A University of Betrayal (The Blairville Legacies #2)

Chapter 61

Julian

Andante Con Moto – Piano and Strings – “Vaulter”

Nicholas Britell

Julie had just shown up, giving Bayla the chance she had needed to escape the Circle. But I had been too distracted to see where she had disappeared to, and now, I was pushing my way through students standing around complaining and looking for her.

I didn’t realize that I was already far too close to the pack.

“Julian. There you are,” a familiar voice called out, and I sighed, before turning around.

My father was standing there in a neat dark brown suit and beckoned me over.

I overcame the urge inside me to just leave and stepped toward him.

He and Mia had come all this way, and it wouldn’t be fair of me not to talk to him at least once.

“Is everything okay with Bayla and Diana?” He sounded worried.

“Her mother isn’t too happy with her choice of clothes,” I sighed, speaking the truth, and continued to look around for Bayla. Could she be outside already?

“Yet she’s wearing such a beautiful dress,” Dad laughed, and I agreed with him. The dress fitted her like a glove, as if it had been made for her body.

“I have to say, it looks familiar to me, but there are so many dresses here that it’s easy to get confused,” Dad laughed, and I looked at him in surprise.

He must have known Alice, even if only fleetingly.

“Well, anyway, what I really wanted to tell you, Son…” He came closer and put his hand on my right shoulder. “I’m sorry about the other day. I keep forgetting how much you did for Mia and our family when I...” He broke off and lowered his eyes. It was hard for him to say it. He’d never talked about his addiction before. Not to anyone. “When I was miserable.”

I was grateful that he had almost said it at least once, as if he was making progress. But I wanted him to know that he didn’t have to apologize. Not for what I had done to this family. If I didn’t exist, Mum would still be alive. The woman he had loved.

My heart began to pound without control, and I felt myself close to a possible transformation. I didn’t have a bottle of wolfsbane with me.

“You know that family comes first for me. You don’t have to thank me for something like that,” I said, and he looked down at the ground, concerned.

The monster inside me calmed down a little without me having done anything in particular.

“No. I do . You were young, and I shouldn’t have left you alone,” he said in a firm voice, and it broke my heart that after all these years he still didn’t realize who the culprit was. Without me, he would never have sunk so low, would never have had to fight these shadows.

“I had a serious word with Nickolas about giving you a little more time. He didn’t seem enthusiastic, but you should be given more time... three months.”

My eyes widened.

“You asked the Alpha for something?”

My father lowered his voice. “Yes, and I would do it again and again to protect my family.”

My whole body tensed.

Fuck . What had he done?

“What did he ask in return?”

My father said nothing, and my anxiety rose immeasurably fast.

What had he done?

“If you’ll excuse me, I have a conversation to finish,” he said, and was about to leave when he paused once more. “You should dance with Emely. She’s been looking in our direction this whole time, like she’s waiting for you.”

I didn’t look at Emely, because if she really wanted to dance with me, she would have approached me by now.

Instead, my thoughts dwelled on my father’s words as he just left me standing there.

I could have stood here longer, staring into nothingness, realizing what he had done.

A pact with the Alpha . You only had one free pact. The Alpha promised something, and you... gave your soul to the pack.

My father had joined the pack.

My vision darkened, and I was forced to turn around. The man who was to blame for making my life even harder after my mother’s death. It was him. Nickolas . The Alpha of the Canadian American pack.

“Good evening, Julian.”

He hadn’t changed a bit in the last two years. He still had that look, down from above, as if he wanted to show that he was the Alpha, but, as always, his authority didn’t really get through to me.

His dark blond, almost brown hair had turned gray, as had his short beard, which looked well-groomed, albeit rough, just as I had seen him as a child.

Standing in front of me was a man of tradition, and one who was better not to upset.

With all my effort, I gritted out a “Good evening.”

“I hope you enjoy it,” he continued immediately, looking around the ballroom with emphasis. “After all, you’re on our property.”

Those words were unnecessary. Just like the next ones, which made my body tense up even more.

“Just don’t enjoy it too much. I saw you with the Quatura, with that girl with the green dress, and the women I call my enemies for a reason.”

He looked at me with mistrust. His blue eagle eyes no longer scanned the ballroom. They hung menacingly over me.

“There’s a lot of potential in you. I saw that back then. You’re stronger than other Senseque. And yet you’re wasting it. One day you will realize where you belong.”

His words felt wrong. Like he was trying to inject an untruth into me. Through manipulation.

“You forced my father to join the pack,” I pressed out, and his gaze darkened.

If I were a stranger, I would be scared now, but something inside me wanted to rebel against this man. I wanted him to know that he would never be my Alpha.

“You know that every Senseque has to join a pack sooner or later,” he said with a threatening undertone in his voice.

I wondered if he spoke to his daughter like that.

How could she be so connected to the pack? A bunch of idiots blindly following a single deluded man.

“You know what awaits those who don’t.”

I began to tremble on the inside, with tension.

He had forced my father... blackmailed him.

Stunned, I stared at the man I had once had so much respect for. Small, barely visible scars above his eyes reflected his past within the pack hierarchy, as well as all the games he’d been forced to participate in.

I had once admired him for that. What a naive child I had been. I realized now that if I hadn’t left, he would have brainwashed me.

As painful as the thought was, my mother’s death had opened my eyes.

I would have loved to tell Nickolas how much I didn’t care about his opinion, but all I could do was stand there in silence and let his rebuke wash over me because I knew he now had something he could use against me. Until he finally decided he was done with me and marched back to the pack.

I must have stood there rooted to the spot for a while until someone shook me by the arm.

“Julian, hey. I’ve been looking for you.”

Bayla had finally reappeared and was looking around frantically in all directions.

