Chapter 33 Avery
AVERY
Thirty seconds before I sat down in my Tuesday morning Folklore class, an email hit my phone.
From: Blackwell, Aiden
To: Baxter, Avery
Subject: Tutoring
Dear Miss Baxter,
I’m cancelling our tutoring session tonight and all sessions for the rest of the semester. You’ve demonstrated sufficient knowledge and skill with the Runes 101 curriculum and will receive an A.
- Professor Blackwell
I stared at it. Aiden hadn’t said anything about this before the break, but he had seen me successfully perform a Moon blessing, so maybe I’d earned the rest of the semester off?
I’d just have to get over the pinch of disappointment at losing that slice of time with Aiden when I got to be the sole object of his unwavering focus.
Still, something uncomfortable began to churn in my gut.
I’d had a blissful, relaxing spring break at home with my family. I felt good. My shoulder had healed, which I’d accelerated by spending some time as my beast, lounging around in the privacy of our house. Ian had even brushed out my fur, and I swore the extra endorphins had fixed me right up.
Or maybe it was the nightly TLC I’d given myself with thoughts of Wyatt’s hot mouth on mine, Elijah’s glowing yellow eyes, Aiden’s rasp up against my neck, or Heath’s demanding tongue between my thighs that’d done it.
As nice as it was to spend time at home, I’d been looking forward to returning to campus.
I was ready to kick ass and earn back my place on the leaderboard, but if I was being honest with myself, I’d been looking forward to seeing each member of the Blackwell Quad again.
An itch plagued me, like I was an addict jonesing for my next fix of… I didn’t know what.
Heath’s bossy care? Aiden’s praise? Wyatt’s panty-melting smile? Elijah’s dangerous allure?
But when classes resumed yesterday, something hadn’t felt right.
Wyatt and Heath had ignored me completely.
It wasn’t unusual for them to keep their distance from me during the school days.
It wasn’t as if I’d expected Wyatt to show up to school and announce we were something after our encounter at the lake any more than I’d have expected the same of Heath after what happened between us the night I’d helped Clara.
But I no longer felt the heaviness of their gazes on me when I wasn’t looking.
The hyperawareness we had of each other.
The sizzling tension that I’d pretend was my imagination.
As of yesterday, all of it was gone. The difference was stark.
And now Aiden had summarily dismissed me from tutoring.
My beast bristled. I don’t know either.
The class took a collective breath, which tore my attention from my phone, and Elijah strode into the room.
I braced myself, waiting for him to take his usual path up the center aisle stairs. He’d always pause, and those golden eyes would meet mine. He’d give me a sly, knowing smile, and then he’d make his way to the seat next to mine.
Not this time.
My stomach sank through my chair as he made his way to the far side of the room and offered a fist-bump to a couple of the avian shifters, and then he winked at the blushing girl sitting behind them. My beast hissed angrily within me.
He grabbed a seat, cracked open his backpack to grab his laptop, and settled in to listen to the lecture as he always did.
He didn’t even look at me. The same guy who’d stared at me like I was the only thing on this planet while his quadmate lit me on fire was now acting like I didn’t even exist.
I opened my own laptop. The pages of today’s reading assignment blurred. I clenched my teeth tightly together, desperately trying to keep my lip from trembling.
Nothing changed in the weeks that followed.
Heath, Wyatt, and Elijah melted into the crowd of elite students in the dining hall, in the classroom, even in training.
They had flirty smiles for the girls who batted their lashes.
They joked with and fist-bumped the same assholes who call me an abomination under their breath when we passed in the hallways.
During one particularly grueling individual challenge against the SWIM, I took a gorilla-wraith fist to the head so hard, the impact with the arena floor left me with a mild-but-real concussion.
Heath didn’t even notice, much less drag me off to the infirmary to glare at Dr. Lee while he fixed me.
Aiden managed to never look my way in Lunar Magic class.
I hadn’t even seen George, and I wondered forlornly if Elijah had convinced him to keep away from me.
At least classes had been busy and the homework heavy.
I’d signed up for every individual combat opportunity that was offered to my training class, and I’d managed to gain some ground on the leaderboard, but I still needed to kill some major wraiths with a team if I had any hope of advancing to camp this summer.
