Chapter 21
What is going on with me? I keep glancing at my watch, sitting in my room and letting the hours pass, the bright winter day outside slowly turning into night.
I don’t know if it’s a good idea for me to be around others right now, but I’m feeling stranger than I’ve ever felt — the echoes of my own magic still coursing through me as if they weren’t my own, and it’s all making me so scared, I just can’t stop myself.
I shoot Raven a text for her and Alaric to meet me in the Junkyard. I peel my ass off my bed and I get moving.
I feel palpable feverishness in the air as soon as I step out of my room. Everyone seems to be getting ready for the Ball, but I go straight to the Junkyard, breathing a sigh of relief when I see there’s no one there.
It doesn’t take Raven and Alaric long to show up. They walk into the Junkyard, making me raise my eyebrows when I see them all dressed up.
Damn it, this is supposed to be a fun night for them. I force myself to throw on a smile. “You look amazing, the both of you,” I say with warmth in my voice as they come to stand in front of me.
Raven tilts her head at me. “Amazing?” She turns to throw a confused look at Alaric. “I look exactly the same, don’t I, Alaric?”
He gives her a tender, slightly awkward smile as he runs his hand through his hair. “Yes and no.” Then he turns to me. “Look, Anna, Raven told me all about what happened at the exam.”
The smile slides off my face.
“And you passed?” He shakes his head as if he’s impressed. “They’re saying the professors have decided that destroying the course equals passing it. Wow.”
I myself can’t feel happy about that part. It doesn’t seem fair, that they did let me pass.
“How did you do it, Anna?” Raven asks.
“Sorry to disappoint, I’ve no idea what that was.” Maybe it was a bad idea, to make them come here and to sour the mood for them.
Raven comes to pat me on the shoulder. It’s so awkward, the way she does it, but at the same time, so sincere. It makes me throw her a sad smile. I look away, saying, “I don’t know what’s going on with me, Raven.”
She stays silent for a second. “From what I can gather,” she replies in a voice that’s barely above a whisper, “no one ever does, at least not in the moment.”
“Yeah, but…” And I break off, not knowing how to put it into words, what’s really going on with me.
Raven shifts a little. “I don’t know if this is the right time for me to tell you, Anna…”
It makes me frown. I turn to look at her. “What? Tell me.”
She throws a glance at Alaric. “When you injured me that time, the tattoos that appeared on you looked less complete than the ones that appeared today.”
I frown, opening my mouth.
Alaric beats me to it. “Tattoos? You mean shifter marks?”
Raven shakes her head. “Different. Repeating pattern, all circles and lines.”
That’s strange. Should I tell them about the things I’ve seen ever since I touched the Lexarcanum book?
Alaric seems to be thinking, too, reaching his hand into his bag to rummage pensively.
There’s this guilt washing over me that I can’t quite explain, the same as that night I found myself wading into the river. It”s as if I did something wrong and if I told anyone about it, I’d only be opening up a can of worms I’d rather stay closed. I decide not to say anything after all.
It snaps me out of it, when Alaric gets a book out and opens it right in front of my face. My eyebrows shoot up when I see it’s that book he found in the Junkyard that day. The history of Pull Chambers.
On the page he has it open on, there is an ancient-looking drawing. A circle of symbols done in dark brown ink, revolving around the one at the center.
My eyes round when I see it.
The symbol.
I’m in even bigger shock when I spot the background. Faint pattern of circles and lines.
I look up at him with my eyebrows raised.
“Raven,” he starts just as she leans in to take a look as well. ”Are these her tattoos?”
Raven nods.
What the… “What does this mean?” I ask as I look up at them.
“I don’t know,” Alaric says simply. No jokes, no sarcasm. Just plain ‘I don’t know’.
It makes me more afraid than the thing itself. I grab the book and start leafing it, but it doesn’t seem like the rest has anything to do with the drawing.
I lean to take a whiff of it. It’s by some kind of magic it’s been put here.
I shake my head and take a deep breath. “It’s fine,” I tell the two of them when I look up and see the concern in their eyes. “Just leave this with me and go have fun, please.” Leave and preferably forget all about me, I think to myself.
“No,” Raven says with determination in her voice, “we’re not doing that, Anna.”
“I think you need to have some fun, too,” Alaric chimes in.
“Should we play a game?” Raven asks.
“No, silly,” he replies with a laugh. “It’s the Ball I’m talking about.”
“The Ball?” I ask, frowning. But the very thought is so absurd, at least it bursts the self-pity bubble a little. “Are you kidding me? It’s the last thing I want to do right now.” Smiling, I roll my eyes. ”Go to the Ball.”
“Anna, you’re coming to the Ball with us,” Raven says firmly. Alaric nudges her to add, “And I’m not taking no for an answer.”
For a second, I just look at her. It”s already decided, though. She’s never asked anything of me and I’m not going to say no to her. “Alright,” I concede with a smile. “Let’s go.”
I get up and move to lead the way to the Main Hall.
“Oh you’re not coming dressed like that,” Alaric stops me, dragging his eyes down my outfit.