I would carry her out of here myself if anyone from the Circle came and wanted her. Maybe my anger was getting the better of me, but I didn’t care.

“You should dance with her,” I heard Bayla’s voice next to me and looked in a daze in the direction she was pointing, and then I caught sight of Emely standing there like a pillar of salt, looking at me.

After that conversation with her father, she reminded me even more of what I most wanted to avoid. That miserable pack of wolves!

I turned my back to her and held out my hand to Bayla. “Distract me.” She placed her hand in mine, confused. “Please.” It was almost a whisper.

Say You Won’t Let Go

ItsAMoney

With those words, I pulled my neighbor girl, who I never expected to become my best friend, onto the dance floor, and we began to dance.

She didn’t say anything, just watched my facial expressions, and I was grateful that she was here, even if I couldn’t bring myself to say it. I felt like a pile of broken shards, and Bayla glued me back together, just for the moment, but that was enough for half an eternity.

I looked at Bayla, taking in her scrutinizing gaze. “I hope you won’t hold it against me if I can’t dance.”

Bayla just laughed and came closer, making it easier for me to lead her across the floor while counting the freckles around her nose to calm down a little.

“Don’t worry about it. I can’t either.”

Her words made me smile, and so we danced the easiest dance I’d ever danced without it feeling like it.

As we repeated our steps over and over again, I felt what was living inside me, what I wanted so much to separate from me, relax and disappear back into its dark hole.

A shadow suddenly flitted past me and I looked up to see that it was Miles. Another shadow followed him... Emely. I watched them pass, looked at Emely, and didn’t understand why they were suddenly dancing.

Hadn’t she hated him? And hadn’t he tried to make her life difficult?

I saw Emely’s overwhelmed look and felt the urge to go to her and get her out of this awkward situation, but Bayla pushed me further away so that another couple could get between us and them.

“Don’t do it,” she whispered.

“She looks like she’s uncomfortable,” I protested, searching among the dancers for Emely, who was – for whatever reason – at war with this Ruisangor. She had probably gotten herself into trouble, and now he was out for revenge. And that in front of the damn pack...

“Emely can take care of her own problems. If Miles pisses her off, she’ll just leave. He can’t do anything to her. Not here. And he wouldn’t.”

Bay seemed to think well of him and, so far, he hadn’t made any notable missteps in my presence.

I had overheard an argument between the two of them, but I didn’t know how much they really hated each other. But judging by Emely’s principles, she loathed Ruisangors just as much as her father and the rest of the pack did.

“I have a feeling you’re confusing her.”

I turned my head to Bayla and found despair in her two peculiar eyes.

“In what way?”

Bayla spoke in a calm and understandable way, as if the words themselves were getting to her.

“She always comes to you, you reject her,” images of the campus flashed through my mind, where Emely had come to me almost every morning. “Then you ask her out, but leave her standing there, and instead of apologizing, you make her wait...” More images of her sitting next to me on the tree house... and eventually giving me angry and sad looks.

The truth hurt. Bayla had just confirmed what an ass I was.

“With him, she seems distracted from you, even though she might not like him.”

I looked back at Emely, who was looking up at Miles, completely focused on him. It seemed like they were arguing, not much, but enough so that she wasn’t focused on me any longer.

“You just rejected her. Don’t make it worse by making a scene now.”

I looked at Bayla.

She was right. She was always right. This girl was so smart and had noticed things I wouldn’t have realized for ages. Without her, I wouldn’t even have known that Emely had feelings for me.

My eyes traveled over the fabric of her dress, which accentuated her body, and then to her neck, where the blue gemstone pendant I had found on the sidewalk in front of her house hung.

“Without you, I’d still be where I was a few months ago,” I said softly so she could still hear. “Thank you, Bayla Adams, for giving me a chance.”

Bayla blushed and this time I knew it was my fault.

“Thank you for saying Yes to being friends with me,” I continued, watching the light from the chandeliers reflect in each of her different colored eyes in a different way. Maybe it was just the gleam in them…

We danced, lost track of time, danced even more, and she made it easy for me not to have to concentrate on Emely. Even though I could see Miles and her literally gliding across the floor in the corner of my eye...

At least she had a dance, even if it was with a Ruisangor.

Bayla had a radiance and a way about her that made me forget that I was supposed to be miserable. She was the lightness I had never expected to find in a friendship. Bayla Adams was the light in my darkness for a dance, and I tried to memorize the moment so I could thank her later.

When the orchestra stopped, I bowed jokingly to Bayla, and she grinned.

Take Me to Church

Vitamin String Quartet

“I don’t mean to interrupt, but there are definitely too many people dancing here right now, and I feel like an idiot.”

Larissa appeared next to me and Bayla, looking a little windswept.

In the corner of my eye, I saw a black shadow scurry past me toward one of the corridor exits. Then I looked to where Miles and Emely had just been dancing, but there was only Miles standing there, looking like Emely had just slapped him in the face. Then he suddenly stormed off toward where I had just seen the shadow.

Worry spread through me and I hoped he wouldn’t hurt her. Otherwise, he would have to deal with more than just Emely’s other friends.

“Maybe it’s time to get back to the reason we came here in the first place,” Larissa remarked, glancing at her cell phone watch before slipping it back into the sewn-in pocket of her dress.

“Where are the others?” Bayla asked, looking around.

Larissa just shook her head, as if something in particular was upsetting her. “Julie actually knows that we’re meeting on campus by the big oak tree and Miles...” Now she was looking around too. “God damn it, where is this guy when you need him?”

I pointed in the direction I had seen him disappear. “That way.”

Larissa nodded her thanks to me and looked at Bay.

“Okay, how about this: I’ll go look for him, and we’ll meet right outside in a minute.”

Bayla and I nodded at the same time, and Larissa disappeared in the direction Miles had gone.