Chapter 26 Avery
AVERY
You could’ve knocked me over with a feather when Elijah strolled into Folklore class, his shoulders relaxed and his gait easy, like he hadn’t been missing for almost a month.
George slithered happily along next to him, clearing the front row as he went. Elijah chuckled and rolled his eyes playfully in my direction, as if the students scrambling out of their seats and clawing their way into the rows behind them were just so silly.
“Mr. Harrow,” the professor said, sounding exasperated but also a little wary. “While I am, um, pleased to have you back in class, is the snake necessary?”
Elijah paused on the stairs that bisected the room’s tiered seating.
George continued on without him, headed my way.
“George goes where he wants to, Professor,” Elijah said over his shoulder.
“He’s his own snake. I promise he’ll behave.
” Elijah took in the rest of the class, amusement glinting in his golden eyes.
“Unless someone provokes him, of course.”
The professor sighed heavily. “Fine. Take your seat, please. All of you. We’re starting class.”
George curled up under my feet as Elijah dropped into the seat next to me, which no one else had dared occupy in his absence. The sweet, tempting scent of citrus, mint, and male floated around me.
“Hello, Dove. I’ve missed you terribly.”
I’d saved up a lot of thoughts and questions for him. The last time I saw him, he’d looked so forlorn, like the fact that he needed to let his beast out to rampage against a Giant wraith had been a tragic failure on his part.
And I wanted to know more about his mother.
But all I managed was to angrily hiss, “Where the fuck have you been?”
His smile was blinding white, those deadly sharp canines taunting me. “Oh, here and there.”
“What does that mean?”
“It’s okay to admit you missed me, too, Dove.”
I looked away and stuck my nose in the air. “I had George to keep me company.”
“Yes, I hear you two had some exciting times together.”
Of course he knew about that.
He leaned in, his warm breath ghosting along the side of my neck. “I hear you had some exciting times with Heath and Aiden as well.”
My face heated and warmth bloomed low in my belly. Of course he knew about that too.
“You boys gossip like church ladies,” I muttered.
His chuckle was sinful and dirty. “A quad becomes very comfortable with that kind of thing, Dove. After all, a painfully heterosexual group like ours is meant to settle down and fuck the same girl together for the rest of our lives.”
It took every ounce of my willpower to control the full-body shiver that threatened to consume me at that thought. My beast rolled over, ready to show her belly to the dangerous predator. He doesn’t mean me, you ridiculous animal.
“And what a lucky girl she’ll be,” I said, going for flippant but just sounding hoarse.
“I’d like to think so. But you’re right, Dove. Class is starting, and if we’re going to discuss… arousing things, I’d rather we be alone.”
“We aren’t going to be discussing—”
“Okay, settle down everyone!” the professor said, projecting her voice over the low hum of student chatter. “Today we begin our unit on the Heroic Journey.”
Elijah scooted ever so slightly out of my personal space and began typing notes on his laptop. He appeared genuinely interested in the lecture, as usual. It was ridiculously endearing.
When class ended, Elijah and George followed close on my heels as I made my way out of the classroom and into the stuffy wood-paneled hallway.
George slithered out ahead of me, and students swore and scattered out of our way.
I rolled my eyes. Not everyone who walked the halls of this school had a powerful predator living inside them, but come on.
This was a seven-foot-long python with shiny purple scales, not a wraith stalking down the hall.
“Dove, may I have a word?”
“Um—”
Long fingers threaded through mine, and Elijah pulled me gently into a small alcove between classrooms. An oil painting featuring one of the 19th-century founders of the college hung there, the grizzled old shifter watching us with judgy black eyes.
My back hit the wall next to the painting. Elijah stepped into my personal space, leaning an elbow against the wall by my head. It was intimate, and he was too close, but I had no desire to demand he move.
This was not a private area, but George had curled himself into a pile out in the hallway in front of us, a glittering purple traffic cone that had the few students wandering this way turning around and hurrying back the way they came.
Yellow-gold eyes drank me in, sinful, dangerous, but also playful.
That was Elijah in a nutshell, wasn’t it?
“I’m sorry for what happened when we sparred, Dove,” he said in a low voice.
He swiped his thumb softly across my cheekbone.