“I need to lay low, Alaric,” I tell him. “This is the way I dress and I can’t be attracting any attention after everything that happened today.”
He winces. “We’re about to enter a hall crammed with people in suits and gowns. I think it’s your hoodie that will be attracting attention.”
As much as I want to protest, he’s got a point. “Fine,” I say with a sigh. “Give me ten minutes and meet me in the Entrance Hall.”
Raven nods contently, while Alaric throws me the biggest grin. “Party,” he bellows.
***
The Main Hall looks like a crystal forest with the icicles hanging from the ceilings and the snow covering the floor. There are bars and booths lining the walls to our left and right, a stage with the musicians across from us and the dance floor taking up the rest of the space, interspersed with high tables designed to look like crystal trees.
As soon as we step in, I see that Alaric was right. Even in my little black dress and high-heel boots, the people gathered here are all more dressed up than I am.
Unfortunately, the outfit doesn’t make me blend in more than my hoodie would have.
My stomach drops when I notice the glances that some of the people are throwing me, followed by rushed whispers.
I guess this is about the incident at the exam.
“Word sure spreads quickly,” I tell my friends as I nudge them to keep walking.
Trying to shrug it off doesn’t seem to help. Now the crowd seems to be parting around me, the glances and the whispers even more insistent.
What really rubs me the wrong way is my friends looking at me with sad eyes.
I just can’t bear to be the recipient of such looks, or let myself become the reason they end up not having fun.
“Why don’t the two of you have a dance?” I ask them, motioning at the dancing floor.
They look at each other, and I see the hesitation in their eyes.
“Go on,” I urge them, forcing myself to smile, “it’ll cheer me up, seeing you have fun.”
“Dance we shall then,” Alaric says. Raven gives him her hand and they walk away, blending in with the other dancers.
I grab a shot glass off a waiter’s tray and I come a little closer, ignoring the movement of the people around me.
This is nothing you haven’t suffered through before, I tell myself.
Still, all my muscles tense up, when I see Serra and Lorcan standing in a small group of professors just outside the dancing floor, staring at me. They both look tense, Serra even sicklier than usual, an entire strand of gray hair now swept off her face.
As soon as our eyes meet, they look away, but it’s so obvious it was me they were talking about.
Suddenly feeling too exposed for my tastes, I toss the shot back and get moving, not knowing exactly where I’m going, just eager to get out of their line of sight.
My phone vibrates and I check my messages, only to see it’s one of those automated emails from the main Academy account, which I’m still receiving simply because no one remembered to remove me from the list.
It makes me frown, when I see which type of email it is. Someone’s been granted the permission to use the Pull. Tonight at 2AM.
That’s unusual. These emails we get only when it’s neither the faculty nor one of the students asking for permission. And everyone outside the Academy who’s supposed to be here, they’ll be leaving way before 2AM.
It snaps me out of my ruminations, when I hear a voice that instantly makes my heart start racing. His voice. I see I’m headed straight for a large group of people all gathered around him. I slow down. It’s not just students and professors this time. He seems to be attracting all the political and social elite that’s been invited, looking hot as hell in a dark suit without a tie.
“Isn’t that—” I hear some woman on the margins of the group say just as I lock eyes with her.
She instantly zips it, only confirming the hunch that she really was pointing at me.
I don’t care, but what actually does sting a little is that I see some people I do know in that group. None of them even acknowledge me.
I turn around and start in the opposite direction. I’m loathing the attention, but there’s one upside to this at least — no elbowing through crowds.
Gods, why is everything in my life so complicated that — for whatever reasons — I need to avoid literally everyone I know?
Sadness floods me again, only punctuated by the yearning to forget everything that’s happened to me these past months. Oblivion, I’m in dire need of oblivion, I think as I grab another shot off a passing waiter’s tray. But when you don’t have it in you to have fun, drinking only makes the sadness worse.
Just as I start contemplating going back to my room, I feel a need to look over my shoulder and my eyes land on Bane’s as he makes his way through the dancers.
Straight towards the empty circle around me.
Goddamnit.
I fix my eyes back ahead and pick up my pace, looking around for someplace to hide.
The fact that he’s looking for me right now — it can only mean one thing. He’ll want to have some super intense discussion about the incident at the exam, demanding explanations that I just cannot give. Even if I could, I just don’t have it in me to give them.
“Oh come on,” I hear him tease even before he comes to block my way, “literally running away from me?”
Great.
“Desperate times,” I say with a cordial smile.
“You don’t look like you couldn’t spare a minute,” he replies as he points at the shot in my hand.
I glance around nervously, catching a couple of stares from the group he’s just left. Ugh. I really can’t do this today. “Maybe later.”
He squints at me, craning his neck to follow my gaze. Then there’s that already familiar spark in his eyes. A smile tugs at his lips. “You know,” he starts, raising his voice quite a bit and already turning even more heads, “you shouldn’t beat yourself up about it so much, Miss Novak.”
It’s like he’s in my damn head.
