Chapter 20
CHAPTER TWENTY
WHEN ONE DOOR OPENS, ANOTHER SLAMS SHUT
I know I’m dreaming. My limbs are heavy, my thoughts float as I hover on the soft, dreamy edge of sleep.
The temperature overnight plummeted, and I remember getting up at one point to grab another blanket.
Now, though, I’m so toasty warm, all I want to do is snuggle deeper into my cozy bed and drift until my alarm goes off.
I roll onto my side, pressing against the warmth, as I drop straight into a dreamscape that’s eerily similar to the one where I unintentionally abducted Bugby.
This time, though, there’s no battle in front of me; rather, it’s like I’m looking at the same fields years later.
Instead of soldiers preparing for battle, a verdant sea of wildflowers paint color all the way to the horizon.
The sun is high in an azure sky, and warmth kisses my face.
A summer breeze blows strands of my hair across my face.
I lift a hand and watch as my fingers comb through Nordic white strands.
Awareness trickles as soft fur brushes against my skin, but before I can twist around to check, I’m drawn back into the dream, instantly succumbing to an overload of welling happiness and deeply intimate sensations as a warm, wet snout presses firmly against the junction of my shoulder and the base of my neck.
I crane back wanting and inviting more. A nip of sharp teeth against my throat evokes pleasure so true, I know the beast behind me is mine in every sense of the word.
I chase the sensation we share, both physically and spiritually, as a voice—his—whispers and weaves through my thoughts. Not yet, Rakkaani.
I go to turn, but the feeling of him, our connection, and the surrounding landscape drain away like sand grains in an hourglass.
A deep sense of loss engulfs me, and I wake with a start, sitting up.
Tears track down my face as my thoughts desperately try to return to the dream, and I struggle to separate where I was from reality.
My room is dark to match my mood, but when I flick off my blankets to turn on the light, I’m frozen in place.
Tentatively, I reach out to find the top of my bed is toasty warm.
It’s the same warmth I found after our old cat at home spent the night sleeping next to me.
Unlike the cat, who was small, whatever slept on my bed nearly took up the entire length of my body.
Something moves close by, and when I see my door is slightly open, my heart hammers so hard in my chest I feel like I’m having a heart attack.
Without thinking I fly out of bed, throwing myself against the door, and the sound of the door slamming echoes through the early morning.
I search for the light switch, blinding myself when I flick it.
My breathing sounds like I’ve run a marathon, and I crush my hand over my mouth, forcing myself not to make a sound and I leave it there as I search for signs.
I know something or someone was in my room, on my bed. The violation is too horrible to consider. I wonder if I simply had a bad nightmare, but that gets blown out of the water when I see the food under my desk.
Sinking to the floor, I shudder at the realization that someone was in here while I slept. I feel sick, my mind racing so fast that I miss when Bugby reappears, only noticing him when he’s standing on my foot. I yelp, and he starts his deep gargling, as if he’s saying, ‘I’m here’.
“Shit,” I whisper, rubbing my eyes and willing my pulse to stop mimicking arrhythmia. After a massive inhale, and an equally impressive exhale, the rushing between my ears fades.
I do it a few more times, and once I’m done, I can focus on trying to figure out what’s going on. First things first, how cold it is. I move so quickly that Bugby does a weird jump-flap-squawk, and I know I shouldn’t laugh, but I do.
“Sorry,” I whisper when he throws a very unimpressed glare my way. “Nervous energy.”
Shutting the windows, I then hop back into bed, rolling onto my side so I can watch the door.
I’m not going back to sleep, but I need to chill the hell out if I’m going to survive the day.
Though lying this way what I can see is limited, and when Bugby joins me on my bed and settles on my hip like a sentinel, my gaze keeps moving back to the food.
“If you were going to hurt someone, would you bring them food?”
Clearly, I don’t expect an answer, but I get one. The raven makes a series of clicks and soft caws, which sound a lot like attitude. Then he hops off me, landing on the floor right next to the food.
He rummages through the offering, moving things out of the way and giving me the chance to see what was left behind.
Honestly, it makes little sense—a packet of raw steak, a block of cheese, a bag of bread and a banana.
