14. An Incident
FOURTEEN
an incident
Keira
Bells ring out so loudly, it’s like static crawling beneath my skin. My lashes open to bright rays of light, and I close them hard to block it back out. But then I feel him just inches behind me. His body heats mine, and when I search with restless fingers beneath the blanket, he catches my hand in his. The hold on me is tighter, more painful than I remember last night, but it draws me to him, nonetheless. I turn on my side into his warmth. I nuzzle back into the reassurance of his body. Slowly, he releases my hand and just lets me lie near him. He feels good. Everything in me is awake suddenly, and all the words that were whispered between us surface in my mind.
You don’t belong to me, darling.
He deserves more. I do too.
If we let ourselves, could we be happy? Could I find happiness if I forget all the rest? My death, the connection with Arcane, the incident in the Hell Well: can I just ignore it all and simply be his pretty little Fated mate for the rest of our lives? Is it really that easy to pretend?
With an impatient shimmy across the small space of the dense bed, I meld into him until my chest is against his side, and my fingers flex slightly over the rigid planes of his abdomen. I freeze for a hesitant moment of uncertainty before unclenching my fingers and settling them lightly over the smooth, delicious feel of his stomach. My body fits perfectly against his. He feels right. Maybe it was the whispers in the dark or the bond really is finally bonding, but he feels so incredibly right. Every nerve in my body buzzes from his nearness.
A boldness pounds through my heart, and I slide my leg up over his, feeling a hardness just beneath my inner thigh as my limbs fully tangle around his. His hips shift against my thigh. A delicious growl hums through his chest, and I feel that deep dark sound all the way through my core, making me instantly achy and wet for more. Until he finally speaks.
“Wrong brother, Haunting,” A taunting voice stained with charming arrogance cuts through my lust-filled euphoria, and my eyelids open fast and wide.
Gorgeous, stormy gray eyes peer down on me with the most annoying smirk kissing his lips.
It’s his smile that I hate the most. A lazy line pulls his lips up into the frame of his perfect dimples. It’s a false look of amusement. It’s like he’s never really been happy a day in his life. And I hate that he has the nerve to charmingly mask himself for anything more than what he truly is: a cruel, sad excuse of a man.
“Gross,” I hiss before rolling away from him and veiling the pain that burns through my knee with a grimace across my face.
“You’re so pretty when you lie, my pretty little Haunting,” he taunts.
I glare a hole through his inflated head as he folds his arms behind himself like a makeshift pillow.
“Why’d you jump into the well?” The words come so clipped and jagged, they steal the cocky smile right from his lips.
“I didn’t,” I correct with just as much coldness.
“You could have gotten us all killed, including my little sister.” A tense muscle pulses along his jaw, and I have the sudden urge to feel it with my fist.
“I. Didn’t. Jump,” I grind out.
“If Clawd hadn’t called us back and rushed Lila out of there, I never even would have known you jumped in. You’re lucky he was there.”
And that’s it. That’s the straw that broke the despicable dragon’s back. Him telling me how lucky I am that Clawd saved the day is my fucking breaking point.
“He fucking shoved me into the well!” I blurt before I can stop myself. “And what? You want me to thank him? Praise him for trying to kill me? Again ? Fuck you, Arcane!”
Long lashes blink slowly as he seems to process my long stream of screaming words. Then his head tilts ever so lightly, and he looks at me from the corner of dark steely eyes.
“He pushed you?” he asks, and the tone that carries that question is careful. Controlled. And a little bit terrifying, if I’m being honest.
I swallow slowly before nodding a quiet confirmation for him.
“He said the dead float. He called me a freak. And then he grabbed me by the back of my neck and shoved me in face-first.” I hate how tiny my voice sounds. I hate how hard it is for me to confess his sins. I hate that I trusted any of them at all.
Undead rule number three: never, ever, trust the living.
Stiffly, he turns away to stare up at the ceiling, not replying to the terrible things I just told him his friend did to me.
“What do you care though, right? You tried to finish the job for him last night.” I shove out of the bed, holding the blanket against my chest in the most modest fashion I can muster.
I feel so stupid. My jaw grinds hard, and I try my best to ignore the turning sensation of my stomach and heart.
It’s his attention that scorches across my body like a fiery lick of heat that I feel the most though. It burns away all thoughts of embarrassment and only leaves confusion in its wake.
The cold floor meets my bare feet, and I pull open the closet to find something to cover myself with.
“I can’t control it.” I pause when he speaks those low rumbling words. From beneath my lashes, I look at him where he sits in the middle of the bed. His dark forearms fold over his knees, and he’s so casual in his near nudity as he speaks to me. “When I shift, it isn’t me. I can’t control the two-ton dragon, Haunting. I can only attempt to. And I fail. A lot. I’m sorry if he—I’m sorry I hurt you.”