“Look,” I reply amicably, determined to cut this as short as possible, “I really don’t know what happened today, so...”
His eyebrows shoot up. “Is that really what you’re so worked up about?” To my surprise, he shrugs. “So you blew up some gym equipment. I think we’ll all find it in ourselves to move on.”
I throw him a suspicious look.
He laughs. “Come on, show me where I can get one of those,” he says, pointing at the glass in my hand again. “Or better yet, help me find some good scotch.”
Now it’s making me angry, that he’s choosing to be so casual with me after everything.
“Let me rephrase,” I start in a noticeably colder voice, “it doesn’t matter why you came to talk to me.” My jaw clenches remembering the way he threw me over his shoulder. “I don’t want to talk to you, period.”
He quirks an eyebrow at me. “And with so much passion at that. I can be nothing but flattered.”
I just stare at him, gritting my teeth.
“What?” he asks.
I let out a scoff. “Don’t play dumb,” I tell him. I stop myself before saying anything too specific. “You’re my professor, you’re an alpha, and you took advantage of my moment of vulnerability.”
Something flashes through his eyes. “You know,” he says as he takes a step closer, “I’d definitely get seriously offended… if it weren’t for the fact you don’t even believe that yourself.”
For a second, I just stare at him. Then I fold my arms and say, “You have no insight whatsoever into what I do or don’t believe. You don’t know me.”
“Come on,” he sneers as he throws a glance around the hall, “I’m barely two years older than you, I’m as much an authority figure to you as you are to fucking MacArthur, and I think it’s pretty obvious by now — alpha or not — I couldn’t make you do anything you didn’t want to even if I tried.” His eyes narrow. “But I do know what this is about.”
“What?” I ask with a roll of my eyes, surprised that I’m secretly fearing he’ll accuse me of having feelings for him.
He gets in my face, a smirk tugging at his lips. “You just can’t stand that you’re attracted to me.”
I blow out a laugh. “You can say that again.”
“So you admit that you are,” he insists, his voice low and his eyes diving into mine in that way that makes me feel completely naked.
But this, I could’ve admitted this on day one, no problem. “Yeah, why wouldn’t I?” I snap. “Oh…” My lips tug into a smile. “Because my having a hard time admitting that, it would mean I’m playing hard to get or something, right? When in fact…” I lean a little forward, the smile sliding off my face. “I just see you.”
There’s a split second during which he stays serious. Then he lets out a laugh. “Yeah yeah,” he says with a dismissive wave of his hand. “And you don’t like what you see, you’ve made that abundantly clear, Novak.”
It all makes me frown, but he goes and takes me even more by surprise, a spark in his eyes as he says, “But that doesn’t mean you can’t ditch this stuffy party with me.”
Frowning, I let out a scoff. “Ditch the second biggest event of the year to spend time with the number one asshole?” I pretend to consider it, but it’s in an obviously mocking voice that I say, “Let me get back to you on that.”
“Sorry,” he starts before I can push past him, throwing me a grin, “I stopped listening after you said ‘number one’.”
“The only shocking thing about that is you saying ‘sorry’.”
He blows a laugh and leans to whisper in my ear, “But it does seem to be a unique moment, don’t you think? Everyone at the Academy is gathered in a single place, right?”
“Right,” I say a little breathlessly as his proximity keeps me pinned in place.
When he pulls away to look at me, there’s that spark in his eyes and this contagious mysteriousness in his voice that I’ve never heard before. “Which means there’s probably not a soul on the entire grounds.”
When I just keep looking at him, feeling torn because I actually want to go… “Come on, help the asshole out,” he says with a grin. “No one’s ever given me an actual tour.”
My eyebrows pull down, but I find myself unable to resist. “Alright,” I say, “but we’re going out separately.”
***
By the time I’ve shown Bane everything I find interesting in the gardens, we’re stopping near the Dame Gothel statue and I’m finding the whole thing — spending time with him in a way that’s a little strained but definitely pleasant — so strange that it’s keeping me feeling disoriented.
“I knew you were a giant nerd, Novak,” he snaps me out of it, “but how exactly have you come to know this much about the Academy?”
He’s looking at me with a teasing smile, only making my confusion grow. But I guess it would be a good time to say bye and go back to the party. I smile back and say, “Sorry to disappoint, but the nerd’s not taking any more questions. The tour is drawing to an end.”
“Very unhelpful,” he quips with a shake of his head. “I’ll leave you a scalding review.”
“I’ll take my chances,” I reply, glancing first at my watch and then in the direction of the castle. “Don’t want my friends to worry.”
I move to start getting back, but he comes to block my way, squinting. “I’m sure Sieger and Raven will live,” he says, my eyebrows pulling down at the fact that he knows their names. “Besides…” His eyes sweep over the grounds with that spark in them, lingering on the Wall stretching in the distance before he turns his focus back onto me. “This tour of yours was a tad limited for my tastes. But if we went for a run…”
I feel a sudden, violent flutter of excitement at those words. “A run?” I echo. I’m frowning, but the thought is so unambiguously appealing, especially to my wolf, that I’m already on the verge of saying yes, despite the party, my high heels, who I’d be going on a run with...
