Chapter 16 Avery
AVERY
ONE MONTH LATER
Afizzy pink drink with a sugared rim and an umbrella stuck through the straw landed in front of me. “Drink up, bitch.”
I scowled at Mallory. “Why? Not like it’ll get me drunk.”
“It is for the vibes, obviously. We are in a bar, and you will act like you’re enjoying yourself. You haven’t seen me in, like, two months. It’s the least you can do.”
Allen, her bonded mate and wolf shifter, nodded enthusiastically, his blond curls bouncing.
“Let loose, Avery! You gotta take advantage of what little time they let you out of your prison in the woods.” He jerked his chin to where the dart boards and pool tables had attracted a small crowd. “Look, Joon and Nico are having fun.”
I rolled my eyes. Those two had wasted no time in cozying up to a couple of cute girls I recognized from the rising senior class at Proteus.
Joon’s shirt was unbuttoned down to the middle of his pecs, his black hair flopping boyishly onto his forehead as he leaned an arm against the wall, bicep flexing.
His girl du jour stood on strappy heels underneath that arm, blinking coquettishly at him as she took delicate sips through the straw of a drink that looked suspiciously like mine.
Nico wore a tank top that left little of his chest and nothing of his arms to the imagination. He was standing boldly between the open thighs of a beautiful girl, who was perched on the edge of the pool table and had some truly impressive breasts.
“Those two are going to have to get creative with respect to location if they want to get laid,” Ian mused as he slid back onto his stool at our high-top table.
He set three pints of beer in front of Brody, which meant he, still six months away from turning twenty-one, had deployed his trusty fake ID again.
“A shared bunk in our cabin is not ideal for hooking up.” He slid a heated glance at Brody. “Ask me how I know.”
Brody chuckled, snagging one of the pints before handing another to Allen and the last to Ash, one of Allen’s besties from the wolf contingent.
Ash’s dark hair was a bit longer on top than it had been the last time I saw her at school, but she’d freshly shaved the sides of her head.
She wore a fitted dress shirt in an eggplant color with the sleeves rolled to her elbows, displaying the myriad colorful tattoos that decorated her forearms. Her many rings clinked against the glass as she raised it to me.
“Here’s to the first month of camp being behind you.
At least you look like you’re still in one piece. ”
My answering grin was wry. “For now.”
Mallory, who was parked on the stool next to me, leaned in. “How has it, um, been?” she asked in a low voice so that only I could hear her. “Is your beast… unsettled?”
Mallory knew that I’d been caught in the woods during the breach of the school’s wards because she’d been walking the perimeter with me when those first swarmers had crawled over the wall. She was also aware that after I’d sent her running, I was injured and had to shift to save myself.
While I still hadn’t told her exactly what I was, I’d come clean to her about the fact that my beast had met her Fated in the entire moondamned Blackwell Quad out in those woods.
I’d needed someone I wasn’t related to by blood or boyfriend to discuss it with, and Mallory was conveniently well-versed in this topic.
She and Allen were Fated, which had struck their beasts like lightning the instant that Mallory had gathered the courage to shift into her cat form in front of Allen’s wolf several months into their relationship.
She was, predictably, both thrilled that I’d also joined this special club of shifter rarities and horrified that my experience had been so completely tarnished.
“My beast doesn’t help the situation,” I replied. “I just have to remind her of the facts, and usually she settles.”
With all the polite acceptance of a hungry cat being told it’s not dinnertime yet. She was growing more difficult by the day.
“I am astonished, frankly,” Mallory said.
“And thoroughly impressed by you. Not that I disagree with how you’re feeling about all of this, given those boys’ terrible behavior those last weeks of school.
But the pull to a Moon-blessed mate is strong, Avery, even without a bond, and you’ve been in such close proximity to them for a month.
I was preparing myself to come back from Palm Beach and find you fully bonded after the first Full Moon. ”
That first Full Moon had fallen on a Saturday two weeks into camp, and since Saturday was the day we were allowed to leave camp to do whatever we wanted, I’d spent it at home with my dads and Ian.
Couldn’t accidentally trip and fall into a bonding while tucked safely inside my house with my family, watching cult documentaries for hours.
There might’ve been a basilisk in our tree at one point, but I’d chosen to ignore that.
