24. Stella
24
Stella
“I can’t stay long,” I say, shoveling dry cereal into my mouth with my hand. “I’m working on my book.”
That’s become my story when Ryan sees me sneaking off with my computer or burying myself in research – that I’m writing a book. I feel bad lying to him, but I can’t tell him what I’m actually doing. I like him too much to get him wrapped up in this.
I don’t know why, but I cannot shake the feeling that I’m in danger whenever I start digging.
Ryan nods stiffly, sipping on his coffee. “Wow, you wrote all day yesterday. You’ll lose your whole weekend to the book.”
“Yeah, but when inspiration strikes, it strikes, you know?” I grab my to-go smoothie and a banana and hop from my seat. “I’ll see you two later!”
Ryan and Clay look at one another, and a strange moment passes between them. Shrugging, I shake out my wings and jet out of the dining hall before anyone tries to stop me, my feet slapping the familiar path through the forest to the clearing I’ve been seeking refuge in.
The ground is still moist with morning dew, so I lay out a flannel and sit atop it, resting my laptop on my legs. I grab my phone to set up the hotspot and groan at what I see.
Yuri
Do you have an answer for me yet?
My patience is close to running out, Stella
You have three days
I drop my phone and bury my face in my hands. I can’t do this. I cannot handle this.
He’s blackmailing me for sex. He’s threatening to get me thrown into prison. He can pretend it’s about his reputation all he wants, but it’s clear that’s not his guiding force.
My stomach clenches, and I throw my head back against the tree.
Three days.
Three days to figure out how to get out of this.
“Who’s Yuri?”
I startle, looking up to see my elusive friend, the leprechaun, holding my phone. “You scared the shit out of me,” I say, clutching my chest. “Give me my phone back.”
He shakes his head, blue hair wet like he recently got out of the shower sticking to his knotted forehead. “Who is Yuri?”
“He’s just a guy I had a thing with.”
“Is he the guy? The revealed that you’re a supernatural guy?”
Well, he wasn’t, but I guess he is now. Looks like manifesting works for negative things, too.
I sigh, rubbing my face with both hands. “Yes, he’s the guy.”
His slender finger, with chipped black polish on the nail, scrolls through the messages, no doubt reading the weeks of poison Yuri has been texting me.
“What answer is he looking for?” The leprechaun’s voice is clipped and serious, with none of his teasing lilt presence.
“I-”
“I swear to all the fucking Gods of all the fucking realms, if you lie to me, Stella, I will lose my shit.”
I swallow my protest, my lies. I don’t know what to say to him. What good would any of it do? It’s not like he can get me out of this mess I fucked myself into.
“This guy is dangerous, Stella.” I look into the male’s moss-green eyes and see an emotion there that hasn’t been claimed. Whatever he is feeling, it’s against his will.
“I know,” I say as I stand and brush off my pants. I hold my hand out for my phone. “But I can handle myself.”
“No, clearly, you can’t. Why won’t you tell me what is going on?”
“What could you do?” I practically spit the words at his feet. “He’s blackmailing me. You can’t help with that. He has something on me, and he wants something in return. How could you possibly influence that situation?”
He shoves my phone back in my hand with a growl. “Why are you so stubborn? I am trying to help you.”
“I have asked you for help. I asked you to get the ledger, but you haven’t done that.”
He narrows his eyes at me. “You’ll get your ledger.”
I turn on the hotspot on my phone and sit back down, situating myself on the flannel against the tree and willing him to drop our earlier conversation. “Excellent. Meet here tomorrow after dinner?”
“I’ll find you, banloach .”
“That’s ominous.”
He chuckles and gives me an exaggerated shrug. “If the combat boot fits, I guess?” He holds his leg out, showing black combat boots under baggy jeans.
“Nah, you’re not an ominous guy, Blue. More annoying than anything.”
“Blue?” He squats down in front of me, pushing my laptop off my lap and looking me in the eyes.
“Yeah, you won’t give me your name, and I’ve gotta call you something when I’m bitching about you to my friends.” His proximity makes me nervous. Something about him has me on edge, but one that I am really looking forward to falling off of.
“I’ll tell you my name if you let me help you with this Yuri situation.”
My nose crinkles. I hoped we would move on from that conversation, but apparently not. “Drop it, Blue. If I need your help, I’ll ask for it. I can handle myself.”
Blue hooks his finger under my chin and leans close to me to where we are nearly nose to nose. From this close, I can see the barest sprinkle of freckles, so faint they almost fade into his skin. He smells like forroweed and coffee, which likely explains how he spent his morning. “It’s okay to need help sometimes, Stella.”
I am nearly frozen stupid, his proximity heating me from the tips of my toes and up through my scalp. It’s like a rope is sliding around my body and burning me as it does.
But I stubbornly hold my tongue, refusing to ask him for help with Yuri.
“Since you’re being so stubborn, then,” he purrs, his lips inches from my own, “you can learn my name when it’s time for you to scream it.”
My jaw drops open, and my voice catches in my throat. I try to speak, but he laughs softly at me and walks away, leaving me behind with an ache between my thighs.
I couldn’t trust myself to work in the woods, wondering if Blue would come back and tease me some more or, worse, try to find out about Yuri, so I moved back to my room and am using my pretty desk for something other than laundry.