But then he says, “Yeah, you can ride my fox so we can both explore the borders.”
What the... The flutters in my stomach appear again, but now they’re flutters of sheer terror.
“Who knows?” he keeps going, but I’m busy processing what he’s actually suggesting. “It might even help your dismal progress with shifting.”
Now, for a host of reasons I’m not even fully aware of, I’m feeling such burning discomfort at the very thought. “I don’t see how it would.”
“Come on, you think I didn’t see that spark in your eyes, Novak,” he insists. “You know, part of being a shifter is taking what you want in the moment.”
“Yeah, that’s a hard no,” I rush to say, one scenario in particular haunting me — me falling on my ass somewhere and him seeing the granny panties I’ve made the mistake of wearing tonight.
“What, scared you’d see me naked?” he asks as he flips the lapel of his jacket inside out, showing me that it’s Second Skin, enchanted to stay on his human form even when he shifts.
“I couldn’t care less,” I reply, a touch of aggression in my voice, “I just think I’ve been out long enough.”
I move to push past him.
He doesn’t let me. “Why so defensive?”
“I’m not.”
He squints at me, this smile tugging at his lips. “You know, this could be as simple as you telling me what you’d need to be comfortable.”
With an exaggerated roll of my eyes and a helpless sweep of my hands, I glance down at my outfit.
He laughs. “How about this?” he asks as he drags his eyes down my body, making blood rush to my face. “Ditch the heels, you yourself won’t be doing any actual running anyway. As for the dress…” He looks up to lock eyes with me. “If it comes to it, I promise I won’t look. Anything else?”
“No,” I find myself saying, feeling reassured albeit still a little hesitant.
“Alright,” he replies with a smile that’s making me think he didn’t really expect me to say yes.
Then he just looks at me for a second, thinking. “Um,” he starts, running a hand through his hair, “just to give you a heads up.” And he looks away, hesitating a little.
I frown. Is he being… awkward?
“My fox, um,” he continues as he turns his eyes back onto me, “he’ll want to smell you.” Gods, he is being awkward. “You know how it goes, but if you think there’s a chance you’d get scared or something—”
“No,” I cut him off with a reassuring smile, feeling strangely endeared. “That’s fine.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah.”
“Alright then,” he concludes with a grin.
Before I have time to process what I’ve just agreed to do, I find myself watching him take long strides backwards. Then he stops, making my breath catch in anticipation when I see his body tense up.
The next thing I know, there’s a giant monster fox landing on all fours in front me, pinning me in place with those pitch-black, burning eyes.
Gods.
He really did need to put that much distance between us to safely shift. It’s easily the largest animal I’ve ever seen, its fur a deep, burning red, its muscles stiff but visible underneath and its lush tail wagging languidly.
Instantly, my wolf rises to the surface, silent as usual, but more focused than ever. She seems to love the look of him.
Still, it startles me a little — making me shove my animal down — when it gets closer, staring into my eyes for one long moment before taking a series of quick, deep whiffs of me, its nose as big as my head.
I wait, closing my eyes so as not to imagine the maw closing around my neck. I sense it circle me a few times, never stopping with the sniffing.
Then it does.
I feel a soft nudge against my stomach.
I open my eyes, finding the fox bowing its head, offering its neck to me. With surprisingly little hesitation, I kick my heels off, grab onto its fur and throw my leg over, getting comfortable.
The next thing I know, its muscles are tensing up and I’m being lifted off the ground, my stomach doing a flip even before the animal breaks into a sprint, headed straight for the Lycan Forest.
Leaning forward and grabbing on more tightly, I feel the wolf inside me rise to the surface again.
It’s intoxicating, watching the gardens disappear in a blur and darting into the forest with all the scents, sounds and sights around me — the soft shifting of pine needles covering the ground, the age-old trees whizzing past me, the blood pumping through the scurrying animals’ veins.
Before I know it, there’s the north stretch of the Wall appearing through the trees before us — ancient and covered in moss — and it makes my stomach tighten with panic, for the brief second that I think we’ll be crashing straight into it.
Then we go up, up and onto the wall itself, my lungs filling with air and the expanse of the night sky exploding all around me.
Whenever I dare to look down, I see the Academy grounds from a perspective that’s been completely inaccessible to me before now. I want to inspect every last bit of it, but the next thing I know, we’ve made a full circle and the fox is jumping off the Wall and straight onto the barren top of Graf Hill.
Slowly, it comes to a full stop. Catching my breath, I get off and watch Bane shift back with a grin on his face, his skin covered in a thin sheen of sweat. He walks up to me, still smiling, undoing the top few buttons of his shirt and tugging it loose a little. I’m still a little breathless and under the impression of all that I’ve seen and felt, so I fail to stop my eyes from lingering on the delicious lines of his collarbone.
