by May Dawson
His steely fingers around my bicep left me with the most confused feelings. Did I like having Lex touch me? Did I want to punch him in the face? Could both feelings exist simultaneously?
“You’re a liar, aren’t you?” I whispered, glancing up at his face as he pulled me away from the door, as if he was looking for some privacy.
“You are too, aren’t you?” he muttered back. He drew me around the side of the brick building, then finally let go.
I glowered at him as I rubbed my arm. “You didn’t need to touch me.”
“Oh?” he said, and his gaze lingered on my lips for just a second, before they jerked up to my eyes. Then he said, as if he’d forgotten himself, “I’m sorry. You’re right. You’re not a student here yet.”
“What does that mean?”
“We’re wolves. We fight,” he said, but he tucked his hands into his pockets like he wasn’t thinking about fighting. “Freshmen lose. That’s kind of the nature of being a know-nothing freshman.”
“You’re only nice until we get here, huh?” I asked, feeling as if I’d gotten a quick glimpse into the future with that bruising grip on my arm.
“We’re only nice when you earn it,” he said, and for some reason, as close together as we were, I couldn’t help noticing his lips the way it seemed he had noticed mine. “So, where were you? Really?”
“I told you.”
He shook his head.
“I’d like my actual guide back, please.” I just wanted to nettle him. I wasn’t sure I wanted to leave Lex, even if he was kind of an asshole.
“Not a chance.” He flashed me a tight smile. “I can tell you’re trouble, Northsea.”
“Takes one to know one.” He looked like he was trouble for me, anyway.
He flipped through his leather folio and pulled out a crisp sheet of paper, which he presented to me with a flourish. “You and your sister disappeared before I could give you this. Your itinerary for the day. Which you should follow.”
“Of course.”
“And I’ll be right here with you,” he said, and this time, when he took my elbow his fingers were gentle. He tugged me with him toward the entrance, and then his hand fell away. “Making sure you don’t get lost.”
“Lucky me.”
Chapter Five
Lex lead me to a table where a few students were already sitting. As I followed his broad shoulders across the crowded lunchroom, turning sideways to scoot down the long rows of tables, I asked him, “Are you sure you want to introduce me to your friends?”
He snorted. “I’m not sure I want you to be introduced to them. I’m trying to give the academy a good reputation here.”
“A good reputation? It might help if you were nicer to me.”
He stopped, half-turning, so quickly that I almost walked my tray into his back. His lips quirked up, just a little.
“If you come here in the fall, you’ll be a first-year and I’ll be a fourth. I’ll be in the cadre. Believe me… this is me being nice.”
I stared up at him, debating what to say.
“Maybe you shouldn’t come here,” he murmured, half to himself. The words would have been inaudible in the murmur of voices to anyone who wasn’t standing as close to him as I was.
“Why’s that?” I demanded.
He shook his head instead of answering, as he headed to a table already occupied by a handful of guys. As he set his tray down, he said, “Try not to scare her off, gentlemen. Best behavior.”
“You don’t think that’s scary right there, Lex?” The guy directly across from me asked. His eyes flickered to me and then away.
“Piper, meet Jensen McCauley.”
McCauley like the Dean. “Any relation to…”
Jensen groaned. “Unfortunately.”
“Where’s your brother?” Lex asked him, glancing over his shoulder.
“Pop’s got him running around doing security stuff with all these randoms on campus.” Jensen made a lazy gesture with one long-fingered hand.
Lex gave him a look, as if he didn’t like Jensen much, and then pointed to the other guys at the table. “Piper, meet Rafe. He’ll be cadre next year too. We’ll be helping to train you guys as well as finishing up our studies.”
A ridiculously tall-dark-and-handsome guy at the end of the table raised his hand in a quick wave. While he was gorgeous, he had a bleak expression that looked like he didn’t know how to smile.
“Beckett, Faro, meet Piper Northsea.” Lex nodded to the other two guys. “They’re first-years now like Jensen.”