And then the day finally arrived—the day the Guardian training program opened the arena to the rest of the school and the public so they could watch our power quads work. Today I would challenge the SWIM with a unit of four and finally earn back my rightful spot on the leaderboard.
I’d been paired with a moderately skilled trio of Primes who Brody assured me were probably not going to try to kill me.
It would’ve been unfortunate to experience another simulated soul death, not just because it would be the end of my chance to become a Guardian, but also because the whole damn school was in the bleachers.
But my assigned partners had failed to show up.
Cash was ready to giddily throw me out of the arena and probably the program, but then Ward Gale stepped in.
And now, as I stood at the edge of the arena and warmed up my shoulder with a few slashes of my sword, a heated conversation unfolded in front of me that made it clear that I hadn’t been imagining things these past few weeks.
Something was very wrong.
I could only listen in stunned silence as Heath, Wyatt, and Aiden squared up to Ward and brutally and unapologetically attempted to destroy everything I’d been working for.
“No, Ward,” Heath growled. “It doesn’t matter that Elijah’s not here. We do quad challenges with just the three of us all the time. We don’t need a fourth, and we definitely don’t need her.”
“She’s not a part of our quad and never will be,” Aiden added, sounding as though the idea disgusted him.
That knife through my back hurt like hell. My beast flattened her ears against her head and hissed.
If Ward was surprised by their attitude, he didn’t show it. “Overruled. I’m assigning Baxter to your team. Everyone else has a full four.”
“We run our attack with full rotation of Prime beasts, Dad,” Wyatt drawled. He looked like he didn’t really give a shit about anything right now, least of all me. “She’ll hinder us.”
That was a fucking lie, and they all knew it.
Especially Ward, who raised a single bushy brow. “Oh? If Elijah was here, he’d be shifting?”
They just stared at him.
“That’s what I thought. Shut your mouths and sit your asses down. You’re up last as the grand finale.”
As Ward stalked off, the guys didn’t acknowledge my presence. Heath heaved an annoyed sigh then marched over to a nearby bench, and the others dutifully followed. The three of them sat down and spread out, leaving no room for me.
I could take a hint. Sliding my swords back into their sheaths, I walked to an empty bench ten yards further down the way. As I sat down, I kept my attention firmly on the first quad that’d taken the floor to enthusiastic applause.
There was no time or space for me to marinate in this hurt. I had to get on that floor and show that I had what it took to hang with the most talented men in the Guardian program. If I wanted to move back above the cut line, I needed a lot of kills, including several Giants.
Then, and only then, would I allow myself to feel… blindsided? Betrayed? Like an idiot for allowing myself for one second to fantasize about there being something real between me and them?
Because the Blackwell Quad now seemed determined to make it clear that there had been nothing at all.
I searched the crowd and found Ian across the way, seated in the front row and surrounded by his friends from the Support Squadron. Everyone around him was laughing and cheering as the quad on the floor plowed through the first swarmers, but not Ian.
His face was hard, and his blue eyes glowed dangerously as he stared in the direction of Heath’s bench.
Couldn’t get anything past my brother. Add one more item to my list of problems: keeping Ian from trying to stab any members of the most powerful quad on campus.
It was a long hour of simulated wraith battles as team after team took the floor. Three people “died.” Four others ran out of bounds rather than take a death blow. Only one quad managed to kill a Giant without also taking a huge loss of points.
The crowd had somehow grown even larger and louder over the course of the hour. I spotted a whole section of faculty and staff, and there were also family members scattered throughout the crowd.
I hadn’t thought of inviting my dads up here to witness me killing wraiths that were complex magical illusions.
They were about as impressed as Ian and I were with the fact that no one in the program went near a real wraith until senior year, but they were also pretty astounded by our description of the complexity and power of the magic produced by the SWIM.
Next year, I decided. I’d sit in the stands with them, like the other senior Guardian trainees were doing today, and we’d critique everyone’s skills together.
Cash’s obnoxious voice echoing through the speaker system knocked me back to earth. “And finally, the last team of the day will be our current leaders! Heath Blackwell, Aiden Blackwell, and Wyatt Gale of Blackwell Quad, with one substitute.”
I didn’t even merit a name.