Chapter 38 Alaric
Alaric
What the actual fuck was Lightfoot playing at? Despite what he’d told us, I knew damned well the forest was out of bounds. There hadn’t been any more demon attacks in the immediate area since the winter solstice ball, but my father was keen not to lose any more students.
Students dying at the ball had caused too many problems for him. While the Supernatural Council didn’t care if a few lesser magicals perished, they raised hell if a witch or mage died. That also applied to the general magical population where witches, mages, and shifters were in the majority.
A wolf shifter in his shifted form launched at me from a bush. Rolling my eyes, I zapped him with lightning. He fell to the ground, seizing and drooling. For fuck’s sake, this was too easy.
I sighed and then kicked him in the balls before snatching away the red flag he carried in his mouth and tucking it in my pocket. Idiot. It was all very well shifting to track down other students, but how did he expect to carry a bunch of flags and still bite people?
No wonder a wolf had never been in charge of the Supernatural Council: they were too driven by their instincts. All brawn and no brain.
Someone screamed nearby, and I turned to see a witch running toward me with another wolf shifter in pursuit. This idiot had shifted back to his human form and was naked. Goddess, they were making it too damn easy.
I whistled loudly, distracting him so he stumbled over an exposed tree root.
“Good boy,” I said with a grin before blasting him. He went down like a sack of rocks, twitching as he pissed himself.
Another flag to add to my collection. This one was green.
The witch he’d been chasing came back to thank me for saving her. Recognizing her as Demelza’s friend, I smiled before zapping her too. She fell into a mass of thorns with a look of pure betrayal on her face.
“The karma train arrived early,” I whispered under my breath. I grabbed her blue flag from her pocket and sauntered off. The bitch deserved more than a few scratches after the nasty bile she’d spewed at my witch this morning.
Raven hadn’t seen me, but I’d overheard the shit-talking she’d endured from Demelza’s coven. If Zane didn’t get to them first, I’d go after them one by one.
It was the least I could do.
I planned to protect my mate from the shadows so my father wouldn’t figure out who she was to me.
Luckily, he was too busy dealing with feral shifters and demon attacks to worry about facilitating an arranged marriage. Small blessings. And he hadn’t spotted the missing brimstone powder yet, or he’d have come after me.
I gave the second wolf shifter one last kick as I walked past, enjoying his pained groan, and then jogged away. Since I was stuck in the damned forest for another forty minutes, I figured I may as well have some fun.
I could have hacked the charm and yeeted myself straight back to the sports field, but Lightfoot was probably there waiting for us while sexting some poor deluded bitch on the Plenty of Shifters app. Catching the nasty bastard with his dick out was not on my to-do list today.
Three more shifters suffered a painful electric shock before I came across Raven’s witch friend with the nerdy glasses. She was busy trying to climb up a tree, presumably because she thought it was safer.
“Need a hand?” I smirked as she cursed.
“Why? So you can steal my flag?” She pulled a pink scrap of fabric from her pocket and tossed it at me. “Here. I’ve saved you the trouble. Now please go before some asshole finds me.”
Picking up the flag, I stalked over. “I don’t need it.
” Before she could protest, I shoved the flag at her and boosted her up onto a thick bough.
“Use that branch there to pull yourself up, and then it will be easier to climb out of sight. The charm will transport you back from here in around forty minutes.”
The witch seemed surprised I was helping her.
“Have you seen Raven?” She awkwardly pulled herself onto the next-highest branch before replying.
“No. I haven’t seen anyone apart from you so far. I hope she’s alright. Demented has a vendetta against her.”
My lips twitched. As much as I hated the incubus, his stupid name for Demelza had stuck. Honestly, it was scarily accurate. The bitch really was fucking demented.
“Raven’s powerful, so I doubt Demelza is any kind of threat, even if the silly bitch thinks she is.”
“How would you know when you’ve done your best to avoid her, eh?”
“Careful, or I might set the tree on fire,” I warned.
The witch rolled her eyes. “Oh fuck off, Alaric.”
Damn it, I was losing my edge if small, mediocre witches no longer pissed themselves at my threats.
Once Glynda had climbed high enough to hide from the other students, I walked away, following a narrow trail through the trees. Snowflakes floated down as daylight faded, and I shivered as an ice-cold blast of wind sliced through my thin top.
Fucking Lightfoot. Like all shifters, he didn’t feel the cold, so it wouldn’t have occurred to him that the non-shifters in the class could be half-dead with frostbite by now.
I sped up into a jog to warm my extremities. The path widened and grew steeper as the trees thinned. As more snow fell, I heard a female laugh.
Demelza.
Oh good.
I’d been waiting for an opportunity to zap the bitch. Only when I broke through the trees, she wasn’t alone.