“Nice to meet you, Piper.” Faro rose to his feet, holding out his hand to shake like a gentleman. “My first name is Jack.”
Beckett dropped his shaggy blond head in his hands in response. I couldn’t help looking at him at the same time as I shook Faro’s hand.
“Does anyone else have first names?” I ask lightly, wondering what was wrong with Beckett. As Beckett straightened up from the table, there was a smirk across his face.
“I think the first-years were just leaving,” Rafe said, a hard edge in his voice.
“We only tolerate them for Will’s sake,” Lex explained.
“Will?”
“My brother,” Jensen explained.
“Does everyone make that big a deal out of the whole first-year thing?” I asked.
“Yes,” Lex said.
“Embarrassing, isn’t it?” Jensen leaned back. Even on the bench, he managed to look relaxed, as if he was slouching. He tilted his head, studying me. He’d seemed to avoid my gaze, but now, for the first time, his glittering eyes met mine evenly. They were eerily beautiful eyes, not quite human, yellow and dangerous. With his dark curls wild around his chiseled face, he looked like he carried more of his wolf with him—even as a human—than any other boy I’d ever met.
I shrugged as I took my seat. “The packs have strange ways.”
“Yeah,” Jensen muttered. “Especially your pack.”
Most of the packs forbade any magic except the most simple defensive counter-spells. They had good reason for hating magic. But we took a different perspective.
“I’m sorry I’ve never heard of your pack,” I said sweetly. Maybe they would remember that it was my pack who had hunted down the last of the Grim Witches, a coven that had murdered children throughout the Northeast. I couldn’t wait to join them.
“Then you must not have been paying attention,” Faro said blandly.
Jensen shrugged. “Princesses have better things to do, after all.”
He said that like he was mocking me.
“Like what?” I asked sharply.
“Like making cubs,” he said shortly. When his eyes locked with mine, I couldn’t tear my gaze away. He was still staring into my eyes from across the table as he asked, “Is she staying here to watch a fight, Lex?”
“No,” Lex said, and the same note of steel was in his voice as Rafe had a minute before.
“When is it?” I asked. “Maybe I can fit it into my schedule.”
Jensen’s lips turned up at the edges.
“It’s not that exciting,” Lex said. “It’s just a training exercise. Patrols versus patrols.”
“It really helps your patrol if you can hold your own,” Jensen said. “People tend to take it personally if you can’t watch their back in a fight. Especially when we’re all heading out to face down the covens one day.”
“McCauley,” Lex said in a warning tone.
“I can’t imagine having a girl in your patrol.” Jensen’s lips curled up. “Sorry. Not even a girl. A princess.”
His dismissive words made my heart hammer in my chest. I wanted in on one of those fights. I wanted the chance to show him just how dangerous I was. Up close and personally.
“You might be surprised by what a girl can do.” I winked at Jensen. I didn’t want him to see how angry his words made me.
“Oh, I’d love to see what a girl like you can do,” Jensen said, his voice dropping low. He winked back at me, bu
t it meant something else entirely. “But not in the ring.”
I stared at his smirking face. Would I get kicked out of here if I reached over and showed him how a girl like me could slap him out of his seat?
“And you’re done.” Lex was on his feet, moving with fluid grace, and he gestured Jensen up. “I don’t care who’s son you are, or if you’re my best friend’s stupid kid brother. On your way.”
“I’m just being honest with her.” Jensen never even looked Lex’s way. Now that his eyes had met mine, he couldn’t seem to tear those strange, golden-yellow eyes away from mine. “No one wants her. Someone should tell her. Someone should tell her what’ll happen if she comes here.”
“The fuck did you just say?” Lex’s voice came out low and hard.
Jensen’s gaze flickered to his face, and his eyes widened.
But before he could say anything else, Lex bounded over the table, clearing it with sudden, violent grace. His foot caught a tray and it flew across the table, crashing to the floor. Jensen threw himself backward, off the bench. Lex barely missed slamming into him, and he caught himself with his hand on the wooden tabletop, managing to land on his feet.
