Still, he was the only other friend she had. Which was a depressing thought in and of itself; she really needed to get out more on campus. But she had to talk to someone.
You doing anything today? She fired off a text to him.
She expected him to be asleep until noon at least; he seemed the type to bargain for any sort of shut eye that he could or work off a hangover. But a few seconds later, her phone dinged. Not a thing. Got something in mind?
I just need to decompress a little.
Brunch?
She couldn’t stop herself from smiling. She quickly typed out a response in the affirmative and sent it off to him. He sent her back a location and told her to meet him there in an hour. She instantly felt better, the idea of getting out of her apartment, which was becoming a different type of prison all on itself. She threw on some clothes and makeup and felt a little lighter as she downed the rest of her coffee and then followed it up with mouthwash to get the bitter smell out of her mouth. She threw on a light jacket and stepped outside.
The day was still overcast as it had been yesterday. That proved to be a slight damper on her mood, but she headed along campus regardless. The place he’d texted her was just in town, called Fran’s. It was a big brunch spot for the hungover and drunkenly disenfranchised of the college campus. As she got closer, she could smell why. It wafted down the street with the smell of frying bacon and the sweetness of powdered sugar, likely going over pancakes and French toast. Her stomach rumbled. She hadn’t eaten anything since a snack at the festival yesterday before she’d been knocked unconscious and taken captive.
Right. That happened. It sounded like something warzone journalists talked about with such nonchalance, not something a twenty-five-year-old graduate student on her way to brunch thought about. If her mother knew, she’d be petrified. If her father found out, she’d never hear the end of how dangerous shifters were and how they all needed to be banned from schooling and public places.
She spotted Erik waiting outside for her. He looked a little worse for wear as well. She imagined he had to be if he was up this early on a Sunday. She knew why she was; she wondered what had him so sleepless.
“I am fucking starving,” he said. “I’m ready to eat the goddamn golden calf.”
She snorted as she stepped into the restaurant under his arm, which held the door open for her. The smells inside were even more tempting as coffee mixed in with the smell of grease and sugar.
“There’s something about brunch,” he said. “That makes all of the food taste better.”
“Are you high?”
“No. Just think about it. You can have lunch, you can have breakfast, you can do whatever. Throw alcohol in there and it’s perfect.”
She rolled her eyes. “Definitely high.”
He stuck his tongue out and held the chair out for her as they were shown to their seats by the hostess.
“Are you a breakfast brunch person or a lunch brunch person?” Erik asked, opening the menu.
“I’ve never been one for breakfast,” she said. “Usually just a Powerbar and some coffee, and I’m good until I hit the salad bar at lunch.”
“Okay, you can cut the whole fucking bird eating habits for a day,” Erik said. “Get the breakfast supreme.”
“Don’t tell me how to live my life.”
He gave her a fake look of narrowed eyes and it was her turn to stick her tongue out. It was already working. She already felt better, forgetting about the things that had happened the night before. Well, it wasn’t really forgetting, she knew that. She simply pushed it back, putting it on some shelf in her mind that was undusted, that she couldn’t touch. She’d leave it there as long as possible.
“Bloody Marys?” she asked.
“Not a mimosa girl?”
“I’m feeling like vodka is the way to go after the night I’ve had.”
“Then by all means.”
The waitress was some depressed-looking undergrad, ruining her Sunday morning and probably her Saturday night beforehand by working the opening brunch shift at a college diner. She didn’t smile, she wrote down their orders with objectivity, saying okay and sounds good. Alessia ended up getting the omelet with a side Caesar salad. Erik got his breakfast supreme with two sunny-side-up eggs, a short stack, a side of bacon and sausage, and two pieces of rye toast. He claimed he would eat it all and then some. She bet him five dollars that he would want to throw up before that happened.
Their drinks were placed in front of them and Alessia wasted no time in diving into hers, sucking down the salty mixture of thick tomato juice and the tart, sharpness of vodka. It was her least favorite alcohol, and she was rarely able to drink it by itself. When she needed it, she could stomach it in a mix of tomato juice and pepper or even in a Coca Cola. She’d managed a large sip of it and Erik looked at her with wide eyes.
“That bad of a night?” he asked. “There’s the hair of the dog but this is something else entirely.”
She sighed and moved the ice cubes in the glass around with her straw. She wanted to tell him. She wanted someone to talk to about these things, to run the whole situation by. Fuck, she needed some way to decompress. Wasn’t that a thing therapists said people needed after something traumatic happened? They needed an outlet, a place to put their grief or their anger. She wouldn’t exactly call her situation last night traumatic. It had been scary and she maybe, once or twice, feared for her life. But she came out of it unhurt and unharmed. Though she was convinced she was being watched.
Erik was still watching her and waiting. He wouldn’t stop looking at her until she said something, or made some sign that she was somehow okay. For all his obnoxious jokes in class and the ways he’d rubbed her in every wrong way before, she knew he was caring underneath, at least for his friends. He watched her with concern and the longer it took her to talk about it, the worse the theories in his head would get, the more dangerous his thoughts would become.
“I got caught up in the stuff yesterday,” she said. “The protest.”
