by Jody Morse
“Mmhmm. My roommates are gone, too, so it was just going to be the two of us.” I was mostly teasing him. I knew that I wouldn’t have actually done anything.
Actually, that was a lie. Based on the kiss in the water, I wasn’t sure that I would have been able to control myself. I wanted Kaden, and I wanted him bad.
Why were paranormal beings just so damn irresistible?
“Damnit. Connor would choose tonight, of all nights, to get into trouble,” Kaden said with a sigh.
I laughed. “I really do hope that all turns out okay, by the way.”
“Thanks,” he replied as we headed up the stairwell that led to my dorm room. “I hope so, too.”
Once we approached my dorm room, Kaden lingered at the doorway for a long moment.
“I had an amazing night with you, Juliana.”
“And I with you,” I murmured.
His lips came down on mine then. The world felt like it was spinning.
When he finally pulled away, I was more than disappointed that he had to go now. I was so addicted to him, to this feeling he gave me. I wanted him to just stay here forever.
His steel blue eyes locked on mine, making my heart skip a beat. “Goodnight, Juliana.”
“Goodnight, Kaden.”
I watched as he turned away from me, staring at his back as he left.
Once he was gone, I breathed in deeply. Wow. What an amazing night.
I pulled my key out of my evening bag and then fumbled with the door.
When I stepped into the room, I turned the light on and then my stomach dropped.
My dresser drawers were open, and my belongings had been spilled onto the floor. My clothes, my school books, everything was all over. Someone had flipped my mattress onto the floor.
This room—or my side of it, anyway—had been completely turned upside down.
What had they been looking for?
Chapter 31
I didn’t want to ruin Ambur and Draia’s nights by texting them. Not on Halloween. I knew they had both been looking forward to this.
I just wasn’t sure what to do. The last thing I wanted was to be in this room by myself.
At that moment, I realized that Max wasn’t in the room. Since it was only my things the person had gone after, I doubted that anyone would have done anything to Draia’s familiar. But I headed for the bathroom.
The door was closed. Carefully, nervously, I opened it.
I was relieved when I saw the black cat staring back at me.
“Good. You’re back. I’ve been locked in here all night.”
“You mean, whoever broke into our room locked you in here?” I asked him.
The cat nodded. “Yes.”
“Did you see who did this?”
“No. Whoever it was, they were wearing a black mask. They weren’t tall or short—about average height—and they were thin, so we can probably rule out werewolves. But I’m not sure if it was a man or a woman.”
I swallowed hard. I was relieved that they hadn’t done anything to actually hurt the cat, but I wished that he was a bigger help.
“I don’t know what to do. I don’t want to bother Draia or Ambur.”
“Well, if I were you, I would report this to the Headmaster,” Max asked.
“That’s a smart plan,” I realized. How did I find the Headmaster at night, though?
Then it dawned on me. I was pretty sure I knew who would know.
Pulling my cell phone out, I sighed. Everly was probably going to kill me for this.
I texted Brett.
Juliana: I need you. Something has happened. In my dorm room.
It wasn’t even seconds before I heard a knock at the door.
There was no way he normally would have gotten to my dorm room that quickly, so I was pretty sure that he must have been with Everly.
I moved over to open it. As I did, Brett took a look into the room. His jaw dropped.
“What the hell happened here?”
“Someone ransacked the place,” I explained. “I need to report this to the Headmaster, but I’m not sure how to get ahold of him at this time of night.”
“Just leave it to me.” He stepped out of the room to talk on the phone.
A moment later, I heard Everly’s familiar voice say, “Wow. Who did you piss off?”
I glared at her. “Who says I pissed anyone off?”
“I just can’t figure out why else anyone would do this,” she replied, shaking her head.
“I can think of plenty of reasons,” I muttered under my breath.
“Like what?” Her gray eyes met mine curiously.
“It seems obvious that they were looking for something.” I just wasn’t sure what. It wasn’t like I had much of anything here. What could they have possibly been looking for?
But there must have been something. As much as I wanted to believe that this was random, it obviously hadn’t been. If it was, they would have gone through Ambur and Draia’s things, but instead, they had only gone through mine. They wanted to find something that belonged to me. I was determined to find out what it was.
A moment later, Brett came back into the room. “Well, I just spoke to the Headmaster.”
“And?” I asked.
“And he is going to have the campus guards try to figure out who was in here tomorrow morning. He doesn’t want you or your roommates to come in here until afterwards, so you don’t tamper with any evidence.”
“Well, where am I supposed to go tonight?” I questioned.
“My dorm room,” Brett replied. “Headmaster Crane doesn’t want me to leave you by yourself.”
“What about me?” Everly asked.
“I’m sorry, babe,” Brett said. “These are Headmaster Crane’s orders. I’ll make up for it tomorrow night.”
“But tonight is Halloween,” she insisted. “We always spend Halloween together.”
“I’m sorry. I wish there was something I could do.”
I wasn’t going to lie. He didn’t sound genuinely apologetic, even to me.
Everly shot me one last hateful glare and then, with a huff, stomped off to her own dorm room.