Jensen slammed into the floor and rolled to his feet in one quick movement. He held out a hand toward Lex. “Seriously? The girl’s not worth fighting over.”
“I’m not fighting over the girl,” Lex said. “I’m going to kick your ass because of what you’re trying to turn my academy into.”
“You going to fight the dean too?” Jensen shot back.
Lex shrugged.
For a few seconds, they stared at each other. Lex’s hands were in fists, his posture aggressive, like he wanted to fight Jensen now and he couldn’t make himself ramp back down. Jensen looked ready, but his hands dangled at his sides now. He wasn’t provoking Lex.
The doors at the back of the cafeteria opened. The dean’s secretary strode in. Lex crossed his arms over his chest, his posture stiffening.
“I’ve got an announcement to make,” the secretary said, his voice projecting clearly through the cafeteria. “As of today, shifting on school premises is forbidden outside of instructor direction.”
A low murmur swept through the room, and then immediately abated as the secretary clapped his hands and went on.
I frowned. This must be the dean trying to prevent a panic. But it didn’t change the fact that there was something to panic about. If I could just slip out of here and get to the walls, I might be able to help prevent a massacre.
I was lost in thought, and then slowly I realized that the secretary was still talking…
…and that Lex was staring at me. His eyebrows were arched like he knew I was up to something.
I flashed him a quick smile. “My hero.” I mouthed. Let him think I was a silly, airheaded girl. It was better than having him try to stop me.
“You heard me,” he whispered back. “It wasn’t about you.”
“I heard you,” I whispered. “I don’t believe you.”
He stared at me in surprise. “You cocky little—”
The secretary finished and left the room, and the room exploded into conversation.
I sat down again, reaching under the table to swipe my cloth napkin from the floor where it had fallen. I draped it in my lap and finally began to eat my lunch.
One of the guys nearby picked up his fallen tray, sighed, and carried it back toward the kitchen, stepping over the scattered remnants of his lunch. Lex didn’t bother to apologize as he took his seat across from me.
Jensen hesitated. Lex raised his hand and waved him off, a quick, dismissive gesture, and Jensen rolled his eyes but left. I watched his big shoulders in his tailored school jacket as he wound his way through the crowd, then slammed open the lunch room door and went out.
“I guess he’s going to order a pizza,” I joked.
“I guess he’s going to miss a meal,” Lex said calmly. “First-years aren’t allowed to keep food in their rooms.”
“That seems barbaric.” The thought of never having another midnight snack didn’t sit well with me. “I’m sure he’ll like me even more now. What’s his problem?”
“It’s a long list.” Lex chewed robotically. He seemed cool and calm, the complete opposite of his flare of temper a minute before, but the coolness struck me as false. On the inside, I had a feeling he was still dying for a fight.
I cocked my head to one side as I studied him. I wanted to know what would happen if I came here, what Jensen had hinted at.
Should I push Lex for answers, even though he wanted to make the academy look good?
Or should I go find my new enemy and get the low-down from him?
Either way, first I needed to make sure the academy was protected.
Lex swallowed, and then his gaze fixed on me. “What are you thinking about, Northsea?”
“Nothing.”
There was a spark in his eyes when he said, “Definitely a liar. You don’t seem like you ever have a moment when you aren’t scheming.”
Well, he wasn’t wrong.
Even when he was being mean, I had the strangest sense of being seen when I was with him. Not as someone’s little sister, the way I was with Piper and her pack. The dearly beloved little sister, who could do no wrong.
Here, I would be someone else, someone who could make mistakes and suffer for them, fight my own battles, find my own way.
“Tell me a story,” I said. “Tell me about what it’s like being here.”
“Oh, Lex has stories,” a guy said as he joined us, carrying his tray. The grin he flashed Lex was friendly. “He wasn’t always an uptight hard-ass.”