“I’ve worked very hard to maintain my hold over my beast. I’ve gotten good at controlling the urge to shift, but once he’s out, I’m not in the driver’s seat as much as you would expect from a strong predator Prime.
The basilisk is a bit more volatile around you, for some reason, and I’m sorry if I frightened you. ”
“It’s okay,” I whispered. “I wasn’t scared, Elijah. Just worried about you, I guess.”
A pleased grin spread across his face. “Were you, now?”
I swatted his chest. He wore his usual breezy linen shirt, unbuttoned low enough to show off the snake draped around his neck and the top of his defined pecs.
“Don’t read into it. Are you sure you should be this close to me?
If I set the basilisk off in this hallway, I’ll never hear the end of it from Heath. ”
And yet, even knowing his loss of control was a distinct possibility, I felt no fear. My beast wasn’t even tentatively on edge, which she normally would be at the slightest whiff of danger.
I know you think you can handle the beasts in this quad, but this basilisk can and will kill us.
She licked a paw and flicked her tail. Great.
Elijah just chuckled. He slid his hand lower to wrap it possessively around the back of my neck. “Mmm, true. And what happened the last time you got in trouble with Heath?”
A hot blush flared from my face all the way to my chest. He knew exactly what happened, so I wouldn’t dignify that question with an answer. I just scowled at him.
He grinned even wider. “Heath’s a lucky bastard. I’m insanely jealous. Not sure if I mentioned that.”
“You did not,” I replied, clearing my throat.
“But, to your point, Dove, I’ve decided to work on this little issue of mine.” He leaned in, his nose a hair’s breadth from mine, and whispered, “Exposure therapy. Plus, if our ruthlessly by-the-book quad leader is going to misbehave, it’s only fair I get to.”
“What—”
He kissed me.
Soft, insistent lips pressed to mine. His hand tightened around my neck while the other landed on my hip, and he pulled me closer.
My body went slack, and I kissed him back. Elijah rumbled a soft male noise of satisfaction. He licked the seam of my lips, and I opened for him. A skilled tongue caressed mine, coaxing little moans from me as he explored my mouth.
I buried my hands in his shirt. Wet heat burned between my legs. “Elijah,” I gasped against his mouth.
He ripped his lips from mine and took a big step backward. Slitted pupils inside glowing golden irises stared at me, hungry and predatory.
My beast awoke from her lusty little haze and began to pace.
Elijah slammed his eyes shut and shook his head like he was trying to clear it, his nostrils flaring like a bull’s and his fists clenched at his sides.
“Hey, it’s okay—”
His eyes snapped open. Round pupils greeted me, and his irises had returned to their usual non-glowing gold.
After a cleansing breath, he smiled at me once more. “Thank you, Dove. Baby steps, I think, but all progress is good progress, wouldn’t you agree?”
He didn’t wait for me to answer. He turned around, whistled at George like he was a dog, and strode off down the hall. George glanced my way, his little snake face sorrowful, before he slithered off after Elijah.
I just stood there, shellshocked and confused, as they both disappeared from view.
After that, Elijah joined Heath and Wyatt in keeping a respectable distance from me.
None of them engaged with me—not in the dining hall, in our shared classes, or during Guardian training.
Wyatt didn’t openly flirt with me. Heath didn’t boss me around.
Elijah didn’t try to kiss me again or even touch me beyond the inadvertent brushing of our arms on occasion when he sat next to me in class.
I knew better. Despite appearances, they weren’t ignoring me. They were watching me, all three of them, like hungry dogs watched the family’s pet rabbit that they’d been forbidden to eat.
Aiden was the worst of them all, or maybe it just felt that way because we were forced into spending so much one-on-one time together.
He continued to pay me no mind in class, but our tutoring sessions were rife with sexual tension, his beast constantly peeking through his eyes, studying me from across his desk.
Both of us struggled to pretend that I hadn’t shattered in his arms while I’d come the hardest I ever had in my life.
Unfortunately, he did not decide to rut me like an animal against the side of the Magical Ed building, despite his claim that he had a free pass to do so.
George still came around. Elijah and I were splitting custody of him at this point, and he even spent a little time with Ian, who’d bought George’s affection by shifting into his fox and taking George out hunting for rodents one night.
