Chapter 34
Something was…wrong. Because the second Dean Felling looked up from his dark wooden desk and saw Nix walk into his office, his entire body shuddered with fear.
Fear. Of Nix.
“Uh,” Nix muttered as she lost a little confidence to the confusing reaction of the dean to her presence. “Dean Felling, can I speak with you?”
“Y-You shouldn’t be here.” Dean Felling tried to stand, but his rolling chair caught under his desk, and he fell back slightly onto it. Fumbling, he freed his legs and stumbled into a standing position. He used the chair like a shield, positioning himself behind it.
Okay, weird. “First classes haven’t started yet,” Nix replied in a confused tone. “Look, I wanted to ask you about—”
“You really shouldn’t be here.” Dean Felling glanced nervously at his phone as if he wanted to make a call but feared Nix would stop him. “My secretary let you in?”
“Your secretary loves me,” Bael said.
“I—I know what you did,” Dean Felling told Nix with an expression of fear and accusation. He sucked his bottom lip into his mouth and glanced back at his phone. “W-What do you want from me?”
He knew “what I did.” What was that? Nix started, “I want to know where Mr. Lemmuns is. The man you plan to replace Professor Bowen with.”
Dean Felling’s brows furrowed, and he shook his head. “Whatever for? Do you plan to kill him as well?”
Nix frowned. As well?
“How’d you read our minds?” Bael asked jokingly, but there was a palpable edge to his voice—as sharp as his pocketknife.
“I knew I should have never allowed a dragon and a demon into this school,” Dean Felling scolded himself as an aside.
“Focus,” Nix snapped. “Where is Mr. Lemmuns?”
“He is preparing for the announcement in the auditorium.”
In the last timeline, Nix had been with Adar and Elle off campus. What announcement had they missed? “We can find him in the auditorium?”
“You are not supposed to be here,” Dean Felling told her in an eerie tone. “Why are you here? You are not supposed to be here.”
The tiny hairs on Nix’s arm rose with unease at his words. Surely, he meant that he knew Elle and Adar were “supposed” to take Nix off campus today and not that he knew she had traveled back in time by one day.
“I’m bored,” Bael commented before he blurred over to Dean Felling’s chair. The incubus’s arm shot out. In the span of a single second, Bael held his shiny, sharp blade to the dean’s throat.
“Baelfire!” Thierry gaped.
“Why did you replace Professor Bowen?” Bael asked the dean. “And remember, I can tell when someone is lying to me.”
“That is not an incubus trait,” Thierry stated.
Bael cast Thierry a “Really, Stoney?” expression before focusing back on the dean. “Tell me why you planned to replace the best professor at this academy.”
Thierry sighed. “Rude.”
“B-Because he wasn’t loyal,” Dean Felling stuttered. “P-Please don’t kill me.”
“Loyal?” Thierry asked. “To whom?”
“He was asking too many questions.”
“Like what?” Bael politely inquired as he pressed the blade harder to the dean’s throat.
“I—I can’t say.”
“Who are you so scared of?” Nix asked him, already knowing the answer.
“The council will punish you for—” the dean cut off as a thin trail of blood trickled down his neck. “Oh gods! Y-You’ve cut me!”
“He was asking questions about enchanted students, wasn’t he? Professor Bowen.” Nix guessed. “There are more enchanted students on campus.”
“You need to l-leave my office at once.”
“The council knows about the enchanted students? What about the missing students?”
“I will not be answering any of your questions—”
“Be right back, guys.” Bael disappeared, along with Dean Felling.
Nix watched the rolling chair spin at the gust of wind from Bael popping the dean out of existence.
“Did Baelfire just…take the dean to Hell?” Thierry muttered in disbelief.
“Wait for it…” Persius said. “Hmm, nope. Didn’t pop back here. Means the dean belonged there.”
“So, we just, what?” Thierry asked. “Wait for the incubus to come back?”
“Shouldn’t be long. Time moves much faster in Hell. A couple of minutes there are a few seconds here,” Persius said. “He is most likely getting the answers to Nix’s questions.”
“The dean was…scared of Nix,” Ryker said in his low, rumbling voice that wrapped around Nix and squeezed.
“I noticed that as well,” Thierry stated. “He said, ‘Do you plan to kill him as well,’ as if…”
“I haven’t killed anyone in this timeline,” Nix said.
