Chapter 22
Chapter Twenty-Two
Callum
The sun peeking through the trees on the hiking trail is entirely too loud for my hangover. Yet I’m determined to enjoy my after-sex saunter while coming back from last night’s romp in the woods with a very flexible tree nymph and a witch with absolutely killer abs.
I come up short, pulling the sunglasses from my face…There appears to be a woman lying in the middle of the path up ahead. I take my earbuds out. “Hello? Are you alright?” I shout from a dozen paces away. She turns and blinks up at me, bewildered.
Beautifully out of place, like a Siberian wallflower growing through a crack in the sidewalk? Check. A spill of wild merlot-colored curls? Check. A general look of adorable confusion? Check. That could only mean one person: Lena.
“Callum?” She shields her face from the sun with her hand as I approach. “Yeah, I’m fine.”
I assess her. Yeah, she looks alright, a little flustered maybe but overall okay. “What are you doing lying in the middle of the hiking trail?”
She glances around in bemusement. “Huh, I must have fallen asleep,” she mumbles to herself as she stands and brushes dirt from her neon Lycra pants.
She looks like she shops in the summer clearance section of GapKids.
What’s with all the neon? None of it matches the sassy, self-confident personality and cutting humor she brandishes like a weapon in the face of societal expectations.
I have the sudden strange urge to help this poorly decorated flower, who keeps committing every grave social faux pas.
I raise an eyebrow at her, realizing she still hasn’t answered my question.
“Oh, um. I came out here to read.” She holds up a textbook.
“I was looking for a spot to lie down, and I guess I must have chosen right here.” Tilting her head, she looks at the ground like it offended her.
Odd place to rest, but she’s an unusual magica.
“What are you doing out here? That isn’t really hiking attire.
” She gestures to my outfit: vintage burnt-sienna trousers and a ’70s-inspired acorn floral shirt, which is unbuttoned to reveal my white fishnet tank.
Frankly, I’m hot in last night’s look, but obviously, this isn’t outdoor activity wear.
Of course, the outdoor activities I was engaging in didn’t involve clothing.
“Oh, this old thing?” I deadpan, and she smirks in response. “I’m just coming back from a party.”
“Must be nice.” She scrunches her nose up like a little rabbit. “Apparently I’m not even allowed to have dinner on campus after the sun sets.”
“Well, every day the sun is setting earlier, so think how dark it will be by seven in the near future,” I offer facetiously.
“Rude of you to use logic against me.”
“Now, before you get us both in big trouble, what are you doing out of your room alone?” I try to give her a stern look. But I fail miserably because I feel bad; she’s had a pretty rough go of it this last week. As an air and earth fae, I don’t know what I would do if I had to be cooped up inside.
She huffs out a half laugh. “I’m not alone.
I definitely learned my lesson yesterday.
” So I heard. Both Boden and Kian were livid.
“Boden’s running laps through the hiking trails.
He told me I could either come with to get fresh air and exercise—but ew.
Or I could sit here and study and cheer him on every time he passes. ”
“He asked you to cheer him on?”
“Well, no. I’ve been taking that on at my own liberty.” She grins mischievously. “He loves it, feels really supported, I think.”
I laugh, knowing for a fact he does not.
“What’re you listening to?” she asks, pointing to the earbuds in my palm.
I hand her one and turn up the volume. “Funk. Perfect for a sunny Saturday morning,” I say as she bobs her head to the beat. “This is ‘Keep That Funk Alive’ by—”
“Lettuce,” she interrupts. “And Bootsy Collins. Yeah, I know them. They’re good.”
“You like funk?” I ask, impressed.
“I like music. I’ve been listening to a lot of Cinephonic, recently.” It’s rare that anyone has an interest in the same bands I do. “Or well, I was. The few records I own are in Portland.”
“I assume you don’t know any magica bands?” I tilt my head as she hands me back my earbud. “Like the Fae Funk Collective, Ethereal Echoes, Shifter Soundwave?”
“You assume correctly.” Her lip twitches in amusement.
“I’m going to make you a playlist.” I send her a quick text. Kian gave us all her number, when Petra picked up her new phone. “Now you have my number. Expect the playlist soon. Consider it mandatory magica education.” I wink before turning and heading toward the entrance of Havard Hall.