The honesty in the air singes my lungs, I swear it. It’s hard to take it in. It’s hard to accept his apology. But I want to.
I want people I can trust even if it’s not safe for me.
I need them.
“I think my name is Keira.” I look away from him and the tension that’s strung tight between us. The blanket drops to my feet, and I pull on the first pair of pants that I hope are mine and not Aelix’s. Honestly, with how narrow his hips are, I don’t even think the jiggle of my ass could fit in his academy uniform.
They slide up over my thighs with minimal hopping and wiggling, and I’m quite sure they’re mine.
It’s when I glance back up that I realize the carelessness these shifters have with their own nudity isn’t extended to me. Hooded eyes rake up my hips and across my stomach. Heated attention lingers on the dip of my pants where they hang unbuttoned. His gaze roams up my stomach, across my bra and the swell of my breasts before lingering on the part of my lips. Finally, stormy eyes meet mine.
“That what the ghosts told you?” he asks casually, like he didn’t just strip me down bare beneath the weight of his hooded gaze alone.
“Um.” I try to remember what the hell we were talking about, but it takes several seconds and several fumbling attempts of buttoning up my blouse before I can find the words. “They said I’d met them before. That I’d tried to help them. Like maybe I was dead for a long, long time and just don’t remember. But they knew who I was.”
“Hmm,” he says without much help.
I arch a brow at that little annoying reply.
“What are you thinking?” I demand from him, and he only smiles for a moment.
“Do you ever wonder if you’re more than just a ghost?”
I blink slowly.
No.
Okay, honestly . . .
“So, there was a moment where I thought I was supposed to be like your guardian angel or something, but then I quickly realized not even the Fates can save you from yourself. I refuse.”
His small smile tilts so hard, it shines in his eyes, and we pause there, staring at one another for far too long.
“If you’re my guardian angel, I’ve surely pissed off someone higher than the Goddess, beautiful.”
My stomach does this stupid little somersault at that new pet name, but I’m convinced it’s just heartburn from the lack of food this prison of a school gives us.
“What other entity would I be?” I finally ask.
“Could be a demon.” He flicks his attention across my body once more and nods to himself like that possibility checks out.
Fates, he’s so annoying.
“I am not a demon.”
“I don’t know. It’d make a lot of sense.”
“Like how?”
“Just . . . you’re incredibly hard to get rid of. You’re entitled, needy, deman—”
I ball up the blanket and throw it in his obnoxious face.
“By that definition, maybe you’re also a demon,” I snark, and his laughter comes out in this rumbling hum of distraction that flutters my chest with a strange happiness.
Some emotions . . . are good, I guess.
I try my best not to look at him as I pull my boots on and grab the discarded journal by the door. I cross the room quickly to make sure I’m checking all the boxes of being a good mate. At the small desk, I dip a black feather into the ink and hold it above the first page of the journal. Several seconds pass. I try to think of something witty and clever. Something a lover would whisper sweetly to her Fated. Perhaps a great poem for the ages . . . A blot of ink drips down to stain the middle of the page, and I force myself to scribble down the first thing that comes to my mind instead. At the sound of the quill scratching across the thick page, I find immense satisfaction in the journaling process, as if I truly am scrawling something the scholars will deliberate a hundred years from now as I write:
This entire school sucks big dragon dic—
“What are you doing?” Arcane asks with a tilt of his head and a small smile.
I quickly snap the journal shut. I pause where I stand for several seconds and wait for a response from my Fated. A bit of magical tingling should be happening any minute now . . . Any minute.
But nothing happens.
“I have to get to class,” I say, in a sudden haste to slip away from him and this weird friendship that’s trying to bloom between me and the man I’m destined to hate.
I cross the room on quick steps, and my hand is already on the doorknob when he speaks again.
“There’s an assembly notice on the first floor,” he says, halting me in my tracks.
“An assembly?”
He nods slowly, never once rushing to get up and get changed for this mystery assembly.
“They’ll want to discuss it.”
“Discuss what?” I ask, but the twisting feeling in my stomach already knows.
I just don’t want to admit it. I don’t want to think about it. I want to be normal.
Not a freak.
But the academy won’t let me. It’ll force me to face my past. I can’t just sweep my problems under a rug. The truth will come out.
I just hate the sickness that sinks through my stomach when he says it out loud.
“The ghosts.”
EMERGENCY ASSEMBLY IMMEDIATELY
Time: High Noon
Place: The Great Dining Hall
Agenda: TBA
My eyes scan the large parchment nailed to the first-floor double doors that lead into the dining hall. Roaring laughter and yelling spills out from the thin crack between the two enormous slabs of dark glossy wood.
“It says immediately, but then it says high noon . . .” I murmur.
