Chapter 15
FIFTEEN
ATTICUS
I sat in the dining hall swirling strands of spaghetti on my fork.
Zev was talking about some shit about what the Sable Hounds were getting up to.
I fumed because my effort at getting Rawling kicked out of school was a failure, and trying to humiliate him by having him run around campus naked and serenade a squirrel didn’t work.
Even the attempt at harming him by getting him to walk the plank between two buildings was a dud.
And now he was pregnant, probably with a shifter baby, and mated to my best friend. But could I really call Phelan that now? Because we not only didn’t share a room anymore, but we hardly spoke, and more often, he avoided me in class or when we passed in the hallway.
Phelan was a damned wolf shifter, and while my beast could take on and destroy most others in Sombertooth, his wolf was freaking magnificent and scary. I wouldn’t want to fight him, not that that would have even been a consideration before that freaking latent appeared on the scene.
I was still mulling over that moment with Rawling where he’d stared at me.
It’d been as though our positions were reversed, and he was the dominant one and I was at his mercy.
He must have been practicing in the mirror, or perhaps Phelan was giving tips on how to frighten me.
Not that he did. No latent would ever make me nervous.
“Atticus, what do you think? Should we try? It might get us tossed out of school if it goes ass up.”
Zev was irritating me just by talking. Why couldn’t everyone just leave me alone? And unless they were discussing how to get Rawling expelled, I wasn’t interested in some squirrel or ferret shifter.
There was a downside to Rawling leaving Sombertooth and that was that Phelan might go too. But he wasn’t the guy I’d known most of my life, so good riddance to them both.
“Don’t involve me in this shit.” I grabbed my dishes and stood up. “Do whatever you want.”
My Sable Hounds friends stared at me and whispered, “What’s wrong with him?
” as I strode toward the door and almost collided with that fool Bardoul.
I enjoyed him scuttling off like a timid little mouse.
Maybe I was still numero uno here. Nah, even my ego wasn’t that big.
I was a sophomore, and some of the seniors’ beasts, especially the tigers, could scar me for life.
But after witnessing Bardoul’s reaction, I strutted along the corridor.
“Atticus, I caught up with your uncle over the summer.”
Professor Shaw was standing in the doorway of his office. Right, they were at school together along with Rawlins, the latent’s godfather, and Peregrine, my alpha father.
“He often talks about the good times you had as students.”
I hadn’t seen my uncle in a while, and he rarely mentioned the professor, but it was smart to stay on a faculty member’s good side.
“Those were the days when everyone was unmated and we shifted whenever we got the chance.”
Was the professor mated? I’d never heard he’d found the one, but I wasn’t privy to his personal life. Maybe I should ask Uncle. That information might come in useful.
My uncle had a family, and he and his mate owned a successful business, so he didn’t shift as much as when he was younger.
“He looks back on his time at Sombertooth with affection.” I was laying it on thick, but I always looked for an advantage, whether it was about school or life. Also, I was aware that the professor had been best friends with Rawlins at Sombertooth.
“If you’re free, I’ll brew tea and I have red velvet cake.” He stood back and extended an arm into his office.
I didn’t give a shit about tea and cake, but I accepted his offer.
Professor Shaw fussed over the tea, insisting the pot had to be warmed first. I nodded but gods, who cared. I was hoping he was going to share some juicy gossip about one of the faculty members which I could use as leverage and get better grades.
“It’s interesting how history repeats itself.”
He poured me a cup and asked if I wanted milk or lemon. I had no idea but said lemon because my beast didn’t like the smell of milk and said it reminded him of cow shifters.
History wasn’t my favorite subject, so I sipped the tea which was gross. The professor offered me a slice of cake, saying Rawling liked red velvet cake. Hearing that, I was tempted to grab the cake and toss it out the window.
“As I was saying, history just says ‘See you later.’”
I was bored already with all this talk of the past and bit into the cake. Huh, Rawling had good taste.
“When your uncle and I were students, there was gossip about another student.”
That got my attention because I fed on salacious stories of people I considered beneath me.
“The story was that this person, who happened to be latent, wasn’t.”
I frowned because I’d missed something important. “Wasn’t what?”
He glared at me but quickly replaced it with a half smile. “Wasn’t latent.” He leaned closer. “He was actually human.”
That concept was more ridiculous than me sitting here drinking this gross liquid.
“How could that be? Even a shifter who’d just met their beast would scent a human.”
The professor sat back in his chair. It was ancient and it squeaked, which irritated me.
“He wore a ring that masked his humanity and scented him as latent.”
That sounded like a fantasy and reminded me of stories I’d read when I was younger. Not that it was true. A piece of metal couldn’t fool shifters.
“The ring protected him from his peers. Instead, they just looked down on him because he was latent and inferior.”
He drummed his fingers on the desk as my mind went to a Sombertooth student who always wore a ring. And he was latent.
“Tell me more. Did the student ever remove the ring?”
He shrugged. “Not while they were here. As soon as the rumor started, they dropped out, and I never heard anything of them again.”
The way he was talking reminded me of the language used in ancient fairy tales. But it got me thinking about the ring Rawling wore. Jack said once it was a present from his godfather and that Rawling never removed it because it made him feel close to him.
But what if? What if what the professor was telling me wasn’t about a kid he went to school with but referred to freaking Rawling?
Gods, I came in here hoping for tittle-tattle, but this was explosive.
I could ruin Rawling’s life with this information.
Phelan would be collateral damage, but he’d chosen to have sex with a latent, get him knocked up, and mate him.
I’d have to confirm it by getting that ring off Rawling, but I’d come up with something.
It’d be harder now that he lived in the infirmary, because I’d been there once on game night and stormed out.
I couldn’t tackle the guy and get it off him because he was pregnant.
No matter how much my friends hated latents, no one would approve of me downing a guy who was about to pop out a baby.
And he wasn’t attending classes in person since he was so close to his due date.
I nibbled a nail as I came up with scenarios.
Maybe the best idea was to announce it to everyone and then make Rawling prove he wasn’t human.
That was a fucked-up way of going about it, so maybe not.
Or I could just start a rumor, and when the entire student body was whispering about Rawling, he might break down.
Hmmm, what if it brought on labor? Everyone would have sympathy for him, and babies were cute, according to other people. Babies, in my opinion, should be avoided until they were in their late teens. All that puke, spit, and shit was so gross.
I’d need to consider the best time to put my plan into action. Of course, there was Phelan to consider, but I doubted his beast would challenge me because of gossip.
Professor Shaw made a face and said humans were worse than latents. I agreed. It was a shame shifters hadn’t wiped out humans centuries ago.
The professor said he had to get ready for class, and I must have walked out of his office.
I needed time to make a plan, because unlike when I hacked into the school’s computer system, I couldn’t have this go wrong and backfire on me.
My folks would never forgive me if I got kicked out of Sombertooth.
Someone clapped a hand on my shoulder. Zev was babbling about a new scheme to mess with the heads of the humans in town. But my mind was on one particular guy who I was convinced was human. And I was going to bring him down.