Right before I enter, I hear Lena’s sweet voice shout, “You’ve got it, hunny. Keep running like that, and you’ll make the team in no time! Quarterback is yours!!”
I shake my head, laughing as I jog up the stairs. What a cheeky little thing she is.
I walk into Mystic Mocha, the coffee shop in the student commons and immediately make eye contact with the beautiful man I’ve met here every other Saturday afternoon for the last year.
Teariki smiles at me from across the room, a coffee in each hand.
His is undoubtedly a black drip and the one he got for me likely a floral iced oat milk latte.
“They really missed an opportunity to make this purple.” Ariki purses his plump lips as he hands me my drink, which has the distinct scent of lavender.
“Yeah, they did. But at least this way, I get to be discreet.” I flash him a flirty wink.
“I hate to break it to you, Cal, but I think that ship has sailed.” He smiles, throwing an arm around my shoulder as we head to find a table outside.
We both prefer the outdoors to being cooped up inside.
And since we’re constantly forced indoors, we take every opportunity to be in nature when the weather permits, even if it’s just on campus.
Ariki has never missed our coffee date. Last winter, there was a blizzard, and he was snowed in at his pack’s compound.
He shifted and ran the whole way here, in three feet of snow. He’s the most dependable person I know.
We take a seat at a table on the edge of the quad near the library. “How’s the semester starting off?” he asks, pushing a stray hair that’d slipped from his bun behind his ear.
“Pedantic.” I huff out a breath. “As it’s meant to be.”
“Oh, talk nerdy to me.” He chuckles, eyes shining with mischief. “Gets me all hot and bothered.”
“See, you act like you’re joking, but I know you love my esoteric parlance.” I smirk, and he lets out a soft growl. It’d be so easy, the two of us. If the world were different…
Speaking of, I broach an off-limits subject purely to punish myself. “How’s the hunt for the future shifter queen going?” I try my best to sound nonchalant, but I just come off bitter. He gives me an “are you kidding me” look before sighing and running his hands down his face.
“Terrible. I have a list of potential offers from pack princesses and princes across the globe…but…”
“But none of them are six-foot-tall nonbinary princes who smell like apples, tea, and sage?” I tease and bump his much thicker shoulder with mine.
“See you act like you’re joking…” His eyes glint playfully before turning sad.
“I know.” I sigh deeply and grab his hand under the table.
“Me too.” He gives mine a light squeeze, his eyes softening.
We knew when we were finally brave enough to give voice to this thing between us four years ago that it could never be anything more than a secret.
Not because of anything as rudimentary and unsophisticated as queerphobia.
That’s a purely human concern. Magica prejudices lie in the taboo of cross-kingdom and cross-insignia fraternizing.
Even if by some miracle we were able to defy kingdom policies, we’d still have to contend with the fact that we are both future rulers, and uniting our kingdoms in such a way would surely bring war.
I looked into it thoroughly as a teenager because I was very much in love with him even then. It’s an impossible future.
We sit for a while and just let the moment wash through us. In two months, his Challenge Epoch begins, and from then on, he will need to be solely focused on his royal duties. Unfortunately, that includes finding a consort.
“How are you doing, with everything?” I inquire, but he gives me a confused look. He was clearly lost in his own mind as much as I have been. “With the Challenge Epoch coming up?”
“Fine, I haven’t been really thinking about it too much. I’ve been…” He trails off, looking for the right word. “Distracted.”
I follow his eyeline to find Solis and her friends flailing about in the grass next to Havard Hall. She appears to be attempting to practice combat or possibly interpretive dance?
“The Solis girl?” I raise my eyebrows in concern, definitely not jealousy.
“I don’t like not knowing,” he muses, as we watch one of the other women flip Lena over her back. “We can’t risk any unknowns.”
Lena lies in the grass for a moment before righting herself.
She’s graceful, not at all clumsy in her movements, but clearly untrained and unpracticed.
Her punches lack both strength and conviction, a bit like she’s rehearsing a mock fight scene in a community theater production of West Side Story—adorable and completely nonlethal.
I hate that I have absorbed enough Broadway trivia through Ariki’s obsession with musical theater to make my own mental metaphors.
I smile to myself. Who am I kidding? I don’t hate it—not even a little bit.
“I think she’s likely harmless.”
Aki repositions Lena’s starting stance. I didn’t realize they knew each other.