“Shifters take their breakfast very seriously. Trying to address several hundred hungry dragon shifters is too dangerous,” Lila explains casually as she hugs her own mating journal against the smooth buttons of her white shirt. The urge to word-vomit everything that happened last night burns up my throat, but I force myself not to mention it.
What would I say? Your fated mate is a narcissistic shifter-hole who tried to murder me?
Doesn’t feel like the kind of small talk that’ll do good things for our friendship.
Her small hand presses to the door, and she pushes it open with ease, leading the way into the crowded room. A long buffet of scrambled eggs, blueberry muffins, thick bacon, steaming sausage, plump strawberries, sliced melons, and fluffy pancakes are splayed across a table at the back. Both of us turn immediately to the wafting smell of hot, fresh food.
“Fates, it smells good,” I whisper.
My first taste of real food. It’s a moment that’s long overdue.
“The chef at Death Rider Academy is the highest-paid position just under the headmaster himself,” Lila says while scooping large spoonfuls of strawberries onto a white plate. “He’s very vital to our learnings.”
My brows pull low over my stare, but I just nod along like that makes perfect sense.
With a scoop of fluffy eggs, a huge blueberry muffin, and two round sausage patties, I follow after her petite frame. She nearly gets swallowed up among the pushing men and the bumping shoulders all around us. She walks ahead as two bodies move at just the right time, their backs meeting just slightly. And then she’s gone.
“Li—” I step around the two men, but I’m deterred as a girl comes rushing by, spilling a bit of my egg to the rocky ground as she goes. I’m turned this way and that before my breath catches in my lungs, and I want to scream. Before the anger comes out, a warm hand presses to my back. The others step back from me and the air reaches my lungs. My clenched lashes open slowly, and dark stormy eyes look down on me. His nearness is closer than normal with his chest nearly touching mine but not. Arcane’s features are serious as he studies every inch of me with a careful sweeping assessment, searching my body like I might be more hurt in this cafeteria than I was in the bottom of a tomb just last night.
A beat passes before I realize I haven’t said a word.
“Hey,” I whisper up to him, remembering the accidental inappropriate fondling that occurred just an hour earlier. I clear my throat hard and take a breath.
He tilts his head to the side and gestures for me to come along with him. Safely, he weaves me through the crowd. The bodies part for him like magnets not daring to touch such a powerful forcefield. In under a minute, he’s pressing his palms to my shoulders, guiding me down into the last seat on the bench. Right next to his sister.
“Hey!” she says, echoing my quiet greeting on a cheery smile of her own. “Lost you back there!”
“Yeah,” I agree on that absent, quiet voice.
The warm muffin fills my hand, and I busy my messy thoughts with unwrapping the little white liner from around the soft bread. I swallow down the nerves that are still rapid-firing through my veins as I look up casually. Across from me, Arcane lowers himself down. Right. Next. To. Clawd.
I blink at him, and the pretty silver of his eyes is glowing, hinting at a deadly beast that’s not nearly as kind as the heartless man in front of me.
I shake my head hard at him, urging him not to speak a single word of the confession I gave him this morning.
Please. Please. Please don’t ruin the only real friendship I have!
With unnerving, half-deadened eyes, he turns to the man at his side, and I sit frozen with this stupidly large muffin weighting my hand. I think I might vomit up all this food before I even get a chance to taste it.
Clawd’s obnoxious smile is wide and unknowing when he meets his friend’s unhinged stare. Arcane’s fist clenches quietly around a dirty fork at the edge of Clawd’s plate. He holds his gaze. When his cruel lips part, and he’s about to make his move, I lunge forward. I defend myself the only way I can: I shove the big-ass muffin right in Arcane’s big-ass mouth.
Silver eyes that were moments ago filled with toxic rage crinkle at the corners.
And he smiles at me.
He’ll never know just how much I really wanted that muffin, too. It was so warm I could practically imagine it on my tongue. I sacrificed it. A small price to pay for his silence.
Everyone around us quiets. Their attention zeroes in on just the two of us. Arcane’s hand wraps around my wrist, and with far too much sensuality, he finishes the bite I thrusted at him. With his hand guiding mine, he pulls it away, his tongue slipping out to lap up the crumbs left on his bottom lip. He never once releases my gaze from his.
“The blueberries,” he tells me and everyone else who’s listening so intensely, “they’re delectable. The flavor bursts across your tongue,” he says like it’s only him and me. “Have some.” He pulls a hearty chunk of the bread from my own hand, and then he’s leaning over the table, offering to feed me the food right from his hand. I stare wide-eyed at the gesture he holds between us.
Seems like a trap. I dunno. Didn’t this guy just hunt me down through the very halls of this school twelve hours ago??? Why are the signals from my brain short-circuiting before the rest of my body can get the message?
It’s simple, really. It’s because: I really fucking want that muffin.
