Page 21 of Bound to the Dorm Elf
Then Rovax leans down just enough for his voice to slide into my ear, low and deliberate. “Keep walking. Don’t look back.”
The warning chills me more than the man’s stare. “What?—”
“Do not,” he says, each word like a rung on a ladder I’m suddenly very aware of climbing, “look back.”
Something in his tone shuts me up. I tighten my grip on the grocery bags and focus on the click of my boots against the pavement. He walks half a step behind me, body angled just slightly so that one shoulder is between me and the rest of thelot. It’s subtle, but I can feel it — the shift in him. His normal stalking-cat glide is still there, but there’s a readiness now, like a bowstring drawn back.
We reach my car, and I fumble for the keys. Rovax doesn’t help, just watches my hands like he’s timing them against something else.
Then another shadow peels away from the rows of parked cars and steps into the light.
This one’s shorter, broader in the shoulders, and wearing a suit that fits even worse than Clearance Assassin’s. His tie is crooked, hair sticking up like he just woke from a nap he didn’t mean to take.
“Oh, perfect,” I mutter. “Library Creeper has a buddy.”
“Two hunters,” Rovax says under his breath, though there’s no fear in it. Just assessment. “The first is the one who followed us before. This one…” His eyes narrow. “…is less disciplined.”
“Hunters?” I whisper.
“Not your kind of hunters,” he says, voice a low rumble that somehow carries under the sodium lights. “Mine.”
My pulse kicks up. “Okay, define that before?—”
The new guy — Steve, if I remember Bill introducing himself correctly from snippets in the student gossip chain — gives us a lopsided grin and starts ambling closer. There’s nothing threatening in his walk except that it’s way too casual for midnight in an empty parking lot.
“Evening,” Steve calls. His voice is friendly enough, but my gut says it’s the friendliness of someone testing water temperature before they shove you in.
Rovax doesn’t answer. He shifts his stance just slightly, a tiny pivot of his hips that somehow makes him seem taller, broader.
Bill, still by the lamppost, hasn’t moved. His eyes are on us like a hawk’s — cold, measuring.
“Nice night for shopping,” Steve says, stopping just outside the reach of the lamplight over our row. He glances at the bags in my hands. “Stocking up for a party?”
I paste on my most harmless smile. “Something like that.”
Rovax’s fingers brush the small of my back, barely a touch, but enough to guide me closer to the car door. My heart jumps at the contact — not because it’s romantic (it’s not), but because I can feel the tension in him. He’s one wrong word from moving.
Steve’s gaze flicks between us, then over his shoulder toward Bill, like he’s waiting for some kind of signal.
“Y’know,” Steve says, “my friend over there, he’s got an eye for detail. Notices things other people don’t. Like…” He tilts his head at Rovax. “…how tall you are. Or that… accent.”
Rovax doesn’t blink. “Many tall men in your world?”
The question is mild, almost curious, but it lands like a stone in the silence. Steve chuckles, but it’s a hair too forced.
“Plenty,” he says. “But not many like you.”
Rovax’s hand leaves my back, and I realize he’s stepped half in front of me. My skin prickles — not from fear, but from the palpable change in the air, like the moment before a summer storm breaks.
I have the sudden, sharp realization that if this goes wrong, my little midnight grocery run could turn into something way worse than running out of ramen.
“Rovax,” I murmur, “maybe we should just?—”
“Get in the car,” he says, eyes never leaving Steve.
There’s no heat in the words, no visible aggression — but they carry the same weight as a command given on a battlefield. And I realize, with a cold twist in my stomach, that he’s not talking to Steve.
He’s talking to me.