“You can learn my name when it’s time for you to scream it.”
My Gods. It’s on a loop in my brain, the way his breath danced over my lips, the throaty chuckle he gave when he left, and the dark promise that laced every one of those words.
Who is this male? I know nothing about him other than that he is a leprechaun, and I am panting after him in a way that is very unlike me.
I take a deep cleansing breath and try to clear my mind like I’ve learned in my meditation class. That one really isn’t all that bad. It helps center me and allows me to start my research again.
I’m looking for any first-person account from someone who did not graduate as a simplynatural, someone who got out of prison, or a simplynatural who is speaking out against the Academy.
It’s no surprise that all my searches are frustratingly empty.
“Stella, are you hungry?” Ryan asks, knocking on the door to my room from the bathroom. “I’ve got snacks.”
I turn in my chair to see Ryan and Clay standing in my room. Clay holds a coffee and cookies, and Ryan has a plate of vegetables and a spinach dip. “Wow, guys, thank you so much. You didn’t have to do this for me.”
“You skipped lunch,” Clay says with a shrug. “I don’t know anything about writing a book, but I imagine you need energy to do it.”
I place the coffee and cookies on my desk by my computer, grab the vegetables, and sit on the floor, motioning for the guys to join me. “Have you had a good weekend?” The crunch of my carrot is obscenely loud in the quiet that overtakes the room.
Eventually, Clay flops onto the floor, legs sprawled around him, and props himself up on his elbows. “It’s been a weekend.”
Ryan shoots Clay a strange look as he gently folds his massive body into a comfortable position on the floor. “Kind of quiet without you around,” he admits.
“Aw, you’re gonna make me blush,” I say around a mouthful of vegetable dip. “I’m not that much fun.”
“He didn’t say you were fun. He said you were loud,” Clay teases. His blue eyes sparkle with the joke, and I dart my bare foot out to shove against his knee. He’s in shorts today, with a plain red shirt and sneakers like he just got back from a run.
“Okay, rude,” I say before crunching a piece of celery. “But seriously, thank you for bringing me some food, guys. I promise I’ll come to dinner, and we can hang out afterward. I’m in a groove right now, so I can’t chat long, or it’ll break, but I promise you both dinner and whatever you want to do afterward, okay?”
“Whatever we want to do?” Clay waggles his eyebrows comically before letting loose a quiet “oof” when Ryan elbows him in the gut.
My cheeks heat, and I fight my thoughts tooth and nail to get them to leave the gutter. “I mean…”
“Dinner,” Ryan says softly. “We’ll see you at dinner.”
“Yep, dinner and a date! See you later, little warrior!” Clay calls over his shoulder as Ryan ushers him out, exiting my room through the bathroom and closing the door behind him.
After that odd encounter, my groove is slightly off, but a few cookies help me find it again.
Eventually, I stumble upon a website buried under multiple layers of encryption in a section of the internet that I tend to avoid. Supernaturals have what we call the Spiritrealm, a private internet that is so well hidden that Authentics cannot access it.
A blog that briefly discusses the Academy pops up there. However, it mainly focuses on the prison, who funds it, and how they’ve never seen any job postings for it, as if it has no employee turnover. One comment chain especially draws my attention.
user4357300001:
Yeah, my brother was arrested and given the option of the Academy or prison and chose prison. They gave him ten years for shifting into his wolf form in public. For the first two years I’d go every weekend and try to visit him but they would always say he was busy and could not take part in visiting hours. They never even let me past the guard shack. Six months before he was due to be released I get a call that there was a riot and he was killed by another inmate.
I don’t believe it for a second. Something fucking shady is happening in that prison and I’m going to figure it out.
wolfinauthenticsclothing:
user435730001 – how do u plan to find out anything without getting arrested
user435730001:
I’ll do my research but it if comes down to it I’ll get my ass arrestted. I don’t care anymore. My brother was all I had. If I have to take that prison down from the inside I will.
princessvampira:
hey I know this thread is two years old, but did user435730001 ever update?
wolfinauthenticsclothing:
i sent him a private message like six months later for an update and he was still researching but was about to try to get himself arrested and i haven’t heard from him since
princessvampira:
This couldn’t be him, could it?
Local supernatural arrested for shifting in public. Sources say over a decade ago his brother was arrested for the same crime, in the same place.
wolfinauthenticsclothing:
well damn it may be thats a pretty specific thing to happen to more than one person let me do some research and see what happend
wolfinauthenticsclothing:
i pretended to be a cousin and called the prison and they wouldnt let me talk to him ill keep trying
wolfinauthenticsclothingr:
i went in person and i dont know why im so invested in this its not like the guy is a friend but this is fucking weird, right
wolfinauthenticsclothing:
i dont know why i’m still updating this but i want someone to know he was sentenced to ten years just like his brother and ive been trying to get in to see him for two years now and nothing
wolfinauthenticsclothing:
eight years ago user435730001 posted about his brother dying in the prison system and two years later he was arrested too its been six years since he went to prison and i was informed he died in a prison riot like his brother user435730001 was a wolf shifter named joseph thomas and i cant help but think he got killed because he got too close to the truth