The banana is bruised, and when I reach over to where Bugby threw it, I twist it around and touch the large puncture holes on two sides.
I put it back where it was, not solving the question of what happened to it.
Bugby swaggers closer, cawing and clicking his beak the whole time, almost like he’s reminding me I’m not alone. He uses furniture and boxes to climb up until he’s walking past me on his way back to my hip. A package he was holding drops and I see it’s a tiny muffin.
“What if it’s poisoned?”
His response involves him jabbing his beak through the plastic and shaking his head until the muffin falls apart, the unmistakable smell of freshness assaults my senses.
My stomach rumbles in hunger, and I forgo the risk of possible poisoning to rip the bag open.
For every bite I take, I offer Bugby a piece.
I reach down to the pile of food to see what else I should eat.
Waste not, want not, right? I sit up with bread and cheese in one hand, and the holey banana in the other, then make the strangest-tasting sandwich ever.
I eat so fast I get the hiccups, and my alarm sounds just as I take the last bite.
I’d intended to get up early, not really knowing how things work in this house and not wanting to appear more of a problem than they already make me feel.
But my plan of showering, then studying has been hijacked because before I can do that, I need to return this contraband.
The last thing I need is Cane accusing me of stealing from him, yet I have no logical explanation how the food arrived in my room.
Knowing I have a limited window to act, I move out of bed so fast, Bugby makes his weird eep sound again.
I stop at the stairs, triple-checking. The house is quiet, and as I race upstairs, I can see the outline of the furniture so I don’t crash into anything.
At the fridge, I face a conundrum, because there’s nothing I can do about the internal light, but I need to open it to return the food.
My hand shakes as I reach for the door, and I can hear the race of my heartbeat.
No matter how quietly I try to open the fridge, everything in the door clatters and clanks, but I move fast, shoving the stolen food into the back of the fridge before I push the door softly closed.
The kitchen plunges into an even deeper darkness, and I wait for a few precious seconds for my eyes to adjust before I creep back the way I came.
I think I’ve watched too many scary movies, so I expect a jump scare, but I make it back downstairs without it happening.
The lingering adrenaline means I feel like I’m moving at warp speed. Maybe I am, because as the sun is rising, I’m back in my room, showered and dressed in my training gear, going over the assignments I completed last night. And they’re good.
Sounds trickle from upstairs as I hit submit on my paper for Elder Augustus’s class; they’re having breakfast and talking.
The chatter stops, and a chair scrapes before someone walks over the floor, coming my way.
There’s a sharp knock on the wall of the stairwell before Cane yells down. “We’re going in twenty minutes.”
Pasting on a smile, I race out of my room but stay at the bottom of the stairs. “I’m ready. I was studying.”
His eyes are more gold than green this morning, and through my recent education on shifters, I know that the color reflects how near to the surface his beast is. It’s close, by the looks of his iris.
I drop my eyes, remembering more of the basics when communicating with shifters, and more particularly, Alphas. As I wait for him to say something, the silence stretches, but I don’t need to look up at him to know he’s assessing me like I’m a threat.
“Get your gear and come eat breakfast.”
“It’s okay. I’ll get another delivery today. I’m fine until then.”
Under normal circumstances, and with a normal person, my response would work. But Professor Cane’s mood shifts, and he’s back to being an obnoxious dick.
“It wasn’t a suggestion, Maya,” he snarls back. “And your disrespect just earned you a thousand-word essay on why you think you have the right to question any faculty member at Thales.”
He storms off before I can squeak out an apology, not that I owe him one considering I didn’t do anything wrong. Still, he makes me feel otherwise. It’s probably good he left in such a hurry, or he’d see exactly what I think of him and his revolving door of hostility and amiability.
I take a second to steady myself before I walk up the stairs.
The lure of more food isn’t as enticing as it should be because of the company and the ever-changing rules of engagement.
Rounding into the kitchen, I come up short.
Professor Cane is sitting at the table with the other two guys he lives with, the three of them glaring at me like I’m intruding.
I am, but they’re leaking colorful auras all over the place, which is more distracting than their scowls.
I stand there, staring at the ribbons of energy, until the tension in the kitchen becomes impossible to ignore. Although I’m not great with confrontation, I also can’t stay quiet.