Chapter 13 Avery
AVERY
“Take one more step, and it’ll be your last, Ashton.”
Rip the wolf growled, showing Heath a mouthful of sharp teeth.
“Sure, try me,” Heath said, folding his arms across his chest, appearing casual, almost bored. “I’d love to smear your ass all over this field. It would be fun for me. I haven’t worked out today, and it would save me the trouble.”
Thank the Moon. I sat down in the grass, finally taking a load off. Ian flopped down next to me, rested his elbow on his knee, and propped his chin in his hand. We both had an excellent view of Heath’s ass in snug denim.
Rip snarled, and with a contraction of his body and a fast cracking of bones, he shifted back into human form.
Naked Rip stood barefoot in the grass, glaring at Heath, his thick slabs of muscle glistening from the exertion of such a quick shift to and from beast form.
“What the fuck, Blackwell? You’re interfering in a challenge. ”
“Is that what this is?” Heath asked lazily.
“You know it is,” Rip bit out. “You don’t win a challenge against a quad until there’s no member left standing.”
“That would be true in a challenge against another fucking quad, Ashton,” Heath said, his voice icing over.
“No, instead you four have decided to gang up on a lone female. That’s embarrassing enough by itself, but then that female has apparently incapacitated”—he made a show of looking around at the animal bodies strewn around us—“three of your quad, and without the aid of a beast. I’m doing you a favor by ending this now. ”
“Fuck you, Blackwell,” Rip said, sneering. “That bitch is done. I’m finishing this. You can’t possibly want this bullshit with her joining the Guardians to continue.”
“It doesn’t matter what I want,” Heath replied, back to sounding bored.
“Ward Gale makes the rules, not me, and not you. If you’d have spent a fraction of the energy you just used to attack a female on fixing the shitty teamwork your quad displayed in the arena last year, maybe you wouldn’t have been cut. ”
It was mildly comforting to hear that the Guardian training program, even with dickheads like Cash at the helm, still had the wherewithal to toss to the curb assholes who didn’t know how to work as a team.
“For the last time, Blackwell,” Rip snarled. “Get the fuck out of my way.”
They glared at each other. I couldn’t see Heath’s face, but I imagined his eyes had lit up like golden sparklers.
Rip’s eyes pulsed with a deep amber glow, like he was pressing his beast’s will against Heath and then getting slapped back.
The flavor of dominance unique to Alpha wolves was thick and soupy in the air around us.
Students standing in the splash zone fidgeted.
Swimming in a dominance battle between Primes was off-putting for most shifters, and Heath in particular was a very heavy hitter.
I reached for Ian’s hand and found it trembling ever so slightly. I squeezed it, sending calming energy from my beast to his.
After a long, tense minute that felt like an hour, Rip swore violently and dropped his gaze. Heath had submitted him, and it appeared even Rip wasn’t dumb enough to challenge Heath wolf to wolf.
Rip pulled a pair of sweatpants from his backpack—those who could shift tended to carry extra clothes around because unexpected shifting happened and destroyed clothes when it did—and he yanked them on before ordering his brother to shift back to human form and do the same.
Once dressed, they stalked off, arguing with each other, leaving the rest of their quad to finish healing in a heap on the lawn.
Heath turned around and held out a hand as he looked down at me. “Can you stand?”
I stared at his hand, blinking dumbly, until Ian nudged me. “Yes, I can stand,” I grumbled.
I took his hand, which I found pleasantly warm and calloused. His grip was firm as he pulled me to my feet.
My beast chuffed at his touch, flicking her tail.
Stop that.
Once steady on my feet, I let go of Heath’s hand, but he had other ideas. He slid that strong grip right up to my bicep, wrapping it snugly around my arm and ushering me forward.
“Woah, what the hell, Blackwell?”
“I’m taking you to the infirmary.”
“No, thanks. I’m fine.”
“Bullshit. You’re bleeding in two different places, and Brody informed me when I arrived at the scene of this nonsense that Barrett’s bear crushed you. You’re seeing a healer.”
Damn it, Brody.
I craned my neck around to give Ian a pleading look. “You’re going to let this wolf manhandle me?”
He grinned, reclining in the grass like he didn’t have a care in the world. “I, too, would like you to see a healer. Blackwell’s saving me at least an hour of arguing with you.”
“Ian!”
He just waved.
Heath dragged me past where my friends stood, observing my newest predicament with slack jaws. Mallory gave me an enthusiastic thumbs-up, while Ash’s eyes were wide with more of a “what the fuck is happening” sort of look.