I return the smile, but I quickly turn my back to him and stroll over to the edge of the cliff, the view once again taking my breath away — the night sky above, the Wall all around and the grounds below, with the Towers and the forest and the shimmering lake.
“You know,” I say with a persistent smile on my face as I sense him come to stand next to me, “the only reason students ever come here is to mess with each other.”
“Mess with each other how?”
I shrug. “They’ll tie some poor freshman up and leave him overnight, pretending they’ll never come back for him. Stuff like that.”
He laughs. “That’s pretty tame.”
“I guess it is,” I reply, turning a little pensive. “Still, a shame, because it really is beautiful.”
I feel his eyes on my profile. “I don’t think ‘beautiful’ is a strong enough word.”
I turn to give his shoulder a shove with my fist. “Look at you, getting all sappy.”
His phone starts ringing, and it’s such an out-of-place sound that it makes me snap out of it.
He takes it out of his pocket, glances at the screen and puts it back.
“Go ahead,” I insist, “take it. It’s getting late anyway.” And I move to walk away, stopping midstep when I realize what I’m doing.
His eyes still catch the movement. He lets out a laugh. “Are you so eager to get away from me that you’re prepared to fling yourself off a cliff?”
I smile from ear to ear. “Maybe not that eager.”
“Come on, let’s go,” he says, his eyes wandering over to the grounds below us. “That lake, with all its shimmering, it needs to have rocks thrown into it.”
My eyebrows shoot up. “Needs to, really?”
“What?” he asks with a defensive shrug. “I’m a fox shifter. Sometimes, what I need to do is punish water for being the way it is.”
“And what is that?” I demand with a growing smile.
He turns to squint at the lake. “Don’t know. Can’t explain. But infuriating for sure.”
Laughter bubbles up my throat, and the next thing I know, he’s throwing me a playful scowl and shifting, his fox coming to bow its head so I can get on top.
***
The drooping branches of the willows behind my back are slowly swaying in the cold night breeze. We’re sitting on the plateau stretching along the Sobbing Lake, our legs hanging off the edge of the weathered, musty wooden boards, Bane skipping rocks over the glimmering surface of the water.
I guess it wasn’t strange enough that I had fun talking to him. Now we’re sitting in silence that’s not awkward in the slightest. This night is getting weirder by the second.
Leave, now, I urge myself, before it turns sour somehow. But I don’t want to. I want to keep talking to him. There’s something in particular that I want to talk about.
“So,” he starts with another flick of his wrist in the direction of the water, followed by the rock hopping over its surface. “Any curious little facts about the lake?”
“It’s a wolf,” I say before I even give it a second thought.
“Ah, the lake is a wolf?” he says with a pensive nod. “Well, you learn something new every day, I guess.”
I blow a laugh through my nose. “My animal, she’s a wolf.”
“Yeah, I know,” he says, turning to me with a smile, putting the rocks in his hand down.
I frown. “How?”
“It’ll start happening for you too, at some point, but I don’t need to see other shifters in their shifted form to be able to tell,” he explains. “You were the exception, probably because you had practically no connection with your animal. Until that night in the forest at least.” There’s a moment of tense silence before he rushes to add in a teasing voice, “Very predictable of you, by the way, to turn out to be a wolf.”
I laugh.
“But,” he continues, with this caution in his voice, “to be fair, what I saw today at the gym…”
“I thought you said ‘you’d all find it in yourselves to move on,’” I protest.
He shrugs. “I did.” He pauses for a second before he says, “Doesn’t mean it’s not a problem for you. Especially since those weren’t exactly your typical shifter marks.”
I hesitate a little. “It’s…” I shake my head. “I don’t know what happened. I guess I lost control.”
“You did,” he says with a nod. “Spectacularly, if I might add.”
It makes the sting of guilt rise to the surface. “Being a shifter,” I start as I fix my eyes on the lake. “It’s hard for me, but not because I’m generally stuck up,” I say, referring to what he told me that one time. “I have a problem with anger in particular. I don’t seem to want to let myself feel it. It’s such an ugly emotion.”
There’s a moment of silence before he says, “You know, you can’t pick and choose.” He pauses before he adds, “At the risk of sounding preachy… to gain control, you first need to lose control.”
I let out a scoff. “Yeah, in this case at least, I don’t think I’ll be taking any advice from someone like you.”
“Someone like me,” he echoes. He turns at the waist, lifting his leg and laying it flat on the plateau to face me, his eyes fixing me in place. “Alright, smartass, let me have it. Let it all out.”
I squint at him. Then I shrug. “You’re the embodiment of everything that’s wrong with this world,” I say flatly.
“Wow,” he drawls, his eyebrows raising. “Please don’t feel like you have to be gentle with me.”
“You started it,” I protest.
He just looks at me for a second. “And I guess I’ll be a big enough masochist to ask you to finish it,” he replies with a laugh. “Please, how can a single person even be what you’re making me out to be?”
“Let’s see,” I mutter, tapping a finger on my chin. “You’re an alpha without a pack—”
“So you’d be fine with someone forcing you into a life you don’t want for yourself?”
