by May Dawson
“Not a date,” Rafe said. “And Maddie met your family.”
“We were undercover.”
“I’d rather go on a mission than out to lunch with them,” Rafe said. Lex’s lips tightened sympathetically, as if he knew Rafe’s family was rough.
“We can head back to the academy,” I said, because I’d heard Ty laughing before I walked in. It had been good to hear his voice again. “If you guys don’t want to be here, and I…”
“Stay.” Chase came out of the kitchen, his face exasperated. “Jensen and Penn and I went to the grocery store. Do you know what it’s like to take the two of them grocery shopping? We’ve got a bunch of food and you guys could just stop being weird for an hour.”
“He’s like our mom now,” Jensen said without looking away from the TV. “Penn, Skyla is kicking your ass over here. If you don’t watch out, she’s taking your place on the team.”
“Don’t swear around my sister,” Chase said in exasperation.
“Please,” she said, rolling her eyes.
“Skyla, go upstairs and tell Blake to stop angsting for a while and come join us,” Chase told her.
She ignored him, until Jensen reached over and grabbed the controller out of her hands. “Scram, kid. You heard your brother.”
“Your position as my favorite is really in question,” she told him, poking his shoulder.
“Hey.” Penn frowned at her. “You said I was your favorite.”
As Rafe glanced back and forth between us all, a faint smile touched his lips. “Fine, I’ll try not to be weird for an hour.”
“Good,” Chase answered.
Rafe pointed to Chase as he turned his back, raising his eyebrows at Lex in a silent question.
Lex shrugged. “It’s his house. He gets to play Mom if he wants.”
“I’m not trying to be your mom,” Chase said in exasperation. “It’s a little late for any of you to get some goddamn home training.”
“Don’t swear in front of Skyla,” his little sister chided him as she breezed through the living room.
Chase ran his hand over his hair. “She’s turning into such a smartass.”
“I can’t imagine why, she’s got such fine examples,” Penn said. Then, more seriously, “She was a lot quieter when you brought her and Blake here.”
“Yeah, school’s going better here. And I hate to say it, but maybe being away from my aunt…” Chase hesitated. “But I can’t leave her and Blake here alone all the time.”
“We’ll figure something out,” Penn said.
“How?” Chase rubbed his hand across the back of his neck.
Penn clapped his shoulder, the gesture brotherly. “I don’t know, yet. But we’ll work it out.”
Chase nodded, as if he took comfort in the idea that we were all on his side, even if the situation was still tough to deal with. Something warm bloomed in my chest.
Then the sound of the glass door to the deck sliding shut caught my attention, and I looked up to see Ty’s broad shoulders heading across the deck. He stood beside the grill, watching over the fire for no good reason. Apparently Ty was safety conscious now.
I turned back to the crowd, smoothing my hair behind my ears, only to realize they were all watching me. Even Jensen had stopped his game and was twisted to face me, his arm on the back of the couch.
Rafe and Lex automatically assumed that arms-crossed, legs akimbo position that seemed to be a cadre requirement, even though their gazes were sympathetic. Well, that was almost alarming—sympathy from them really made me worry. Chase offered me a reassuring smile.
Penn rubbed his hand up my arm comfortingly. “Go talk to him.”
“I have,” I said. “He wants me to stay away from him. He thinks…”
When I trailed off, Rafe demanded, “He thinks what?”
I didn’t want to say it, but I didn’t have to. Penn explained, “He thinks that the witch, Winter, is their father.”
Rafe’s brows arched as he parsed that thought.
“He told you?” I demanded. I’d been waiting for the right time.
“Penn might have beaten it out of him,” Jensen admitted. “Because it seemed like Ty…hurt you.”
“Then we all came out here to make up,” Penn said. I looked toward him, noticing for the first time that there was a fresh bruise across his cheekbone. “And you need to make up, too. You at least need to function together.”
Rafe pinched the bridge of his nose with his hand as if he were exasperated. “When were you two going to mention this theory? We agreed we wouldn’t keep any more secrets from each other.”
“I needed a day to process, Rafe,” I said, my voice tense. “I don’t think it’s true. But if it is, I… he and I…”
I stumbled, but Rafe cut me off. “I understand.”
“When we get back to the academy,” Lex said, “We all hit the books. All right? All of us. Fate’s not supposed to work that way…”
“But maybe it works differently if you aren’t a full shifter or a born shifter,” Chase said.
We all looked at him, and he shrugged. “What? I don’t know anything about this world. Just thinking out loud.”
“Just because you’re correct doesn’t mean you’re helpful,” Jensen drawled.
The way the guys looked at me, full of sympathy, made me feel so vulnerable that it was hard to keep facing them instead of running away.
“I’ll go talk to him,” I said. As I headed past Penn, I gently shoved his shoulder. “But not because you told me to.”