“Here,” I said to Brody, holding out the rapier. “This pointy toothpick was handy after all. I owe you.”
He took it from me with a satisfied smile. “You wielded it like a pro. I can give you lessons if you’re ready to ditch your little Japanese sticks.”
“Never.”
He tutted. “Snob.”
“I won’t apologize for having good taste in blades, Brody.”
“Come on,” Heath huffed, pulling on my arm. “I don’t have all day.”
“I didn’t ask you to throw your big Alpha dick around and treat me like an unruly child.”
“Avery,” Allen hissed. “You do remember that’s Heath Blackwell?”
I rolled my eyes. These wolves and their worship of the Alpha. “Yes, Allen. He’s very impressive, but as he’s neither my Alpha nor my father, this is out of line.”
Mal brushed a hand lightly over my side. “That’s a broken rib, Avery. If you don’t go with Heath to get healed, I’ll have Brody, Ash, and Allen hold you down while I try my hand at it, and I’m only a medic-healer in training.” She shrugged, her lips quirking. “I might mess it all up.”
“Totally,” Allen added, nodding vigorously. “I’m not afraid of you, Baxter!”
“Some friends you all are,” I hissed over my shoulder as Heath dragged me away, though I was kind of touched they cared after knowing me for all of two days.
“Thank the Moon,” Allen muttered behind me, “because I’m actually very afraid of her.”
Heath sat in a plastic chair in the corner of the small med room I’d been assigned upon arrival at the college infirmary.
He’d folded his arms over his big chest, and his face was firmly fixed in a fuck-around-and-find-out sort of glower.
He’d shucked his jacket and wore only a tight gray T-shirt, so the nurse and I were being treated to the view of his carved biceps flexing under golden skin.
The nurse hadn’t questioned Heath’s presence even once, and she’d just ordered me to take my shirt off so she could clean my wounds.
“How about a little privacy, Blackwell?” I said testily. “I’m here. I’m getting treated. Why don’t you go see if the two assholes whose spinal cords I nearly severed are recovering?”
He was unmoved. “We’re shifters, Baxter. Nudity isn’t a thing.”
That was mostly true, except it was more of a thing for females because most of us couldn’t shift. Except he knew that I was here to play with the big boys, so he was daring me to act like one.
Holding his glare, I pulled my sweatshirt over my head. My Fulton City FC T-shirt followed, leaving me in my strappy sports bra and jeans.
His hazel eyes flashed, the golden starburst that surrounded his pupils glowing from within as he dragged his hard gaze down my body.
He paid particular attention to the deep gouges in my shoulder left by the bear and the bite marks just above my hip from the panther, making a show of examining my wounds rather than checking out my nearly nude torso.
Heath Blackwell had no doubt seen his share of naked girls since he was old enough to get a hard-on and know what to do with it. Shifters were hot-blooded and horny, and it would take more than my modest C-cups shoved into a sports bra to interest the leader of the most in-demand quad on campus.
Not that I cared.
The nurse cleaned my wounds and stitched a few of the deeper gashes closed. Often modern medicine was quicker and more reliable than magical healing for simple things like closing wounds, but she told me to sit tight and wait for the doctor to come see to my ribs.
Heath and I sat in silence for one long minute after she left, and then he spoke. “Why didn’t you shift?”
I raised an eyebrow. “You’re so sure I have a beast?”
“There’s no other explanation for how you move. Your speed, your strength, and your bullheadedness in facing down four Prime shifter males in a challenge. Your animal may not be an asset in a fight against a Prime beast, but you could’ve at least shifted to accelerate your healing.”
“I know you were late to the party, Blackwell, but I won three challenges one right after the other, all without the aid of an animal. You should’ve let me finish them off.”
He clenched his jaw. “Rip was going to kill you. You’d embarrassed the absolute fuck out of his entire quad, and he was about to completely lose control. My wolf felt it.”
“I’m touched you care.”
“Believe it or not, a Prime quad challenging and killing a single female, beast or not, isn’t something anyone with sense condones.
” He dragged a hand through his thick blond hair.
“We can’t have that kind of anarchy. We’re a brutal and violent species at our core, but this is the twenty-first century, and we’re here to go to fucking college.
We don’t kill females in an unfair challenge just because they can swing a sword better than the average male. ”
I stared at him. What a reasonable, level-headed argument that also disclaimed any feeling whatsoever about me personally.
Fine.
“I think you know my skill with a blade is a lot more than better than average,” I said with a taunting smile.