“Alright,” I concede, but that only brings me to my second point. “You’re a professor who’s not even trying to teach the kids, let alone be a good role model—”
He cuts me off with a scoff. “Well sorry for not wanting to play at kindergarten with a bunch of sheltered, privileged little pricks.”
“If that’s what you think of all this,” I demand with a frown, “then why are you even here?”
“Maybe I needed a change of scenery,” he starts reciting with a shrug, “maybe running a business has become less challenging, maybe there were certain external pressures…” He leans a little forward, his eyes narrowing at me. “Or maybe I was just in need of a smartass grilling me about my life choices.”
“Cute,” I say flatly. “But I’m not done. Because you’re not just a packless alpha or a shitty professor. Your little gambling enterprise is literally based on exploiting people’s weaknesses. As you yourself once said, ‘if we’re not targeting vulnerable individuals, what are we even doing?’”
“You remember that?” he asks with a smirk.
“I have an outstanding memory, so if you don”t want me to remember you saying something…” I give him a flat glare. “I suggest you don”t say it.”
He blows a laugh, then shakes his head. “How naive are you, Novak?” he asks with a smile. “Exploiting people’s weaknesses, that’s what all business is. Mine’s far from the worst. At least it’s not selling candy-shaped poison to kids or pricey snake oil to sick people. It’s selling a real possibility of getting rich to adults who know exactly what they’re getting into.”
I don’t like it, how his words are getting to me. “Yeah… even if that were true, your selfishness goes much beyond that.”
“Careful, you’ll make me feel special.”
I let out a scoff, lifting a hand to start counting. “Looks, strength, dominance, connections, money,” I say forcefully. “It’s basically every type of power a person can even have. Unlike the vast majority of people, you don’t just have one or a few, you have them all. And what do you do with them? The world is practically going up in flames all around you and you, you busy yourself amassing a kind of wealth no single person would ever even have a need for.”
When he only keeps looking at me with this unperturbed curiosity in his eyes, I stare him down, gritting out, “So yeah, as I said, you’re the very embodiment of this world’s casual immorality.”
To my surprise, he lets out a laugh.
“What?” I demand.
“I’m just happy to finally see you get caught in that little trap of yours,” he says with a smirk, leaning in to explain, “This is not an i-mmoral world, Novak, it’s an a-moral one, entirely indifferent to anything we do. Which is why it doesn’t matter what you do, good or bad, when in the end, all it ever comes down to is survival.”
The words make my own doubts rise to the surface, but I shrug them off. “That’s a ridiculous way of seeing things.”
“Is it?” he groans.
“Yeah,” I insist. “It’s one of those things that sound cool, deep and true, when in fact they’re just a cowardly cover-up for avoiding responsibility. That’s the main difference between us, why we’ll never be able to see eye to eye. So we can just drop it.”
Now, for some reason, that last bit makes anger flash through his eyes.
He just stares at me for a second.
“You know,” he starts, his tone rigid, “there was this guy I used to know.”
Anticipation takes my breath away, when I realize he’s about to give me a glimpse, however marginal, into his life.
“He was an actual bad guy,” he keeps saying forcefully, not taking his eyes off me. “Part of one of the more infamous còmhlans, which is basically what they call shifter gangs back where I grew up. He did godawful things for the leader of his còmhlan and she showered him with money in return.”
It makes me frown, how far this is from what I’d expected him to talk about.
He shakes his head. “He could buy anything he wanted, but he couldn’t stop letting his addictions ruin his life. There was this violent sadness and self-destructiveness in him that just wouldn’t let up.” His eyes narrow at me. “You’d probably say he was miserable because he wasn’t exactly a good man and it was forever catching up with him.”
Pausing for a second, he continues in a deceptively merry voice. “Then, one day, he left the còmhlan— he needed a lot of help to do it, but he got it. He started living this virtuous life, and three years later, he was found dead in his new shithole of an apartment, killed for escaping the life, along with dozens of people who served as a warning. Now, where’s the moral in that, huh?”
I don’t say anything — it’s obvious he’s not being logical but emotional right now. I just keep looking at him, swallowing around a lump in my throat with this sadness burrowing deep into me at the first ever glimpse into his pain. It’s dark, murky, and so layered, I can’t make anything out.
There’s this overwhelming urge to take it away, making me remember what happened that time Raven touched me. Without really knowing what I’m doing, I find myself lifting my hand to his upper arm.
I see his eyebrows pull down. Still, he lets me touch him. It startles me, when I actually start drawing it all out and into my body. Surprise flashes through his eyes, but he doesn’t pull back.
Until the first slithers of pain flood me, making me have to fight not to wince.
Abruptly, he frowns and grabs my wrist, asking in a low, surprised voice, “What’re you doing?”
My eyes round and my entire body stiffens.
No no no.
***
It comes as such a shock — how naked it makes me feel — that for one long, breathless moment, I just keep looking at him like a deer in headlights, before I break my wrist free and scramble to my feet, moving to start running back to the castle.
