Chapter 10 Wyatt
WYATT
Heath and I hit the showers in the arena locker room—solo, since no one else had done shit during today’s session except stand around and gape like assholes as a female and a fox shifter made them all look like fucking chumps.
We didn’t speak as we toweled off and redressed.
Heath was deep in thought, the default mode for our quad leader, so I left him alone to process the half dozen conflicting thoughts I knew were banging around in his head.
“Let’s swing by Aiden’s office before dinner,” he suggested as we marched back across the lawn toward the main campus, huddled under our sweatshirts as we braced ourselves against the bitter wind. Shifters ran hot, but it was cold as fuck out. “We should probably update him on this mess.”
“Maybe he has thoughts on our new little wildcat,” I added, smirking. “Since she apparently had his class this morning.”
Heath quirked a blond brow. “You think she’s a feline?”
I shrugged. “No idea. You’re better at reading a beast than I am. If she has one.”
His jaw tensed. “I don’t have a read on her at all.
She was such a machine against the SWIM.
Her strength and speed indicate a body enhanced by a beast soul, but she and her brother have also clearly had superior training.
It could just be that she really has been fighting actual wraiths for years, and it shows. ”
“While the rest of us were taking combat class in prep school and poking each other’s beasts with training weapons.”
“Yeah,” he grumbled irritably.
And we’d thought we’d been ahead of the curve.
Only shifter kids from wealthy families or those with Prime beasts—often one and the same—were able to attend the exclusive private schools that catered to the supernatural, and those of us who knew we wanted to serve in the Guardians from a young age would begin training well ahead of our arrival at Proteus College.
We’d learned to wield our blades of choice and were given advanced combat training by expensive private tutors.
Aiden, Heath, Elijah, and I had even had the extra good fortune to meet and resonate with one another when I was in middle school, so by the time we entered Proteus, we were a fully formed quad.
We met up with Aiden here in his senior year when we started as freshmen, and the rest was history.
Blackwell Quad had been at the top the leaderboard since day one for a reason. We’d taken every advantage afforded to us and worked our asses off to achieve our goals.
For me, the Guardians were always endgame; my dads were vets, and I’d follow in their footsteps. I had talent, and I’d been raised with a sense of duty that I should use it to protect the community.
For Heath and Aiden, becoming Guardians would earn them a level of freedom and independence from their fathers and the Council that nothing else could.
And for Elijah…. Well, he needed to be seen as disciplined and useful rather than uncontrollable and deadly.
So yeah, we were going to graduate Guardian training in the top spot, making us the most valuable asset in our class as we entered the forces.
Except it appeared the thing we’d needed to do to really excel was run around outside the borders of Guardian patrol as high school students, pick fights with real wraiths, and hope we didn’t die.
Heath was undoubtedly frustrated by this news.
I thought it was kind of hilarious.
“Stop looking so fucking… giddy,” he griped at me. “I know you think this whole thing is entertaining, but it’s also going to become a major distraction.”
I clapped him on the shoulder. “Relax, dude. It’s been a day.
We’ll handle our own shit, like we always do, and I bet Avery the sexy wildcat bails on this whole thing before the semester’s over.
She’ll decide occasional off-the-books wraith vigilantism in Fulton City is preferable to dealing with Cash and a lot of other bad attitudes. ”
Though it’d be nice to have a taste of her before she stomped out of here in a huff, middle fingers thrown high. My beast hadn’t taken special notice of a female in a long while, but something about Avery had perked him right up. Heath was suffering from the same affliction.
When we arrived at Aiden’s office on the third floor of the Magical Education building, we were just in time to catch Professor Eleanor Tally as she exited, tossing a flirty smile and a little wave over her shoulder as she went.
“Thanks so much, Aiden. See you bright and early tomorrow!” She startled when she spotted Heath and me, and her smile turned even more coy.
“Oh, hello, boys. Dropping by to visit Aiden? I’m sorry to be missing you, but I have a student conference in five minutes.
” She stuck out her lower lip in a little pout she only used around Aiden and occasionally the rest of our quad.
At all other times, she was firmly in her hard-ass professor mode.
Heath managed not to roll his eyes. “We have quad business anyway, Professor Tally. Not really here for a social call.”
“How many times do I need to ask you boys to call me Eleanor?” she said with a little swat to his shoulder, and then she winked. “Aiden’s quad has special privileges.”
