small, focused pain against the larger, echoing one deep in her chest.
The library doors swung shut behind them, muffling Trish's fading sobs. The hallway outside was blindingly bright and eerily empty, the alarm having cleared it out. Their footsteps echoed on the polished linoleum, a lonely sound in the sudden silence.
Angel’s grip on her tightened. "Almost there," she murmured, her voice a low, fierce promise. "I've got you."
The sterile white lights of the hallway glared down, making the blood on Naomi’s sleeve look impossibly dark. Each step sent a fresh, bright throb from the gashes on her face and arm. She leaned heavily into Angel’s side, the torn flannel shirt a poor dam against the pain.
“Just a little further,” Angel murmured, her voice tight. “The infirmary’s right around this corner. Then we’ll get you patched up and find that blonde she-devil’s dorm room with a can of gasoline.”
Naomi tried to form a response, but her jaw felt locked. The memory of cold steel tearing through skin superimposed itself over the present, the library’s scent of old paper now forever married to the metallic tang of her own blood.
They turned the corner. And froze.
Thorn stood at the end of the corridor, his broad shoulders blocking the exit sign. He wasn’t moving. He was just… there. His chest rose and fell in a rhythm that was too fast, too shallow. His hands were clenched at his sides, the knuckles bone-white.
He looked like he’d run through hell to get here.
His gaze, a molten, burning gold, locked onto Naomi. It swept over her, taking in the bloody cloth pressed to her cheek, the dark stain blooming on her arm, the way she swayed on her feet. The air in the hallway thickened, charged with a static that raised the hairs on Naomi’s arms.
Angel shifted, putting her body slightly in front of Naomi’s. “Thorn,” she said, her voice a warning.
He didn’t seem to hear her. He took a step forward, then another, his movement unnervingly silent for a man of his size. The distance between them evaporated. He stopped so close Naomi could feel the heat rolling off him, could see the wild, frantic pulse beating at the base of his throat.
The scent of him—pine forest and raging storm—wrapped around her, smothering the coppery smell of blood.
His hand came up, not towards the wound on her face, but to the uninjured side. His fingers, trembling slightly, brushed a stray strand of hair from her forehead. The touch was startlingly gentle, a stark contrast to the violence of the night before.
His eyes, however, held no gentleness. They were pure, undiluted fury.
“Who?” The word was a low, guttural sound, ripped from a place deep within his chest. It wasn’t a question. It was a demand for a name.
Naomi just stared up at him, her breath caught in her throat. The pain, the fear, the shock—it all condensed into a single, sharp point under his gaze.
Angel, emboldened by his proximity, snapped, “Who do you think? Your psychotic girlfriend cornered her in the library with a pair of scissors.”
Thorn’s jaw tightened. A muscle ticked there. His gaze never left Naomi’s face, as if he were reading the story of the attack written in the lines of pain around her eyes. He slowly lowered his hand from her hair.
His fingers hovered over the hand she had pressed to her bleeding cheek. He didn’t touch the wound. He gently pried her fingers away from the bloody cloth, his own hand enveloping hers. His thumb stroked across her knuckles, a slow, deliberate motion that felt like an apology and a promise all at once.
Then he turned his head, just slightly, towards Angel. The gold in his eyes seemed to glow brighter.
“Take her to the infirmary,” he said, his voice dangerously quiet. “Now.”
He released Naomi’s hand. The loss of contact felt like a sudden chill. He didn’t look back at her as he turned and started walking back the way he came. His strides were long, purposeful, and utterly silent.
He was moving with a predator’s intent, not toward the exit, but deeper into the building, back toward the library.
Back toward Trish.