***
“So, this is my room,” Brett said as he flicked on the lights.
Brett’s dorm room was nothing like I had imagined it to be. I wasn’t entirely sure what I had imagined, honestly, but it wasn’t this.
There was a dresser in the far righthand corner of the room. He had a king-sized bed, and there was a large flat screen TV that hung from the wall.
His room was just so… neat. So ordinary. There were no holes in the wall or scratch marks or anything, which I sort of expected, due to him being a shifter. There were no signs of him being a werewolf in the room. No signs of him even being paranormal. It just looked like an average teenage boy’s room.
“I can’t hear what you’re thinking,” Brett commented as I continued to stare at his room.
I turned to face him. “That’s because I blocked you from listening in on my thoughts.”
“You seem to block me out a lot lately.”
“I don’t like the idea of you listening to me,” I replied with a shrug. Plus, if I let him in, that meant he was only going to end up hearing how I felt about him or that I thought he was hot. Until we knew my paranormal race, he was better off hearing none of that because, unless I really did turn out to be a werewolf, my thoughts didn’t actually mean anything.
“I get it,” Brett replied with a nod. “I may not love it, but I do get it.”
“I’m really tired,” I realized then with a yawn. “I’m not sure what I’m going to sleep in, though.”
I hadn’t thought to grab any clothes, and technically, I supposed that I wasn’t actually allowed to or it would have meant tampering with the evidence. And tampering with the evidence was the absolute last thing I wanted to do. The idea that someone had been in my dorm room and had gone through my things sent a shiver down my spine. I hoped that whoever it was would end up g
etting caught.
“I have some clothes you can wear,” Brett said, rummaging through his dresser. He pulled out a plain white t-shirt and a pair of gray sweatpants and handed them to me.
“Thanks. Um, I’m going to use your bathroom.”
“Go ahead.”
As I went into the bathroom and changed into the clothes, I couldn’t believe how big they were. I knew that Brett was a large guy, but it wasn’t until his t-shirt reached my knees and his sweatpants were about a foot too long on me that I realized how much larger he was than me.
It made me wonder: Could female werewolves even be as small as I was?
Going back into his room, he was already laying on his bed. “I thought we could stay up and talk, but I’m really tired, too.”
“I thought werewolves didn’t get tired,” I remembered from class.
“There are only two times that I get tired,” he replied. “One is on Halloween. It throws all paranormal races off a little bit.” He paused for a moment. “The other time is if I’ve just spent a lot of time with Everly. That girl is enough to tire out even a werewolf.”
I laughed, even though I wasn’t going to lie. It made me slightly jealous to know that she was the one who got to spend all of her time with him.
I shook the thought away just as soon as it had entered my mind. I wasn’t supposed to be feeling this way. I had just had an amazing, incredible night with Kaden, even if it had ended up getting cut too short because of his brother and sister. I was supposed to be focused on Kaden and only Kaden. And yet, here I was, jealous as fuck that Everly got to call Brett hers. What was wrong with me?
“We should probably sleep then since we’re both tired.” And so that I could get him off my mind. The sooner we went to sleep, the sooner this night would be over.
“Okay.” Brett patted the bed next to him. “I promise not to be a bed hog.”
“I find that hard to believe,” I replied as I cautiously turned the cover down and climbed into bed beside him, making sure to put a safe distance between us.
Honestly? I actually trusted him to not try anything. It was me who I didn’t trust.
“Goodnight,” Brett told me, but I could already hear from the tone in his voice that he was drifting off.
“Goodnight.”
***
Sometime during the night, I went to move and realized that I couldn’t. I felt an overwhelming amount of heat against my body, and a strong arm wrapped around my waist.
I realized the heat was coming from Brett’s body. They weren’t kidding when they said that werewolves had high body temperatures. He was burning up.
My eyes fluttered open and fell on the digital alarm clock on the nightstand next to Brett’s bed. It was 3:37 a.m.
I wondered if Brett knew he was holding me or if we had only ended up in this position because he had fallen asleep.
I was trying to figure out if I should stay in his embrace or if I should try to untangle us when there was a loud knock at the door. The knocking sounded sort of urgent.
Pulling away from me, Brett jolted out of bed. “I’ll be back in a few,” he told me.
Stepping out into the hallway, I heard him talking quietly with another guy. The guy’s voice was deeper than Brett’s, giving me the impression that he may have been older, though I wasn’t sure.
As they continued to talk out in the hallway, I couldn’t help but think that the weirdest part was that he didn’t even seem startled or alarmed by getting a visitor at 3:37 a.m.
No, I was pretty sure that, whoever was on the other side of the door, Brett had been expecting him. And, even though I knew it was Halloween, who just came to talk to someone at 3:37 a.m.?
Maybe it was different for shifters. Maybe they just paid late night visits to one another all the time. It wasn’t like I lived in the House of Shifters to know what went on around here.
Ten minutes passed, and then fifteen.
Finally, Brett came back inside his dorm room. The light from the TV was turned on, and it was enough to illuminate his face. And his face told me that he was… well, moody.
I couldn’t shake the feeling that whoever had been outside his dorm room had seriously pissed him off.