He appears in front of me, making me bump into his chest. “I asked what you were doing just now, Novak,” he demands in a low voice as I double back.
No no no, that’s all that’s going through my head. “Nothing,” I breathe out, taking a step back and hoping against all reason that he’ll just forget about this. Right now.
He mirrors me by taking a step forward, his eyes narrowing. “You were hurting yourself.”
I slink back some more. “Don’t know what you’re talking about,” I say, still breathless with surprise.
That only makes him follow me again, shifting his eyes just before he demands, “You changed your name, didn’t you? That’s why I can’t find anything about you.”
I can do nothing but stare at him with wide, unblinking eyes.
It’s harder to lie, now that I’m being pinned in place by his burning gaze. “You’re ruining it,” I say in a despicably small voice.
“Ruining what?”
I let the silence stretch, slowly realizing I was letting myself get carried away with this guy once again. But at least it helps me finally shake off my little deer-in-headlights moment.
I don’t say anything, but I tip my chin up in defiance, pressing my lips tight.
I see a muscle in his jaw jump, but it still startles me, when he grabs me by the wrist and gets in my face. “You need to tell me your real name,” he orders through gritted teeth.
The voice and the eyes, they make the wolf inside me stir and heat settle low in my core, but I keep my cool.
“Sure,” I purr with a smirk curling my lips. “It’s smartass.”
For one long moment, he just stares at me, his jaw still clenching and his nostrils starting to flare.
Then, as if something snaps, he grabs me by the waist and moves for my neck. My breath hitching, I find myself stumbling around the plateau with him, my hands blindly searching his body as his mouth showers these hungry bites on my neck, my shoulders, my collarbone.
My wolf revels in this. Each bite makes the heat in the pit of my stomach grow more frustrating and — still blundering around with him — I start trying to work my hands under his arms so I can take his shirt off and feel his skin against mine.
But he’s pressing himself too tightly to me. My frustration building, I dig my feet into the ground, making him stop moving with me and pushing into his shoulders with my hands to get him to pull away. Grumbling, he gets his nose off my neck and chooses not to waste time with buttons. He just rips his shirt open and moves to grab me again just as my eyes fix on his chest.
I slap his hands away. Gods.
I start touching, sliding my palms up and down the hot skin and the hard muscles tensing underneath, my eyes dropping to the sharp V disappearing under his belt and making my mind go blank.
It’s at that moment that his patience wears off. He grabs my hands, walks me backwards until I’m pressed against a tree and pulls both my wrist over my head, taking them in one hand and pinning them in place.
He buries his face in my neck again, inhaling and biting as his free hand starts squeezing me all over, making the heat between my legs turn wet.
And what I really want is to pay him back for what he’d done to me last time, but I can’t even move my arms, let alone slide my hand into his pants like I want to, that’s how tight he’s holding me.
When he pulls away a little to abuse the other side of my neck, I grab the opportunity to catch his bottom lip between my teeth.
He stiffens and I instantly get what I want, because the next thing I know, he’s letting out a groan, releasing my wrists and grabbing onto my waist as I tug at his lip.
Then, abruptly, his mouth closes over mine, his tongue forcing its way inside. When it touches mine, that first contact sends a violent rush of thrill down my spine, making my arms fly to wrap around his shoulders.
Hungrily, he explores my mouth, stroking and chasing my tongue with his as his hands relentlessly map my body.
For a moment, it all makes me forget about my own agenda. Then, with his tongue still deep in my mouth, I grab onto his shoulder with one hand and slide the other down his crotch, feeling how rock-hard he is as his entire body goes rigid at my touch.
It surprises me, when he breaks the kiss and yanks my hand away, his mouth coming to hover next to my lips. “And what do you think you’re doing?” he asks in a husky voice.
I let out a little laugh. “It’s an intro into getting your pants off,” I whisper into his ear.
“That you have to earn,” he whispers back.
“Earn?” I echo teasingly. “Thought I was just supposed to take what I wanted.”
“Oh you’ll be taking it, smartass,” he says as he lets go of my hand, threads his fingers through my hair and tugs my head back so I’m looking straight into his glazed eyes, “when I say so.”
Draping my arms over his shoulders, I throw him a smirk. “And you are… what exactly? Sir, master?” I quirk an eyebrow suggestively, rubbing myself against him. “Or do you prefer professor?”
His eyes narrow at me. “The longer you use that mouth to talk back,” he warns in a smoldering voice, “the greater your punishment.”
Laughter bubbles up my throat. “Yes,” I snicker, “punish me.”
“Yeah?” he snarls through gritted teeth as he lets go of my hair, one hand still on my waist. It makes my breath catch, when he uses the other one to mercilessly tug the neckline of my dress down, exposing my breast to the cold winter air.
His eyes dart down and I see hunger flash in them, but he quickly collects himself, gripping my waist and locking eyes with me again as he starts lowering his head. “Let’s see how long you keep that smug smile on your face.”