“Watch it,” Lex said, but without rancor.
“Tell her about the time you were on restriction—”
“Which time?”
As Lex and his friends bantered, Lex’s eyes sparkled. The anger he was carrying a few minutes ago seemed to slip away. I’d been so busy watching him that I missed what he said before the table erupted in laughter.
Lex was fun, when he wanted to be. The sense of warmth at the table washed over me, even if it was the warmth of friendships someplace that I didn’t belong. Yet.
Then he turned to me, leaning across the table. “How’s your lunch, Maddie Mae?”
I didn’t know why he used my middle name, but it seemed to roll off his tongue like we already knew each other.
“It’s tolerable,” I said.
“Yeah,” he nodded. “They really break out the good stuff for the prospective students. We don’t usually make it all the way to tolerable.”
His eyes crinkled at the corner as he raised his glass. I quickly picked up my own glass to bump into his with a clink.
“Well, it’s not much, but welcome to the academy, Northsea.”
His smile, his attention, felt like a warm light.
I’d never felt anything like it before.
Chapter Six
After lunch, students headed back to class and the prospective students were supposed to meet the dean in the old church.
“Stay out of trouble,” Lex told me.
“Of course,” I said.
“Of course?” His tone was mock-shocked. “Call me a skeptic, Maddie Northsea, but I don’t think I can take it for granted that you’ll stay out of trouble.”
“And you should stay out of fights.”
He looked as if he was going to say something. Then he just winked at me, as if asking him not to fight was as hopeless as asking me to stay out of trouble.
“See you this fall,” I said, waving at him over my shoulder as I turned to follow the other prospective students.
He hesitated as if he wanted to say something, but instead he raised his hand to wave goodbye.
I’d fallen behind the others, so I ran across the path and up the stone steps to the church. I slowed as we went in the first set of doors, behind the other students, glancing back to find Lex still watching me from across the green lawn. His arms were folded across his
chest and his curls were teased by the steady breeze over his chiseled features. Creep. Watching me like that. My lips still curled up in a ridiculous smile.
I let the door slam shut behind me. I was in the vestibule outside the sanctuary, and the last student in front of me was passing through the second set of doors. With no time to hesitate, I slipped to the right, down the narrow hallway marked with a sign that said Balcony. I’d be trapped if I went in the sanctuary with the dean.
Worst case scenario, I could hide out here for a few minutes and then slip out the front door again. If I got caught, I’d tell them I got lost and do the bubbly-blond thing. Blond hair and a bright smile cover a lot of mischief, in my experience.
Lex would know the truth, but I planned to avoid him. For some reason, I couldn’t stop thinking about that devilish grin or my mixed feelings when he grabbed my arm. He was a distraction. That was another reason to avoid him.
Luckily, when I reached the end of the hallway and the stairs to the balcony, a second door stood open to narrow stairs on my left leading down. I headed downstairs, crossed the church’s musty-smelling basement, and found another set of stairs back up. Ten-year-old me had explored every foot of this place, even though I’d occasionally freaked out and run off into the sunshine, convinced a monster or ghost was on my heels. I was glad for it now.
A minute later, I emerged into the sunshine outside the back door of the church. Beyond the neat green lawn, deep, tangled woods surround the school. The trees pressed in as if the forest longed to swallow up the tidy school grounds and turn the lawn wild again.
I ran for the forest.
If I headed far enough in any one direction, I’d run into the warded wall that was supposed to keep out witches and their spells. But clearly, that hasn’t worked so far today.
I just needed to avoid the patrols that the dean has sent out, and my sister. I’d bet anything that she was out here somewhere, keeping an eye on things as she waited for her pack.
For now, I ran as fast as I could—in human form—through the forest. The silver ballet flats I’d worn to look nice with my navy dress slipped in the loose, damp leaves that covered the slick forest floor. The sun filtered in patches through the tangled branches above. It was much cooler here in the shade of the forest than it was on campus, and I shivered.