Ever so slowly, my lips part of their own accord. Through thick lashes, I hold his gaze, the heat of his stare warming the taste of the food as it carefully presses over my tongue. The very first bite of real food is a nirvana of an experience. My lashes flutter as a tingle of excitement races down my arms. Warmth floods my senses from the inside out. Cinnamon and sugar and berries melt together so perfectly. The burst of the flavor sprays across the back of my throat, and my eyes fly open to meet his watchful stare once more. The sudden urge to stand and seal that delectable flavor to his full lips thrusts through my mind, and I don’t know how something so innocently simple can feel this erotic, but it is.
It really, really is . . .
A mistake.
Two names cross one another over and over again on whispering words, thrown around the room like deadly knives.
Aelix?
Arcane?
Aelix is her mate, right? Is Arcane? Are they both? Who is this girl, and why does she have the leader of the Death Riders feeding her breakfast by hand like a pet?
I lower my head and stare at the slate-gray stone table for a long moment. Because, you know what, I’d also like to know those answers. I’m just as confused as you are! How dare you all parade around this screwed up death school like your life isn’t just as messed up as mine!
But instead of all of that . . . I say nothing.
“Do you have something to say?” Arcane’s voice rings out loud and clear. The girl next to Clawd whose hand hides her mouth as she whispers to a blonde boy next to her gains the captain’s glare.
Her hand drops immediately. Her lips seal together hard.
“Questions?” Arcane stands from the bench and looks around at his classmate’s stunned expressions. “Do we have questions?” His arms rise from his sides like he’s ready for an onslaught of inquisitions from the crowd.
But they’re silent. For once.
“Then eat your fucking breakfast!” he growls out, and just before he lowers himself back to his seat, he adds rather calmly, “I recommend the muffins. Highly recommend the muffins,” he corrects.
As he sits, his glinting gaze meets mine once more, and a small smile presses to my lips before I cover my face in my hands and release the breath I’d been holding.
“You gotta hide your nerves better,” he tells me, and I lower my palms from my face, sliding them back to rub my neck before releasing all the tension in my body. “This kingdom will eat you alive if you let it.” He takes another hefty bite of the bread, and only a fluffy edge is left of the snack.
“I know that’s right,” Clawd adds on. Then Arcane’s looking at him again like he just now remembered an important task he was about to knock off his to-do list.
“Morning, Protectors!” a voice booms over us. “I’ll be beginning today’s assembly a little early as it appears we’re all here.”
Hinges squeal just as heavy doors hit against charred rock. All heads turn to the late attendee. Aelix meets their stares one after the other, including his headmaster’s, as he makes his way toward me. Without warning, he lowers himself down, and I shimmy over into Lila’s personal space before my lap is overtaken.
I meet the sweetest slate-blue eyes. His smile, pure and good and filled with kindness, beams unfiltered at me.
And I try my damnedest not to think of his brother right now.
And I fail miserably.
“Morning,” he whispers on a sexy, gravelly voice.
“Morn-ng,” I mumble out, avoiding his attention as well as the smirking man across from me.
Do you know how many men I was accused of mating in my life before I stumbled into this delightfully messed-up realm of the living? None! Zero!
How did this happen to me?
“As some of you may have heard, there was an incident last night.”
“An incident?” Arcane speaks up with an overly dramatised face of horror and confusion striking his features. And it’s believable. His headmaster believes the leader of the Death Rider’s mocking expression!
It’s bullshit how easily he’s able to pretend when I can’t even meet Headmaster Reign’s searching attention.
“Yes. An incident.”
“Incidentally, what kind of incident are we dealing with here, Headmaster?” Arcane asks with big puppy doglike eyes filling with worry.
Fates, he’s a walking red flag of toxicity.
Has this man never heard of the phrase “fly under the radar”? My dude is lighting up this radar like it’s Christmas Yule and he’s here for the party.
“The very worst kind, Arcane. Souls that were kept under lock and key within the academy tombs have been released. We think it may be Raiders trying to set us back, but we’d like any and all information on the happenings of last night to be turned in to me immediately.” The headmaster’s piercing blue eyes scan his students one by one.
Clawd’s head tilts, and he locks eyes with me in a challenge I can read without trying: he’s going to snitch.
“Do I make myself clear?” the headmaster asks with a strict warning in his icy tone.
“Yes, Headmaster,” say the voices of my peers one after the other.
Except for Lila.
“Headmaster?” she asks, her small voice carried like a song through the crowd.
“Yes, Miss Deces.”
“What will happen to the spirits?” Her big ocean-blue eyes are filled with concern.
Not for us.
But for the dead, of course.
“They’ll do what spirits do, I’m afraid.” The headmaster shakes his head slowly, folding his hands before himself as he adds on a tired tone. “Haunt us.”