Chapter 1 #2
“You can trust me,” Bael promised. His dark eyes were so…dark. Like a haunted night sky with no moon or star to provide a gleam or shimmer of light. A blackhole that sucked at her secrets, wanting them for himself.
But Nix did not do trust. Not since every time seemed to lead to betrayal in her life.
“I might be able to help you,” Bael said.
Nix sighed. With Persius possibly taken from her, what more did she have to lose? “I think that Elle is enchanting the guy who was in her room.”
“Enchanting?”
“You know, the thing you accused me of doing to you at the start of the semester?” Nix rolled her eyes.
Bael had been so convinced he wouldn’t be interested in someone like Nix that he accused his attraction to her as being part of a manipulative spell Nix had cast on him. But Nix could not cast spells or enchant anyone—because she was not a cygnus swan shifter like the Oadess family.
Nix did not know what she was. Another mystery that needed solving.
Bael flashed his dangerous fangs in his smile. “I’m familiar.”
“Well, I want to go to potions class, make the potion that will confirm whether he is being bespelled, and test it.”
“Why?” Bael asked. “What do you care what’s going on between them? Do you like this guy?”
“Excuse me?”
“Am I going to have to share you with another one?” Bael whined gruffly.
Nix gaped and slapped his chest. “No one deserves to be controlled! By anything or anyone. It doesn’t matter how I feel; if he is being enchanted against his will, we need to undo it.”
Bael nodded and smirked. “Right answer, love.” He finally released her neck and kissed her earlobe. “You can accrue as many men in your harem as you want, by the way. I’ll always be here to fuck you better than any of them.”
Nix rolled her eyes, but her nipples perked up at his words.
He added, “Right, so… Time to steal some potion ingredients?”
“Maybe this time we just ask Professor Bowen for the potion,” she said, after having learned her lesson when accidentally causing a fire in class that Ryker protected her from.
Bael booed her.
Ryker had a great plan. Mind his own fucking business. It had served the lonely dragon shifter well over the years.
He would simply not look at Nix or breathe her sweet, tart scent. He would not think about how hard his cock had been when she showered and touched herself in his house the night before. Not think about how he had to fly away and sleep in the forest to avoid losing control around her.
As if she would even want me. A disgusting, violent dragon shifter. Wasn’t that what she thought of him? The same species as her parents’ murderer.
He needed to suffocate the draw he felt to her. The constant pull.
He watched her when she wasn’t looking.
He licked his lips when she licked hers.
But unlike other species, dragons could not hook up or date someone who was not another dragon. Their fated mates were always other female dragons because the creature had to be able to survive a dragon’s fire.
The dragon shifter’s essence ignited into flame when a dragon came inside his mate. As a swan shifter, Nix was not impervious to fire.
But…was she a swan shifter? Because her hair last night had been a fiery, brilliant blood-orange red. Her eyes were no longer blue like the shallow ponds reflecting a cloudless day. They had been…golden bronze.
What is she?
Ryker’s skin sizzled with awareness when she walked into the potions classroom.
She stepped inside, wearing Ryker’s button-down shirt as a thin dress, and held her chin up high. Those legs. Ryker stiffened at his desk. She wears my clothing.
Did that…mean something? Like, maybe now she didn’t think all dragon shifters were evil?
With Bael trailing behind her, an agitated Nix looked ready to bite anyone who got in her way. A palpable waspishness wafted from her, and it reeked of…power. She reminded Ryker of a vexed queen.
Why did she emanate potent power this morning? This was the woman who could not run a mile without hyperventilating in combat class.
Ryker’s golden eyes narrowed onto her as she walked to Professor Bowen and had a quick chat that ended in the professor nodding and gesturing to the clock above the doorway.
Satisfied with that interaction, Nix spun around and began making her way to her desk in the back. Near Ryker. Where he would scent her sweetness again and be reminded of how her arousal had driven him mad with lust.
Fuck, he had been so hard for her last night. He still was hard for her. Thankfully, the desk blocked sight of his horny erection.
“What did you just say?” Nix froze on her path to her desk and turned to glare at the douchebag student in the class.
Atticus Graeves, a self-proclaimed douchebag, held a sheet of paper and looked up at her. Displeasure claimed his expression after being interrupted with his buddies.
Turning his head, the second he saw the new not-blonde Nix, Graeves’ face broke out into a disgusting grin. “Hey there, sexy. Are you new?”
“New hair, new eyes, new face—same utter disdain for you.” Though she looked so different, the sound of Nix’s voice was the same. A beautifully haunting, velvety voice that clung to Ryker’s ears.
Graeves blinked, his brows furrowing as he muttered, “Ugly Fuckling?” He used the vile nickname, and Ryker wanted to bite Graeves’s head off. “You…don’t look like a cygnus shifter anymore.”
“No?”
“No.”
She asked him, “Want to talk about that list you’re holding again?”
Graeves lifted the piece of paper in his hand. “You mean the rankings?”
“Rankings of?” Nix fumed with rage; she did nothing to hide it. Invisible fury smoked from her ears and mouth as Ryker watched her glare at Graeves.
So…queenly.
“Look, I get that you’re a woman, but you can’t just join a predominantly male class and expect us to cater to your feelings, okay?”
“My feelings about you making a list ranking the female prey shifters by your enjoyment in fucking them?” she exclaimed.
Ryker’s spine shot straight. He swore he felt her wrath flowing off of her in waves, crashing into him from rows away. A creeping tension rose in him, and his neck prickled with something as he watched her.
“Nix—” Bael started in a calm voice, which was odd because Bael always loved a good fight. Could he sense the dark energy swirling around Nix?
“Look, if it’s jealousy that you’re not on the list, you can easily get on it,” Graeves said. “I just have to do a little taste test.”
Bael whistled out a breath and mumbled, “Really shouldn’t have said that.” Bael’s knife caught a flash of light, but Nix stepped in his way, leaning over Graeves’s desk.
“You think you need to ‘taste test’ the girls at this school?” she asked.
“I’m the one who will have to marry one of them. Shouldn’t I know what I’m getting?”
“And do you plan to marry any of them?” Nix grabbed the list from him, ripping it from his hands.
“Hey!” Graeves protested, reaching for his list.
“Do you plan to commit to one of your rankings?”
Graeves snorted. “Of course not. I’m not marrying a slut who gives it up that easily.”
The rankings list burst into flames.
As did Nix’s entire body.