“On which side?”
“I got a little bit knocked around while people took off running.” He looked at her with furrowed brows, his eyes moving over her body and she knew that he was looking for injuries on her body, checking for signs of unwell. She shook her. “I’m okay. Nothing physically happened to me except I’m a little bit sore and I’m exhausted.”
“Are you sure?” he said. “You’d tell me, right?”
“Yes,” she said, feeling guilty suddenly about all the things she wasn’t telling him. She tried not to cringe too much and give away her mind. “What were your thoughts on all that?”
He leaned back, clearly not convinced, but he wouldn’t push it. That was a first for him, he always seemed like the type to shove and shove until he got the information he wanted. “I think it was nonviolent, which is good; but it was threatening, which isn’t. We need to separate shifter rights from the fanatics and what they want. People won’t see the difference. It’s like how men get all bent out of shape over feminism because they think it’s some kind of man-hating philosophy after a few women took it the wrong way and got loud about it. Just like feminism, this movement is about equality; but after things like yesterday, people will see it as being about someone, thinking they’re better than someone else.”
She hated how articulate he could sound. He was supposed to be the annoying boy in her seminar, not the one she went to brunch with and had deep conversations about idealism and the state of the nation. Worse, she wasn’t supposed to agree with him. But he had a good point. She wondered if he’d been thinking about these things too, since the protest.
“Where were you yesterday?” she asked, sipping her drink some more.
“At home,” he said. “I knew it would be a total shit show and I was right.”
“Okay, Mom.”
He glared at her as their food arrived and Alessia took greedily to keeping the conversation at a minimum, while she worked through her food, tak
ing bites and alternating with sips of what was left of her drink to keep him from asking more questions. She occasionally caught him staring at her, asking silent questions with his eyes. She wanted to tell him, but she also felt a loyalty to Dr. Tekkin to not. And this wasn’t rooted in fear. She knew they would come after her if she spilled too much information to anyone. She also understood she was probably being watched and next time she wouldn’t be so lucky. But where Dr. Tekkin was concerned, she felt a true sense of loyalty.
Even before Veronica had set her free, he’d tried to protect her. Despite his attitude in class and all the awful things he’d said to her and the ways he’d been incredibly rude, he still tried to keep her safe, keep her protected. She owed him back for that by not breaking his trust, by not putting him in danger as well. And she wasn’t entirely sure that she could trust Erik. She trusted him with her, she knew at this point that he was her friend, for better or for worse. But she didn’t trust him not to go blabbing himself, to tell the wrong people and then cost Dr. Tekkin everything.
So, she ate her food and drank her drink, but didn’t say a word to him the rest of the time about it, finding a way to change the subject to their work in the seminar instead. He took to it fine, though she could tell from the way his eyes shifted over her that he knew what she was doing, what she was trying to hide. She ignored it, shoved her own nervousness away, and pretended to be the most carefree girl in the world after some brunch and some good drinks.
He insisted on walking her back to her apartment and she realized this might be his way of finding out where she lived. She considered lying, saying she had to go to the grocery store or something. It felt a little personal, to have him walk her to the door. She didn’t want that with Erik. He was handsome and they had matching thoughts on the world, but she didn’t want him like that. It was entirely possible he didn’t want her either and she was making a bigger deal out of it than there needed to be. But she was a woman and it always did better to err on the side of caution when it came to men. So, she tried to keep it casual, talking only about class or the food, staying away from any chance he might use to ask to come up, or what other plans she had today, to see if she wanted to go out again.
“See you this week!” she called without preamble, walking right into the apartment building without giving him a shot at the awkward pause that almost always led to an attempted kiss.
He gave a wave and if he was disappointed about any of it, it didn’t show.
Chapter 9
That first day back in Dr. Tekkin’s class, she could practically feel the sweat creeping down her spine in tiny little beads. She wanted to curl up into a ball or call in sick, but if she avoided him, then he’d know. He wasn’t stupid. It would be a little too coincidental for her to just find herself sick a few days after Dr. Tekkin had taken her prisoner for a political faction.
She did, at least, give herself the benefit of being nearly late to class, making sure she got into the room only after every single student was already seated. There was a room full of witnesses, nothing to be done about that. She felt a little better with so many other bodies there, so many other eyes. But, it very quickly made her feel alone, and a little bit trapped. They had no idea what was going on, what she’d gone through, what strange crap she and their professor now shared. It was like she and Dr. Tekkin had a secret no one else in the room knew. They were bounded together by that secret, whether they liked it or not. If one of them decided, the other would be affected. They shared a symbiotic relationship that wouldn’t be easy to wiggle out of anytime soon.
Yep. She should have called in sick.
He wasn’t looking at her, which Alessia felt made things a little too obvious. Not that anyone else in the class probably paid attention at all; it certainly made her realize the gravity of the situation, the fact that it was enough to still bother him. He was always such a stoic man and now he seemed completely on edge around her. It was like she was something dangerous and he looked to avoid her in all ways that he possibly could. On the one hand, it made things easy; she didn’t have to worry about avoiding him when he avoided her first. On the other hand, it made the situation that much darker, murkier, and ever present.