A gust of wind blew Nix’s hair back as Bael appeared back where he had stood behind the dean’s chair. Without the dean. “Your favorite mate is back,” Bael said.
Thierry rolled his eyes.
“Dean Felling has zero pain tolerance, by the way.” Bael smirked and strode around the desk to stand by Nix. “He was ‘told’ by Kellan Oadess to fire Professor Bowen and replace him with Lemmuns.”
He added, “Apparently, Kellan told him that the council had heard Bowen requesting to put protection potion into the school’s wells and water systems.”
Thierry crossed his arms, flexing the muscular biceps beneath his tweed suit. “As if that would be a bad thing?”
“Apparently, to the ‘council,’ yes.” Bael added, “Apparently, not ‘every’ student requires protection from enchantments.”
“We need to get to the auditorium,” Nix told them, swallowing the jittery nerves down without a trace of choking on them. I killed my captor in one timeline. I can do it again. I will not be captured and tortured ever again. “That’s where the dean said Lemmuns is.”
“But I want to fuck you on the dean’s desk.” Bael pouted and smoothed a hand over the dark wood top. “Imagine how hot it would be to be eaten out on the dean’s desk, baby. Make an incubus’s dream come true?”
“I’m still mad,” Nix muttered.
“At Future Bael, not Present Bael,” he defended, slinking up close to her and palming her lower back. His thick alpha scent infiltrated her senses until her eyelids drooped to half-mast.
“Bael.”
“You can still hate me and fuck me, baby. Hate sex isn’t off the table. So, let’s do it on the table—on this desk—”
“Be serious,” Thierry told him.
“I am.” Bael pinched Nix’s chin to force her gaze to meet his. “Baby, this mad-at-us thing is temporary. We’re going to save the world; we’re going to break up the council.”
He stressed to her, “Doesn’t mean we have to be serious all the time. You have three mates—and Stoney, I guess—who fucking love you—” A grin stretched his face. “—and love fucking you. We do what you want and need, yeah?”
Nix nibbled her bottom lip. The incubus’s warm hand kept rubbing her lower back in circles. Each sweep caused a responding pulse between her legs.
Her breaths became heavier as he leaned into the crook of her neck and planted a kiss over the side of her throat.
Bael whispered into her hair, “I can scent your arousal and that needy little pussy. If you keep ignoring the build up, you’re going to snap.”
“I—I’m fine,” Nix sputtered.
Bael smirked. “No, you’re getting horny.”
“We have other, bigger things to focus on right now,” Nix said.
“So, you prefer to let the lust build-up then?” Bael smiled. “Fine. It will be delicious watching you beg to be fucked later.”
Nix cleared her throat, her cheeks blazing hot as she changed the subject. She stepped to the side, letting Bael’s hand drop from her back and regretting the loss of the warmth there.
She led the men to exit the office and asked, “What do you think the ‘announcement’ is that the dean mentioned?”
“I have not heard anything as a faculty member,” Thierry said.
“Say, have you ever wanted to be dean, Stoney?” Bael asked as he opened the door for Nix to walk through. Once Nix walked through, Bael let go, and the door slammed into the other guys. “I hear there is an opening.”
“So, if Lemmuns is in the auditorium, what’s the plan?” Persius asked Nix, wanting her input.
Plan. Right. “Grab him.”
Thankfully, no one commented on her lack of details.
Still, one of the guys questioned, “And if there are too many eyes on us?”
“I’ll create a distraction,” Nix said simply.
Bael’s red eyes grew wide. “You’re going to strip—”
Thierry whacked the back of Bael’s head.
“I am going to make an announcement of my own,” Nix told them in the empty hallway. “I am going to let everyone in this school, and the council, know that I am a phoenix.”
The men stopped walking. All of them froze in their places, and Nix turned to see their shocked and dread-filled faces.
“Is that…maybe what your idea was last time that made us put you in a cage?” Thierry asked.
“No,” Nix grumbled. “Kellan has the power right now because only he knows he has been harboring a phoenix for his own purposes. If everyone knows, he has to answer for breaking a council rule.”
“That is putting a lot of trust in the council to hold him accountable.”
“Kellan got phoenix shifters to become extinct by making us seem like dangerous creatures.” Nix pushed her shoulders back as she said, “I will show everyone that is not true.”
“And what if he baits you into violence?” Bael asked. “My impulsive, fiery mate can keep calm?”
Nix shrugged.
The guys exchanged worried looks.