Chapter 13 Avery
AVERY
My phone buzzed as I stepped out of my cabin, dressed for my second day of camp and eager for breakfast.
Mallory
How was the first day? Did you kill anyone yet?
I snorted.
No, but it was touch and go.
When are you and Allen back from Palm Beach?
Three weeks! You better make time for me on your night off… or else.
She’d been issuing these sorts of vague threats since the beginning of summer, mostly to encourage me to check in to prove I was still alive.
I’ll see what we can do.
I stepped off my cabin’s little stoop and almost tripped over eight hundred pounds of rust-red bear.
“Wyatt!”
The bear was sprawled out on the grass in front of my cabin, lying on his side and apparently sound asleep. He stirred at my arrival, stretching languidly and letting out a big bear yawn.
“What the hell?” I tried to march around him, but he rolled swiftly to his feet and blocked my path. “Why are you sleeping outside my cabin?”
The bear nudged me with his giant head. Guileless green eyes stared at me, and my tiger purred at his touch.
Quit it.
“What do you want?” I asked the bear. “I’d like to go to breakfast.”
He dipped his big furry head under my hand and then rubbed his nose on my shirt.
“Oh, for the love of the Moon. Fine.” I gave him some pets on his wide forehead and a few ear scratches for good measure, and he rumbled happily. “This is under duress, just so we’re clear. You did not earn pets for sleeping uninvited outside my cabin. I’m just hungry and you’re in my way.”
He snorted and rubbed his head all over my shirt again, and then he nudged me in the direction of the chow hall.
I swatted his nose. “Stop that.”
He chuffed, undeterred. I began a brisk stride down the path, and he lumbered along next to me.
There wasn’t much I could do about the situation, save shifting into my tiger and either sprinting away from him or forcing him to go away with my will alone, and I didn’t exactly trust her to behave in the presence of Wyatt’s bear or any of the other beasts the Moon had saddled us with.
Ian, Brody, Joon, and Nico waited for me in front of the Support Squadron cabins. At the sight of my companion, Brody’s dark brows bounced upward, while Joon and Nico both bit off laughs.
Ian’s eyes narrowed into slits. “What the fuck, Gale? Are you harassing my sister?”
The bear ambled over to Ian and butted his head into Ian’s side, nudging him toward me like he was rounding up the kids for the carpool.
“What—” Ian staggered, and Wyatt nudged him again. “Avery, call off your bear!”
I sighed. “He’s bringing you to me like you’re a gift. Trying to butter me up.”
Wyatt chuffed again and tried to steal another pet from me. I shoved his big bear head away. “No. No more of that for you.”
He huffed a disgruntled noise. The rest of the group—all three of those jerks now holding in laughs—fell in next to us, and we continued down the path.
As we passed the edge of the lake, the path diverged, one way leading up the hill to the larger Guardian trainee cabins and the other toward the front of the campgrounds.
Waiting for us at the fork were Heath, Elijah, and Aiden.
Heath, dressed in our standard-issue black T-shirt and training shorts, his blond hair swept neatly back from his face and glinting in the sun like the sands of a tropical island, the barest hint of amusement on his full lips.
Elijah, miraculously also dressed in our training uniform, his long muscular legs on display beneath shorts that were at least one size too small, his canines sharp as he grinned at my predicament.
Aiden, wavy brown hair rustling in the soft breeze, his T-shirt molded to his shapely chest, hazel eyes alight behind his glasses as he not-so-subtly dragged his gaze slowly up and down my body.
My tiger preened and licked a claw.
Damn it.
I was on my own.
“Did you lose something?” I asked Heath, waving an exasperated arm in Wyatt’s direction.
“Good morning, Killer,” he said, his amusement blooming into an affectionate smile. “Did you sleep well?”
“Heath,” I growled. “The night watch is unnecessary.”
“I beg to differ. The beasts don’t like sleeping away from their—” He darted a glance over my shoulder at Joon and Nico. “—from you. You’re lucky it isn’t all four of us there every night.”
The bear shivered, and then his big furry body morphed into a very naked Wyatt the man.
He stood there, unrepentant in his nudity, dark-auburn hair tousled like he’d just rolled out of bed. He grinned lasciviously at me, his muscles flexing under his pale, tattooed skin. “Morning, baby girl.”
“Damn,” Nico said from somewhere behind me. “Are all bears packing like that?”
“Yeah, man,” Joon replied. “It’s probably the compromise the Moon granted them for being so fat and slow in beast form.”
