Chapter 29
SADIE
Ididn’t talk much on the return journey, but Leander filled every bit of silence, chattering away as he told me about his parents, his current workout regime, the book he’d finished reading that morning, the pumpkin cake he attempted to make—it almost burned the cottage down—the mug he dropped this morning while making his coffee, and how devastated he was to lose his favourite mug.
He had no filter, I learned, as we walked through the tight winding pathways of the forest back to the academy.
I was a veritable stranger to him, but Leander told me his entire life story as we walked, as bubbly and ebullient as a golden retriever puppy.
My fear began to break apart, even if I knew the thoughts would return the moment I was alone.
It was quite nice not to have to think, to have no pressure on replying because Leander would speak, whether I replied or not.
“Look at this,” he said with a grin, and jumped up to catch the nearest branch, doing a pull-up with no effort whatsoever
“How are you doing that so easily,” I demanded. “You’re just showing off now.”
“Showing off for my beautiful mate? Why yes, I am.”
I waved my hand in dismissal, but my eyes never stayed from the place where his shirt rode up as he did three more pullups, and then jumped down.
“I can teach you,” he offered, green eyes bright.
“Teach me how to torture myself via tree? No thank you.”
“Hey, come on,” he replied, crossing the distance between us to settle his hands on my waist as if it was the most natural thing. “Don’t put yourself down. You must be strong if you’re studying in that hellhouse up there.”
“I only just got there, remember? No muscles yet.” To demonstrate, I struck a bodybuilder pose, my noodle arm less than impressive. “I’d like to be strong enough to defend myself, but I don’t want vanity muscles. Or worse, muscles that only exist so I can hurt people.”
He looked at me strangely then, his thumbs grazing my hips. “Most slayers I’ve met live for that sort of thing. Hurting people, killing wolves.”
I sighed, glancing in the direction of the academy on the hill.
“I’m not sure they have much choice. From the minute we’re brought to that place against our will, we’re told that if we don’t fight and kill, we’ll be the ones killed.
Given a choice, I doubt most people would want to hurt a wolf.
But if they don’t, they’ll be executed or left for dead. ”
Leander’s eyes were distant when I looked up at him. “They’re as bad as some of the brutal wolf packs. There’s no kindness in those places, no empathy or care. If you’re not the biggest, strongest, or fastest, then you’re prey.”
A knot tightened my chest. What a lovely way to sum up my situation. “I’m insane for going back there, aren’t I?” I asked.
“I wish you wouldn’t,” he murmured, angling himself so there was only an inch between us. “We can’t keep you safe up there. What if you get caught? We wouldn’t even know you were in trouble.”
“I can handle myself,” I replied, the words muscle memory more than anything. Against trained vampires, I didn’t stand a chance.
Doubt hit me from every angle. I could find reasons to stay and reasons to run, and I didn’t know which was the right choice. I didn’t know what to do.
Leander’s hands flexed on my hips. “What would it take for you to stay here with us, and never go back to that place?”
“I don’t know,” I admitted.
I wish I did know, because there was an undeniable feeling in my gut that I should stay away from Lunova Academy. As long as I went back, it would find new and more excruciating ways to torture me, like a dirtbag ex.
“If this is about Lainsz—”
“It isn’t,” I interrupted, my shoulders dropping.
A weight sat on my chest, the doubt a physical presence.
I struggled to put it into words, to find the right way to describe the feeling squeezing my chest. “I lost my home, and the last family member I had sold me. I can’t lose myself either.
I can’t risk it. I’m all I have left. And if I join your pack, it means leaving a part of me behind. ”
“The academy is your final tether to your old life,” he realised, sadness softening his voice.
The moment he said it out loud, the words put in that exact order, it was like a question finally answered. That was what kept me here. If I stayed at the academy, maybe I could find my way back home.
I swallowed. “Do you think it’s stupid?”
“No.” Leander pulled me across the last inch of distance until I was in his arms, and a great breath left his chest. The scent of black coffee smothered every other smell, wrapping me in safety.
“No, I don’t think it’s stupid. I think you’ve been taken away from everything you know, and it’s only natural to hold onto the parts that remain.
But the academy isn’t your home, Starlight.
It isn't safe for you, and those people aren’t your friends.
They’ll kill you, even if you’re a slayer. ”
“I know,” I admitted in a small voice. Even my friends, if they found out I was a wolf. I couldn’t trust them to spare me. Not when it would put them at risk of losing their life too.
