A University of Betrayal (The Blairville Legacies #2)

Chapter 33

Julian

Locked In A Cage

Brick + Mortar

Actually, it could have been a good morning: Getting up, avoiding the Copelands, I wouldn’t have even met the DeLoughreys because they weren’t sleeping on campus, and so I’d have a room, as well as a bathroom, to myself. Then I would have attended my lectures, followed by two piano lessons that I would have enjoyed on my own, and in the evening, I would meet Mia at Lola’s Diner to make sure she was okay.

Instead, I woke up in a cold sweat from one of those ridiculous nightmares, frantically trying to find my cell phone, realizing I’d left it in my car yesterday. So, I hurried, took a quick cold shower, and reached my car, stressed by the fact that it was being used as a rusty border wall between a modern Jeep, driven by Nash’s guys, and an athletic sports car, driven by one of the DeLoughreys.

And, as if that wasn’t enough, I got a message from Mia saying she’d injured her arm while training with the Copelands.

Normally, it was hard to make me lose my shit. But now I was raging.

On top of all that, I spotted Nash getting out of his blue jeep in the distance.

Wrong place at the wrong time, I thought to myself, and my anger multiplied.

I should never have let Mia go there.

“Hey!” I yelled angrily, marching toward the guy I’d known for far too long.

Nash stopped and turned to face me. He looked tense, but I didn’t care.

“What are you doing to her!” I shouted angrily and immediately felt my eyes glow, and the monster that dwelled inside me gave me the kick I needed to shove Nash toward his car.

He stumbled backward. His expression darkened. I stepped even closer, and he did the same.

“What are you talking about, Bardot?” he growled.

“Don’t act like that. There’s only one person I’m worried about right now!” That wasn’t entirely true, but he understood me, and that was enough for me.

“Your sister is fine. Relax.” He sounded tense, but not angry like usual. But I was.

“Oh, is that so?” I clenched my hands into fists, ready to punch when Nash grabbed my arm.

“We both don’t want this.”

My brows automatically drew together.

“If a single thing happens to her that sounds abnormal, I’ll get her back,” I pressed out, tensing.

I couldn’t overreact. There were people here.

“Your sister is fine. She just bruised her arm after exercising too much.” He paused, and his look turned disdainful. “She seems to be making an effort, which no one here would have expected from the Bardots.”

Everything in me fought not to smack him.

“Why are you such a…”

Nash interrupted me without restraint. “I’m not the one who tucked his tail and cowardly ran away.” He laughed, and it sounded bitter. “How could I?” Something on his jaw twitched slightly. “Duties. You have fucking duties as a future Alpha, Bardot,” he finally pressed out.

I snorted tensely and took a step back. No matter what turns this conversation could take, I didn’t see any good ones. Nash had become a stranger. We were both strangers.

I looked at him, but he’d long since stopped looking at me and was instead staring across campus, where Mady had just stepped out of the main building and was walking toward the library with a book under her arm. She was wearing the same dark gray hoodie as last week, and her hair was now stringy and tied back in a bun. She was no longer wearing make-up, and it seemed to me that her skin had become more unclean, which of course I could only be imagining.

Yesterday morning – better later than never – I had expressed my condolences and apologized for Mia after she had asked where my sister was. All I had been able to say was that she had a lot of stress at school at the moment. And lying to her like that was unpleasant and felt wrong.

Blood In The Cut

K.Flay

A loud cheer snapped Nash and me both out of our stupor, and we turned to the big oak tree on campus.

I spotted Nash’s guys standing there, clapping their hands in the air. Not all of them, just a few. Most of the guys clapping were men I didn’t know.

More people were watching what was going on when I finally spotted Emely standing there, motionless and...

“Who the hell is this guy?” I asked tensely.

Everything about the situation aroused suspicion inside me, and my fists still hadn’t relaxed. And it didn’t get any better when I spotted the tall, muscular, handsome blond man with the massive bouquet of roses in his hand marching toward Emely.

My jaw dropped when he held out his hand for hers and held the roses out to her with the other.

“Mikhail Rolanow,” Nash pressed out dismissively, and I looked at him.

I finally knew the reason for his tension.

“What does he want from her?”

I turned my suspicious eyes to the spectacle and almost froze when he took her hand and planted a kiss on it. Everything in me wanted to intervene and confront this man.

“Her hand,” Nash growled.

His eyes had turned yellow, just like mine, and he seemed to have to stop himself from sprinting off straight away.

Shock rolled over me like an avalanche as the rules and principles of the pack flashed through my mind. I remembered Hunter’s words.

“Father invited his family to marry her off,” Nash continued.

I looked at Emely, who accepted the bouquet with flushed cheeks. We’d known each other so long by now that I knew that blush meant she was more than uncomfortable with the situation.

And damn it, everything in me wanted to help her, so my body finally took on a life of its own and I started to move. Nash pulled me back, and I looked at him with furrowed brows.

“What are you doing?!”

“You can’t go there. As much as it bothers you, you’re not part of the pack.”

The accusation hit me harder than I expected and fueled my anger.

“I don’t give a shit!”

Nash looked from me to Emely again.

“But I do.” His expression darkened. “If my father finds out about this, I won’t have a chance to stop anything.”

He let go of my arm, completely transfixed by the sight of the two of them.

I couldn’t look at them anymore without wanting to do something. Just the thought of someone flirting with her like that, someone who wanted to marry her as if she were...