Cash continued to hate me, but there was little he could do about my holding steady in the top quarter on the Guardian leaderboard.
Wyatt’s dad dropped in to observe training once every couple of weeks, and that big bear had little tolerance for anyone’s bullshit—especially from Cash and the other trainers, who were extra fucking obnoxious now that they were bonded and juiced up.
We’d spent the past few weeks working on formation and battle tactics, which involved a lot of slow-motion breakdowns against the SWIM, with various wraith combinations. There’d been little opportunity for leaderboard movement as a result, so the quads were getting antsy.
When the first Friday in March rolled around, tensions and excitement in training were high.
The quad groups were going to be released to go all out against the simulations.
Support Squadron had gone in their six person groups against lower-level swarms the day before, with Ian and Brody’s group coming out on top by a mile.
“Cash is trying to tank you by sticking you with the Mahoney Trio,” Ian muttered.
We were perched in the bleachers, watching as the Valente Quad limped through a challenge that’d thrown four Ripper-level leonine creatures with pincers and scorpion tails at them.
One of them had been stabbed in the stomach with that tail and was being subjected to the feeling of bleeding out on the floor while the rest of his team got their asses kicked.
Ian winced as their leader, an enormous jackal, took a pincer right to the face.
“The Mahoneys are a fucking mess,” he went on.
“It’s no wonder they can’t find a fourth to become a quad. ”
“Plenty of shifters bond as a trio,” I pointed out.
Our dads did—sort of. And there wasn’t a requirement among Primes to form a quad. It was just seen as the ideal, especially among the wealthy and influential families, because it projected maximum strength and was an even number, or whatever.
I didn’t tend to care what the elites of our kind got up to, but I couldn’t avoid it now that I was surrounded by them.
“But you’re right,” I went on. “The Mahoneys will be every man for himself out there.”
But I had to go along with it because I needed to complete challenges in quad formation if I wanted to keep my position on the leaderboard. There wouldn’t be another full quad competition until next month.
Ward Gale was also here today. He needed to see me prove myself fighting within a traditional team of four if I wanted a role among the Guardians and not the Support Squadron, because Cash sure as shit wasn’t going to recommend me for it.
I caught Kace Mahoney glaring up in my direction. He had white-blond hair, soulless gray eyes, and a white wolf for a beast. He was an Alpha in size and physical strength only, because he sure didn’t lead like one.
I sent him a shitty salute. He could stow the attitude because he needed me as much as I needed him right now. His trio was low on the leaderboard and in real danger of getting cut at the end of the semester, and my addition to their team would mean more kills in today’s run.
Trent cut the simulation magic from the control booth, and Cash brought the house lights up. As the Valente Quad limped off the arena floor, Cash announced the next team to go.
“Yes, yes, hold your applause,” he said irritably into the microphone. “The full Blackwell Quad has decided to grace us with their presence today. Looks like none of you have a shot at the top of the leaderboard yet again.”
I sat up straighter in my seat. Ian snorted a laugh at me, and I deserved it for nearly pulling a muscle in my neck trying to catch a glimpse of Aiden in his Guardian-issued tight black T-shirt and sweatpants.
He stood next to Heath at the edge of the arena floor, warming up his sword arm with controlled practice strikes of his saber.
There were the carved biceps and the corded forearms I already knew well. His ass filled out those sweatpants spectacularly, and he’d stashed his glasses away somewhere in preparation to shift. He must’ve just shown up because he hadn’t been here for warm-ups.
Heath stood there with his arms folded over his broad chest, scowling at the empty arena. Wyatt twirled his huge battle-ax like a baton, and Elijah was engaged in some sort of stretching.
“Is that warrior two?” I asked Ian, gesturing at Elijah.
“Might be. Yoga’s good for peaceful connection to the beast.”
At least Elijah had a few tools in his arsenal. Maybe if we tried yoga together….
“All right, Blackwell Quad!” Cash barked into the mic. “Get your asses out there. I don’t have all fucking day.”
The crowd quieted as the lights went down and the soft blue glow of the magic fired up and spread across the arena. I was as enthralled as everyone else as Heath, Wyatt, Elijah, and Aiden stepped onto the floor.