As he climbed back into bed, he spaced himself far away from me, turning in the opposite direction. It almost felt like he was giving me a cold shoulder, even though I knew I was only imagining it. I had done nothing to him.
But even so, I inched to the other side of the bed, too, distancing us a little further.
The truth was that I had liked his embrace… too much. The more space there was between us, the better.
Chapter 32
I didn’t get to see Headmaster Crane the following morning. He asked Brett to tell me that he would meet with me the following day. Something had apparently come up.
Even though a large part of me was relieved that I wouldn’t need to meet with him just yet, I also hated that we had to put this meeting off. If I was going to get expelled for using my magic against the raven shifter, I didn’t want to have to put it off any longer than we needed to.
Then again, if he was really going to expel me, would he have put the meeting off for this long? He probably would have done it on the spot. Maybe he was just going to warn me about using my magic on school grounds again.
After the school security guards had finished investigating our dorm room, I was finally able to go back to my room. It was almost noon, and Kaden was supposed to come to my dorm so we could go out to lunch at one o’clock, like we had agreed on the night before.
I had just changed into a pair of jeans and a red blouse that I’d brought with me from the human world when Ambur and Draia both stumbled into the dorm room.
“Holy shit. You weren’t kidding about this break-in,” Draia said as her eyes fell on my things strewn everywhere. I still needed to clean it up, but I had wanted to make sure I would be ready for my date first.
“Are you okay?” Ambur asked me, her hazel eyes full of concern.
I had texted them both about how my things had gotten ransacked, but this was the first time they were seeing it for themselves.
“I’m fine. I wasn’t here, like I told you, when they came. Max was locked in the bathroom, but otherwise, they only did damage to my things.” And I had learned a long time ago that things were only things.
“Did they take anything?” Draia asked.
“Not that I know of. I don’t know what they were even looking for,” I explained. “It’s not like I really have anything for them to take.”
“I have a feeling that whoever did this is also the one who sent you that anonymous letter last night,” Ambur said.
“I don’t know about that,” I replied, shaking my head. “The letter writer had seemed… helpful. Or like they were trying to be, anyway.”
“I think the letter writer seemed creepy as hell, and I wouldn’t put them past this,” Ambur disagreed. “Promise us that you won’t be meeting anyone at the fountain at ten p.m. tonight, Juliana.”
I hadn’t really given any more thought as to whether or not I would actually meet the anonymous sender. In the midst of everything, it had completely escaped my mind. But now, I was pretty sure that I didn’t want to meet them. As it was, I already needed a security guard to walk me around school.
But what if the anonymous sender actually did know my paranormal race? I knew that Ambur was right. It would be difficult for anyone to prove. But a part of me still wanted to hear whatever it was they had to say, in hopes that it would at least point me in the right direction.
I shook the thought from my mind. I couldn’t just meet some anonymous letter writer. It was too risky… too dangerous. If Ambur was right and the letter writer really was the same one who had ransacked my room, who knew what they were capable of? I wasn’t going to meet them, and definitely not alone.
“I promise,” I told her.
“Good.” Ambur flopped down on her bed and stared up at the ceiling dream
ily. “You guys, Gavin and I had a great night. I’m pretty sure he’s my soulmate.”
“Did you guys do it?” Draia asked.
“A fairy doesn’t kiss and tell,” Ambur replied. “But, um, maybe.” She winked.
“I want more details,” I said.
“I’m still processing all of this. I’m in a serious need of a recharge at some point today. Just an F.Y.I.”
“Okay. Whenever you’re ready. But I’m glad you guys had a good time,” Draia said as she changed out of her pajamas. As she pulled her top off, I noted the marks on her back: long, gruesome-looking marks that looked like they could have only come from sharp claws.
“Draia, what happened to your back?” I asked.
“Oh, um, Marcus might have gotten a little bit out of control last night,” Draia replied, touching the marks gently. “I know it doesn’t look so good, but it’s not his fault. When he turns into a tiger, his claws come out and it’s beyond his control. Thankfully, he got out of the room in time or this could have been a whole lot worse. This is the only thing annoying about dating a shifter on Halloween. It’s the one night every year when they’re completely out of control of their animal side.”
“Wait. Do all shifters turn into their animal forms on Halloween?” I questioned.
“Yup. It’s inevitable,” Draia replied.
“Okay, then this is strange.” I paused. “You guys know I spent the night in Brett’s dorm room last night. Well, he didn’t shift into a wolf. At all.”
“That is odd,” Ambur said. “But you weren’t with him all night. He must have changed before you guys got together.”
“Yeah. That’s probably it,” I replied. I did my makeup in the mirror then, opting for a straight look for my auburn hair. “I have a date with Kaden today,” I informed them.
“So, last night went that good, huh?” Draia asked.
“Wait, why didn’t you spend the night in Kaden’s dorm room?” Ambur questioned.
“Because his sister needed him for something. Some sort of family emergency.” I decided not to divulge more information than I needed to. Sharing any more than that felt like it would have been some sort of betrayal. “He wanted to make it up to me today. He’s supposed to be here around one p.m.”