There was no shoving it all behind her when his avoiding eyes made it obvious to her at every turn. Her plan at the end of class was to bolt completely out of the room and forget this class and this professor even existed until the next lecture that week, but that didn’t happen when Dr. Tekkin called her to stay after class a moment. Fuck. She definitely wished she had called in sick. She swallowed, heavily, and packed her bag anyway, getting ready to make a quick break if she needed to.
When the last student left the lecture hall, Dr. Tekkin walked down the aisle and shut the door, turning around to face her. His face wasn’t dangerous, he didn’t look ready to bounce or yell gotcha as his comrades repelled from the ceiling and drugged her with chloroform to prep her for being dumped in some remote woods of the world. Instead, he walked over to her calmly, picked a chair across the aisle from her, and leaned back into it, his arms coming to fold over his chest. He let out a sigh.
“How are you?”
It wasn’t the words she expected to hear come out of his mouth, but there they were, hanging in the air between them. They sounded soft. They hadn’t been said in his normally sharp, hard voice he used for lectures. It had been a true request, a real desire to know exactly how she was. He sat there, waiting for his answer; he wouldn’t let her leave until he had it. He stared expectantly, but not dangerously.
“As good as can be,” she said.
He frowned. “I know it’s a shot in the dark, but I do hope you weren’t caused any undo harm by what happened.”
“Harm? No. A little bit of emotional upheaval and some missed sleep? Absolutely.” It was her turn to cross her arms. She cocked her hip out to one side on reflex. If he asked, then she would tell him. She wouldn’t sugarcoat it, so he could feel better about himself or feel absolved of what happened; he asked and she answered and his responsibility to the situation was over. “I’d still like an explanation of what the hell happened that day.”
“I think it was fairly obvious.”
She took a step forward. Her blood boiled. Everything she’d repressed over the past few days moved towards the surface like plate tectonics shifting the hot magma of a volcano up and up and up. She was ready to blow and all she could do was try to make it as calm and steady as possible.
“You’re part of a terrorist organization.”
“We’re not terrorists.”
“Could have fooled me. Plenty of people seemed pretty terrified. Myself included, by the way.”
“We’re a political activism group.”
“Is that what they’re calling it these days?”
He frowned now, just on the verge of outright glaring. His hands dropped from that protective cage over his chest and went to grip onto the seat he leaned on, tightly. Alessia wondered if she imagined the groan she thought she heard as caused distress to the poor plastic chair. She knew it was in the anatomy of a shifter to have some slightly unnatural strength. It wasn’t Superman levels or anything, but it was enough to be worrisome for anyone who got a little too close to a shifter on the wrong side of a temper tantrum.
“There are plenty of things in the world you don’t get, little girl.”
“Oh, please. I’m beginning to think you dye the grey hairs in your beard. You’re thirty-three, professor. Hardly world wary.”
“A lot has happened to me in thirty-three years.”
“And you have no idea what’s happened to me in twenty-five. Time is irrelevant where experience is concerned. I know what a group that uses scare tactics and violence looks like. You can justify it all you want, but you didn’t help your cause on Saturday by marching around, dressed in black, and wearing animal masks.”
“What would you have us do then?”
He stepped closer to her. She wouldn’t back down. She met hi
s charge forward halfway, placing only a few inches between them. She could feel the heat coming from his body, the fluid rumble as the air around him shifted, moving faster from the effort. It was the unmistakable sign of a dragon shifter. She didn’t swallow, she didn’t blink. She wouldn’t show him an ounce of fear. That’s what he and his friends wanted all along, people to be afraid of them. She wasn’t buying into the game, no matter how afraid she really was.
“Protest. Sign petitions, vote,” she said, very nearly stamping her foot in the process.
He laughed. “Because that’s worked so well for us. This is civil disobedience—”
“Civil disobedience is a lunch-counter sit in or refusing to give your seat up on a bus. It’s not scaring the crap out of a bunch of college kids and kidnapping your TA when she gets too close to your little mosh pit.”
She could feel the heat prickling her skin now, making the light hair of her arm stand on edge. She wouldn’t back down. He made her scared once, but she wouldn’t tolerate it from him again. She was human, with below-average athletic skills, but she had a feeling her mind was a little sharper than Dr. Tekkin’s. It was always easy to outsmart those who thought they were the smartest in the room.
“I won’t tell anyone what happened,” she said. “I know that’s what you want to hear and what would be the point of me getting you fired, except for petty revenge? You did basically tell me I had no place in this field and refused to give me an active role in lectures. But I won’t get back at you this way because—as much as it pains me to admit it—I think you can do some real good with your lectures and your position here. Just don’t blow it trying to scare the general population into believing you’re not the bad guy.”
Their faces were inches away from each other. It wasn’t so much that the air around him was heating with his fury that their noses could touch if they turned a certain way, but their breaths were so mingled, it was hard to tell whose was whose. She could see the smoldering in his dark eyes, like long-forged black lava rocks coming back to life under some heat. She stared into them, getting lost in the way they somehow managed to heat up. She wondered how hot his skin might feel to the touch.
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