“They were very pushy the first few days,” I admitted. “But then there were some, uh, incidents, and they’ve been on better behavior since then.”
I couldn’t help a furtive glance over the rim of my fruity drink to the other side of the bar, where Heath, Elijah, Wyatt, and Aiden were holding court.
It’d been too much to hope that they’d choose to spend our Saturday liberty at one of the dozens of other bars or clubs on this strip, which I’d learned was one of the shifter community’s nightlife hotspots, but no. They were never far.
There was Wyatt, dressed in a white V-neck T-shirt that clung to his chest and left nothing at all to the imagination with respect to his chiseled pecs, sculpted arms, and tattoos. He leaned back in his chair and pressed a beer bottle to his lips, smirking when he caught me looking.
Then there was Aiden, drinking amber liquor from a glass while wearing perfectly tailored jeans and a dress shirt.
The chocolate waves of his hair had grown longer over the course of the summer, one lock flopping over the side of his glasses as he sipped his drink with a slutty flex of forearm.
He was engaged in conversation with a guy I recognized from the faculty in the college’s History Department.
At the bar, Elijah was chatting happily with the proprietor of this brewery, an older man in a flannel shirt with a white towel draped over his shoulder as he slung drinks with expert hands.
Elijah wore his usual linen shirt, unbuttoned to reveal an unholy amount of chest and his snake tattoo, and tight, ripped jeans that probably did great things for his ass, but I wouldn’t know because I hadn’t looked.
And, of course, there was Heath, sandy-blond hair styled like a magazine model’s, perfect pectorals snug in his T-shirt, jeans molded to his thick thighs.
He was pretending to listen to whatever Mark Ellison, the friendly jaguar, was saying to him while he was actually watching my every twitch.
I glared at him over my drink, and he didn’t flinch.
No, his expression remained as stoic and intense as ever, with only the flash of golden starbursts in his eyes betraying the fact that he was affected by my ire at all.
Mallory arched a fiery brow. “Incidents? Those are four Prime animals being denied their Fated. It’s a miracle the camp is still standing.”
“So I’m told,” I muttered.
As incensed as I’d been at Ward for sticking me with the men I so desperately wished to keep my distance from, he hadn’t been wrong about it settling everyone down.
I’d kept my mouth shut and my focus only on training harder, and for the most part, the guys had left me to it. They knew as well as I did that Ward had given them a boon they didn’t fucking deserve, and they’d decided to accept their good fortune and not push me any more than they already had.
Being around them hadn’t exactly gotten easier, but I’d at least grown used to the intense emotions their presence evoked.
It was clear they were still taking turns sleeping outside my cabin in animal form, but they’d been sneakier about it.
Sometimes I caught a whiff of wolf or bear on the first breeze I encountered when I stepped outside.
Once, I’d spotted Aiden’s jaguar slinking through the trees behind my cabin, taking the long way to breakfast. A few days ago, George had slithered out the door a few minutes after I woke up, and I’d watched in fascination as he and the basilisk disappeared into the forest together.
On our morning runs through the woods, the guys jogged in silence behind me, keeping just enough distance between us that I couldn’t hiss at them about being in my space.
During quad-focused activities, Heath made an effort to treat me like a soldier, and I made an effort to give him the obedience and respect I would’ve given any decent leader of my unit.
The bullshit between all of us had to be left off the battlefield, or someone was going to get their soul devoured by a wraith.
I ate my meals with Ian and Brody except when Cash forced me to the Guardian side of the chow hall.
Then I’d reluctantly join my assigned quad.
Somehow, Kellan and his quad would always end up seated on my other side, so those meals had been rife with uncomfortable silence and unrestrained aggression radiating from all around me.
Being attacked full-on by a basilisk had not put Kellan or the rest of his quad off the flirtatious attention they were determined to give me, but I suspected Ward had dressed them down in a separate meeting because there was no more touching or deliberate attempts to provoke Elijah or the others.
Couldn’t say I was mad about it. I had no idea if Kellan had been truly serious that first night about his quad seeking a bond with a beast soul or if it was just bullshit male posturing between the two most powerful quads on the premises, and frankly, I didn’t care.
That wasn’t why I was at camp.