“You want to prevent this from happening?” I asked in surprise when Nash’s words had finally sunk in.

“I won’t let Father restrict Emy any further. She’s not his puppet, and by now she’s old enough to decide for herself what she wants.”

I was surprised. Nash had changed enormously, but in one aspect he was still the guy he used to be.

“You know how she is. She’ll say yes. Just for Father.”

“Shit,” I muttered as reality hit me like a hard rock. “I have to stop her.”

“I have to stop him,” Nash murmured, looking at me deadpan.

We both had the same goal. Something about it was more than uncomfortable. He seemed to realize that, too, because his right eyebrow twitched uneasily before he continued.

“I don’t trust the Rolanows. The last time they were here, Alarik pissed them off, and now their Alpha wants to get what he didn’t get last time.”

Nash’s expression reached the absolute depths of darkness.

Just the fact that Alarik hadn’t gotten along with them set all my alarm bells ringing.

Suits Theme

Christopher Tyng

“Julian, there you are. I don’t want to bother you, but...”

Bayla appeared next to me, and Nash seemed distracted by her for a moment. He looked her over from head to toe, and when she noticed, she suddenly blushed.

“You,” he said sharply, and Bayla’s posture stiffened until she tore herself away from his gaze and looked helplessly at me.

I had to grin, even though I felt sorry for her. “You smell like... nothing.”

Nash moved closer and something inside me forced me to push myself protectively in front of her, which seemed to remind Nash that our relationship was not under a good star.

I felt Bayla push me away again before she gave me a frustrated look.

“I can speak for myself.”

I took a deep breath and stepped further to the side.

This reaction had to be due to her magic connection…

“And for that matter... I am a human. And don’t worry, I won’t tell your little secret, because my memories will soon be taken away.”

Nash’s gaze was full of unease, like that of many people who realized for the first time that Bayla smelled of nothing. At least if you ignored the secondary scent of her skin.

I stared at her, holding my breath in confusion.

This chaotic morning really didn’t seem to be doing my mind any good.

“You’re not human,” Nash murmured, his eyes starting to glow.

I pulled Bayla a little closer to me. When her eyes began to glow yellow, my breath caught.

Nash paused and held eye contact until Bayla shook her head and the bicolored eyes returned to their original human glow.

“What the hell are you?” Nash gasped.

“I’m sure you mean who. My name is Bayla Adams, and it was nice to meet you... Nash Copeland,” she said with uncertainty, the blush returning to her cheeks before she pulled me away by one arm.

It Hurts

Tessa Rose Jackson, FFM

“Your eyes...” I said, perplexed, staring at Bay as we disappeared from Nash’s sight behind one of the oak trees, and I unfortunately no longer had a view of Ems either. I would talk to her later.

“What’s wrong with my eyes?” she suddenly asked in shock, and I couldn’t help but look at this rare phenomenon in front of me. One deep blue, the other a greenish turquoise blue. It was as if two completely different oceans had been separated, and one had been placed in her right eye and the other in her left.

“Julian. What’s wrong with my eyes?”

“They had a yellowish glow,” I began slowly, remembering the first time her eyes had turned that color, back in the forest before she had fainted. Her eyes had just looked like those of a Senseque, just as they had back then, but I didn’t say so.

Bayla’s expression was full of concern. Then she looked around and pulled me further into the shade of one of the many oak trees on campus.

“I’m going to tell you something, and you’ll promise to keep it to yourself.”

I just nodded, and then she told me everything: from Alarik’s training, that he would protect her from the pack, to the encounter with a damn Ruisangor in her house.

“You should have told me something,” I pressed out tensely, because I didn’t like the fact that a Ruisangor had been so close to her.

“I don’t know who I can trust here and who will lie to me next.”

She blinked away a tear, and I felt the need to take her in my arms and tell her that we would find an answer to all the questions. But then wouldn’t I be lying to her as well?

“I know I can’t answer your questions.” As she looked around frantically, I turned her head toward me, and she stared at me, upset. “But I can listen to you and help you get away from here.”

“How?” Hope flared in her eyes.

Imaginarily, I slapped myself for the way I would let her down.

“I’ll talk to your mum.”

“No!” She reached for my wrist and gripped it tighter than Nash had before. Her panic, I felt it to the core.

“Please don’t tell her. Promise me,” Bay pleaded desperately.

“Okay, I won’t...” If it was that important to her.

“Promise!”

I couldn’t hold back my grin. “Okay, witch girl, I promise.”

She held out her middle finger to me and I allowed myself a joke by taking mine and hooking it into hers, like it was done with the pinky in a vow.

She stared at me in disbelief, but to my surprise, she understood a few seconds later and squeezed my finger further.

“Don’t you dare break that ridiculous vow.”

Then she let go and ran her fingers through her tangled hair.

“I’ll go with you tonight,” I said firmly. She widened her eyes. “Just in case.”

“But Bastien will notice you’re there.”

She was right. “Then he’ll know.”

“Why would you put yourself in danger if that guy could kill you?”

I thought back to the promise I had made to Diana. It had been meant kindly, but now it was more than that. Bay had almost died, and I didn’t want to have to go through that feeling of helplessness and shock again.

“If something happens to you, I’ll feel it anyway. Then why should I extend my path between us and risk you almost dying by a Ruisangor bite again?”

Her jaw dropped.

She wouldn’t go there without me.