What was it Reed said that first morning? Sympathy for a wolf was punishable by death. If Elix or Paige helped me, or merely kept my secret, they’d be put to death just like me.
“I know,” I repeated, allowing him to hold me.
“But you won’t stay?”
If I stayed, I’d lose the last human part of me. If I stayed, I’d be fully embracing the wolf part, and what would be left of my life before? Who would I be without that?
“I won’t give up myself,” I said after a pause. “I won’t change who I am, and I won’t leave any part of me behind.
“Sadie,” he said, watching me with tormented eyes. “No one is asking you to change. Not me or Verne or Lainsz. We want you as you are.”
Familiar, meaningless words. And that was the problem, wasn’t it?
That was why I resisted this pack, this bond, even though the bond pulled me back to the cottage and told me I belonged there, as Verne said I belonged there.
At the academy, they didn’t care who I was as long as I trained and killed for them.
It didn’t matter that I was scared, or insecure, or had the self-worth of a homeless raccoon showering in a muddy puddle. As long as I could wield a weapon, as long as I could throw a punch, I’d be accepted.
But a pack, a bond that I still didn’t understand the depths of, and men who seemed to want me for me, not what I could do for them…
I didn’t understand it. Or maybe I didn’t want to understand it, because if they got close and saw all of me, all the parts I was afraid to show anyone else, that terrified me more than any battle to the death.
“You’ve made up your mind then,” Leander said, reading it in my eyes.
I nodded, couldn’t even speak the words. A coward to the end.
“I’ll come back,” I promised. When I didn’t have my gran’s words echoing around my head, when I didn’t have Derek's poison seeping into my mind.
“I know you will.” Leander forced a crooked smile. “Were your mates, you can’t resist us for too long. You—“
He went deadly still for a second, and then whipped around, a growl pouring up his throat far deeper than anything I’d heard before.
There was a level of threat and danger here that I hadn’t heard even from Verne. A shiver shot down my spine and then all the way back up to the base of my neck, and my wolf reacted with a growl of her own. Someone had the nerve to threaten her mate, and she was furious.
This was what scared me, how quickly these instincts could override my thoughts. How easily the wolf could silence the woman.
Because I wasn’t Sadie right now. I was a wild animal whose mate had been threatened, and I was beginning to understand what that word meant.
Mate. Not just mating in the base since, but a partnership as Verne said.
Because as Leander sprung towards the trees to our right, a never-ending threat rumbling up his throat, I launched after him, fully prepared to rip out the spine of anyone who dared to hurt him.
The illusion of me continuing to live an ordinary, human life was ripped apart with wolf claws as I raced deeper into the trees, eyes fixed on Leander’s back. He didn’t tell me to stay behind him, didn't warn me to hide in a tree while he took care of the problem.
When I caught up to him, his head whipped towards me, nostrils flaring to devour the hint of my scent on the air. It was a grin, not a scowl, that crossed his face, wild and joyous, as if this was a hunt and he was proud to share it with his mate.
For some reason, that scared me, too, because I wanted it so badly. Not a shitty one-sided relationship like I’d had in the past, but a real partnership. I wanted it more than I cared to admit.
Noise reached my ears as we raced faster, my body pushed to limits I hadn’t realised it possessed. The speed was unreal, so fast it plucked tears from my eyes, strands of hair from my head, and strangest of all: a laugh from my chest.
Leander echoed my laugh, still grinning from ear to ear, and I was sure we looked like a pair of psychopaths as we ran through the forest, chasing whatever Leander had sighted.
A small pretty animal I thought, or maybe a deer, until the rustling of leaves and ferns resolved into footsteps pounding the dirt, and rapid, panicked breathing. It was a person.
A wolf who lived in the forest? Or someone from the academy? We were hunting a person, and that realisation only made my wolf giddier.
I got my answer only minutes later, when Leander scaled a tree faster than lightning. He leapt from the tallest branches, falling so quickly that the woman running down the rugged path stood no chance of escape.
I recognised those red brown curls, so wild that when she was knocked to the ground they fanned across the dirt.
And when she struggled to free herself, moonlight slanted across her face.
A sweet face that you’d never expect from someone with such an ugly personality.
A button nose, big eyes, round cheeks, and fucking freckles.
I skidded to a halt, another snarl pouring up my throat, but this time bringing words with it.
And something like relief drowned me when those words came from me, not the wolf.
So maybe she hadn’t completely erased human Sadie after all, because my personality shone through like a falling star, as I spat, “Hello, Oona. Here to throw me off another cliff?”