“That bear isn’t fat and slow, though,” Nico protested. “Pretty fucking unfair.”
“Will you two shut up?” I hissed over my shoulder.
Wyatt’s grin had grown impossibly wider. Aiden threw a black T-shirt and shorts at him, and Wyatt’s burning gaze never left my face as he slowly dressed.
I gritted my teeth and willed away the heated flush I felt from my cheeks to my chest. It was anger and frustration that Wyatt dared—that any of them still fucking dared after what they did to me—and also anger and frustration at the warmth the sight of Wyatt’s naked body elicited in other parts of my body.
It had been crafted by the Moon herself to torment me.
Aiden had done the same thing to me last night, and his jaguar had radiated smug satisfaction afterward.
I pointed a finger at Heath. “No more of this, or I will shift and make you go away. Got it?”
The starbursts in his eyes lit up the brightest gold. His wolf knew as well as I did that letting my tiger out around him might not go the way I wanted it to. “Looking forward to it, Killer.”
I huffed and stomped away. Ian and Brody followed, sticking tight to my back, and the others fell in behind them.
“Dude, could Avery’s beast really force that Alpha to leave?” Nico asked in a low voice.
“You know you’re not supposed to ask questions about Avery’s beast,” Brody replied diplomatically.
Joon snorted. “Doesn’t matter. Those guys are hella pussy-whipped over her. They’d do whatever she wanted them to do.”
“Except leave her alone, clearly,” Nico mused. “Quads are weird.”
“For sure,” Joon replied.
“The bobcats are astute.”
I nearly jumped out of my skin. Elijah had appeared out of thin air, like he so often did, and was strolling along next to me as if it was the most natural thing ever.
The cool touch of his beast slid over my skin. My tiger gave a haughty sniff, but her tail flicked in interest.
“What?” was all I managed to say.
“Your bobcats,” Elijah replied smoothly. “They’re correct. We are pussy-whipped. Every single one of us would stab ourselves in the heart if you asked us to.”
That thought made me feel like I was being stabbed in the heart, and I waved it away with an internal scream of frustration.
“And quads are indeed weird,” Elijah went on, his yellow eyes alight and his fangy smile big and brilliant.
“Always in a constant battle between man and beast. The push and pull of primal instincts versus reason. The baser need to protect the ones we love. We don’t always make the right decisions, Dove. ”
I squinted at him. Protecting the ones they love? Was this about what Heath had said yesterday, when he was acting like his life may be in danger?
The tiger’s hackles were up.
“Elijah, what—”
He just squeezed my hand and then walked ahead.
He jogged up the stairs to the chow hall and disappeared behind the doors, probably to go make himself at home in the kitchen.
The ladies who worked here were always letting him back there, probably so he could assemble a meal that met his dietary preferences.
The loss of the ghostly lick of the basilisk on my skin left me feeling flat and empty. I blamed my beast.
Brody linked his arm through mine and led me up the stairs, chatting happily while Ian beamed at him with so much love that it made me want to cry.
Clearly I needed to eat.
And as I made my way through the bustling dining room to the buffet line, I pretended that the quick knowing caress of Aiden’s hand along my lower back as he swept past didn’t also make me want to cry.
After another four-mile run through the woods with my swords strapped to my back, I was all warmed up for our next morning activity.
The obstacle course.
“All right, everyone gather ’round!”
Commander Moss was back and overseeing this exercise this morning, which left Cash and his quad free to stand around nearby and look annoyed and disgusted by all of us.
“Some of you will remember this course from camp last summer,” Commander Moss said, “but we’ve added quite a few new obstacles and increased the difficulty this year.
” He waved a weathered hand in the vicinity of the large structures staged behind him.
Towering obstacles made primarily of wood and ropes cut a twisted path through the trees, thinner here than at the edge of the forest just beyond us.
“You’ll rack your weapons before you go, but this course is meant to push your human bodies to the limits, just as the wraiths will when you need to be a blade wielder. No shifting allowed.”
Murmurs sounded among my fellow black shirts. In the distance lay a cargo net that looked at least fifty feet high, and some of us would much prefer to scale that in agile feline form.
“Today you’ll be running the course as an individual.
No quads, no teamwork. Each obstacle is set up to take three people at a time, so we’ll run in heats.
The requirement is to finish the course in under twelve minutes.
Each fall from an obstacle is a thirty-second penalty.
” Commander Moss sent a pointed look around the group, like he was daring us to ask questions, and then he clapped his hands. “Line up!”