Without breaking eye contact, he opens his mouth and closes it around the already hard nipple, his tongue lightly flicking over. I struggle to keep my smirk on, failing as soon as he starts circling it languidly, one hand tightening around my waist and the other finding its way under my dress and between my legs.
His fingers hook under my panties and yank them to the side, his thumb doing a few slow circles around my clit before the fingers slide into the wetness between my legs and start working. I bite back a moan, but my eyes flutter shut and my fingers dig into the hard muscles of his shoulders.
Gods, there”s something about his attention that”s so intense, it”s making me feel as if I”ve never been touched before.
He releases my nipple with a wet pop and I feel his breath on my face. “I guess not long after all,” I hear him say in a ragged voice, but I no longer know what he’s talking about. The way his fingers keep pushing in and out of me is rapidly making my mind go blank.
Still, I know it’s some little stab or other so I breathe out, “Asshole.”
I hear a low, hoarse chuckle before he comes to hum into my neck, “Music to my ears.” His fingers up the tempo unbearably, making me start grinding into the heel of his palm, desperate for friction.
When he curls them inside me, putting pressure on that sweet spot and meeting it with his thumb from the other side, it takes mere seconds for me to fall apart in his arms, burying my face in his neck to muffle my cries.
Panting heavily, I only open my eyes when he pulls his hand out. I still have my arms around him and he’s still pressed close to me, but there’s this hungry look in his eyes and a smug smile on his lips as he lifts his fingers to his face to lick them clean.
My wolf loves this, but the smile gets me fuming. Without a second of hesitation, I slide one arm off his shoulder and work the hand between his legs again. But this time, before he can stop me, I’m already stroking the hard bulge under his pants, making him let out a low, pained groan. His mouth searches for mine again as his hands clamp around my waist, his chest heaving.
It’s more languid, the way he’s kissing me now.
But when I unbuckle his belt, give his pants a sharp tug and wrap my fingers around him, starting to slide them up and down the hard length… One of his hands flies off my waist and grabs onto the tree, while his mouth turns brutal on mine, kisses turning into bites and stroking into aggressive suckling of my tongue into his mouth.
Both sides of me — human and animal — revel in it.
Then he’s breaking the kiss, and there’s this low, rushed mumbling against my cheek. I feel his hands grab the backs of my thighs, my hand unwrapping from him as he hoists me up in one quick movement until I have my legs around his hips. He presses me tighter against the tree, locks me in with an arm around my waist and uses the other hand to line himself against me, the contact making me suck in a sharp breath, my spine arching with the now urgent need for him to get inside me.
“This what you wanted, huh?” he grits out.
I nod against his cheek.
“Yeah? I didn’t hear you say please,” he says in a rough, breathless voice, dragging the hot, hard tip up and down my slick, throbbing flesh.
“Please,” I hear myself say, the word turning into a shaky moan when he finally pushes himself inside me, burying his face into my neck on a loud, dragged-out groan.
It feels so good, having him inside me, better than I ever thought it could.
He starts thrusting, feeling the pace out with his entire body tensing up against me, but I’m so heavy with need and I want to make him suffer like he made me suffer, so I start stroking his back, kissing his neck and using my hips to meet his thrusts, until he’s slamming himself inside me, both his breaths and his movements turning more erratic with each moan that escapes my lips.
Just as he starts tensing up as if he’s going to come, he tries to pull out, but I don’t let him. I wrap my legs tighter around him, grind myself against him and take a bite out of his neck.
He lets out a loud grumble, but it’s too late. He’s already coming, a violent shudder coursing through his body and a string of muffled curses leaving his lips. I’m still throbbing with need, but I hum with pleasure when he presses his face into my neck, his chest heaving.
When he pulls out and straightens so he’s towering over me again, there’s a pissed-off look on his face that makes me blink at him with a confused smile curling my lips. He lowers my feet back onto the ground and he stays pressed against me, but he grits out, “Turn around and spread your legs.”
It’s then that I hear something, in the distance, something that makes my ears strain and all my muscles tense up.
The snapping of branches under someone’s feet. My head turns in the direction of the castle.
“Hey,” I hear him demand as he takes my chin in his hand, “eyes on me.”
I push his hand away. “There’s someone there,” I whisper, my eyes searching.
“It’s just some drunk student.” His breath tickles my ear. “And we’re not done here.”
“It doesn’t matter who it is,” I say as I start struggling with getting my dress in order, turning to throw him a scowl. “Don’t be an asshole,” I order, tugging my hem down.
His face turning expressionless, he zips his pants up and goes to grab his jacket off the floor so he can put it over his ripped shirt.
The very next second, I’m turning in the direction of the castle, seeing a figure appear in the darkness before us.
Serra?
She approaches the plateau and stops right in front of it, looking up at the two of us just as Bane comes to stand beside me. There’s this grave look on her face that makes blood curdle in my veins. “Professor Bane, Miss Novak.”
I open my mouth to greet her, already coming up with an excuse for being here with said professor, but she doesn’t wait for a reaction. “If you’d come with me, please,” she says in the most official voice I’ve ever heard her use.