Yeah. Those privileges included fucking her, if any of us so chose.
Tally was the same age as Aiden and had been a senior when we were freshmen.
She wanted Aiden in the worst way and the rest of us in a slightly less-than-worst way.
A pedigreed latent, she was angling to become our central bond, and for her, Aiden was the way in.
He was probably going to be in a mood after this.
“Thanks, Eleanor,” I purred at her, shoving Heath into the office. I slipped inside behind him and slammed the door before she could bat her eyelashes at us again.
Aiden sat behind his large oak desk, reclining in his chair with his arms crossed over his chest, his face pinched. George was curled up on a couch cushion that Aiden had thrown in front of the small fireplace. Ignoring our entrance, he sunned himself in quiet bliss.
I nudged George with my shoe. “There you are, you little slut. I heard you were groping the new girl.”
He lifted his head an inch, yellow eyes narrowed as he hissed at me, then went right back to his nap.
“Is that true?” Heath asked his brother as we both took our seats in the chairs facing Aiden’s desk. “George decided to crawl all over Avery Baxter this morning?”
Aiden’s brows bounced upward. “It is true. He slithered into my class, then lost his mind and climbed right onto her lap. How did you hear about that?”
“We sat behind her in Shifter History. He left some scales behind in her sweater.”
Aiden raked a hand through his wavy brown hair. “It was the strangest thing. She didn’t care in the slightest either.”
“Not surprising,” Heath muttered.
Aiden’s hazel eyes narrowed behind his stuffy professor glasses. “Is that why you two are here? To ask about Avery? Not that I mind the intrusion—Eleanor is growing more insistent.”
I chuckled. “That blouse was unbuttoned a little lower than usual.”
He rolled his eyes. “If it’s not her, it’s a student. This is the price I pay for refusing to join a quad my own fucking age.” He pinned Heath with a scrutinizing stare. “Why are you in my office, asking about the new girl?”
Heath leaned forward in his chair. “What did you think of her?”
“She’s a mouthy brat,” he replied instantly, his nostrils flaring.
I snorted a laugh. “Coming from you, that’s as good as saying you’ll be bending her over your desk before the semester’s over.”
He glared at me. “She lectured me, in my own fucking class, about how wraiths supposedly harm humans.”
Heath grimaced, and I could only casually scratch the back of my head.
“I’m inclined to believe her, man,” Heath said quietly. “She showed up uninvited to Guardian training this afternoon.”
Aiden stared at him. “She what?”
We took turns describing what went down at training. Aiden’s eyes had widened to saucers by the time we finished.
“What the hell is your dad thinking, Wyatt?” he asked me, incredulous. “She’ll get torn apart for this. If not by an actual wraith in the near future, then by the ignorant meat-headed beasts in this school.”
“He was thinking that she dominated the fuck out of that arena, man. You weren’t there. She took down a fucking L4 with only her brother’s help, and he is a fox.”
He sighed. “Great. Well, I’ve failed to mention that I’m also tutoring her in runes twice a week. The intro class is full, and apparently that’s her strongest secondary affinity.”
“Lucky you,” I said, waggling my brows.
Heath punched me in the shoulder. “I wish you would take this seriously.”
“Why? None of this is our problem. We all got a little excited when we found out that not only is she gorgeous, but her father is an Alpha wolf—”
“He is?” Aiden asked, brows creeping upward once again.
“—and now we’ve had to file that little flash of cautious optimism away as something else because it’s pretty damn clear she has a beast but is being real fucking shady about it—”
“This girl wants to be a Guardian but won’t shift or even admit she has a beast?” Aiden pressed.
“—and yeah, it sucks because our backs are kind of up against the wall, and having a new, hot, Prime-blooded latent female, who caught all three of our interests, not to mention fucking George’s interest, had been a positive development on the bonding front—”
“Jumping the gun a little bit to claim I was interested in her,” Aiden grumbled.
“—but I guess it’s not to be,” I finished. “So, yes, bummer, but if she wants to make waves in the Guardians or the school, it isn’t our problem.”
Heath sighed. “As the strongest quad on campus, waves in the Guardians or the school inevitably become our problem, Wyatt. Or a distraction, at the very least, and we don’t need that shit.
” He glanced at his brother, as glum a look on his face as I’d ever seen.
“I don’t suppose you’ve heard anything from home? ”