“It’s totally because I told you to,” he said as I reached the door.
When I looked over my shoulder at him, he blew me a kiss.
Insufferable asses. His teasing still made me feel a bit better.
I let myself out the door, then shivered in the cool wind, wishing I’d made a different series of life choices in so many ways, from sleeping with the guy who was both a total ass and possibly my half-brother, to bringing my coat out with me.
Ty stuffed his hands in his pockets, his posture stiffening, as the sliding door squeaked open. He said, “I came out here to be alone.”
“How did you know it was me?”
He snorted, but didn’t answer.
I crossed my arms to hug as much warmth as I could to my chest. The cold wind blew my skirt around my legs. I came close to the grill, hoping it would warm me, and that brought me close to Ty.
He didn’t speak as he pulled his jacket off and draped it over my shoulders. I shook my head. “No, Ty…”
The jacket smelled like him, like his spicy aftershave and the faint masculine musk of his body.
“Wear it for me,” he said. He still didn’t meet my eyes. “It makes me miserable when you’re unhappy.”
“What a coincidence.”
“Maddie.” He huffed out a breath.
“We at least need to be friends, Ty,” I said. “I get it. Until we know for sure, you don’t want to be too close to me.”
That was a strange thing to say as I pulled his jacket snug around me. The arms of the jacket hung uselessly at my sides.
“You make it sound so simple.”
“I don’t think it’s true, so for me, it is simple.”
“So if I kissed you, you wouldn’t have any hesitation?”
“I’d hesitate because you just said if I kissed you with a note of disgust in your voice,” I shot back. “We can be friends. We’re on the same team.”
“If I said it like that, it’s not because…”
He kept me waiting. The two of us were side-by-side, facing the fire, so close that I could sway to one side and brush his shoulder with mine, if I dared.
“I can’t be friends with you,” he said. “Every time I’m near you, it feels like… it feels like my guts are being ripped out.”
His anguished voice spiked pain in my own chest, but there was nothing I could do to help him, and that hurt worse.
He went on, “Every little thing you do breaks me. The
way you touch your hair, the sound of your voice. All your smiles: that brave, uncertain smile, the big grin that lights up a room, the secretive, mischievous smile. Every single one just…”
I could barely breathe, and I didn’t know what to say if I even could have spoken.
Then he added, flatly, “You destroy me.”
I tried to swallow the emotion that rose like a knot in my throat. “Well, the rest of us are going to figure it out. The guys will comb the mythos with me. And I’m going to find my father.”
“Maddie.” He said my name like it burned in his mouth.
“What?” I demanded, taking a step back, no matter how cold I felt when I moved away from him and from the fire. He didn’t want to be close to me.
He finally turned to face me. Agony was written across his handsome features that used to always look so cheerful.
I did that. I broke this amazing guy.
He warned me, “Don’t do anything stupid.”
“I’m not the one being stupid right now, Tyson Atlas.” I slipped his jacket off my shoulders and held it out to him. “But if anyone’s going to keep me from being stupid, it would be my friends.”
“I don’t know how to stay away from you,” he muttered.
“You’ve done a pretty good job the last three months,” I said. “When you should’ve talked to me.”
He didn’t reach to take his jacket back. His eyes were dark with pain, and I couldn’t bear it anymore, so I dropped the jacket on the grass and turned to leave him behind.
Jensen clattered down the deck stairs, the other guys behind him. I looked up at them wondering what the hell they were doing.
But they didn’t acknowledge the pain that Ty and I were in or the fight between us. They just surrounded us, talking about nothing, getting food on the grill, tossing the football around.
When one of the guys threw the ball at him, Tyson caught it against his chest, and after a while, he began to smile. The tension that choked my chest loosened.
We were a fucked-up crew, but we were a family, too.
Chapter Nine
On Monday, it was back to classes. I was just taking my seat at the lunch table when Lex sat down across from me; he didn’t have his tray yet. He leaned his corded forearms on the table and said, “Dean Clearborn would like to see you this afternoon.”
Penn twisted in his seat to quirk an eyebrow at me. “What did you do? I’m going to be irked if you got into trouble and left me out.”
Despite their joking, there was a sudden air of tension at the table.
“I don’t recall anything,” I said, my stomach tightening, and I dropped my fork onto my tray again. “Which is strange, really, because usually there’s something… I haven’t thrown a single thing at any member of the faculty.”
Lex scrubbed his hand over his face. “Maybe it’s nothing bad.”
Jensen scoffed. I smacked his chest, telling him, “You’re the biggest pessimist.”
“You love me,” he said.
My lips pursed to one side. “Maybe.”
His hand stroked across my thigh under the table. “Definitely.”
I smiled, feeling some of my tension ebb when Jensen touched me, but I still pushed my tray away. “Do you think it would be okay if I went to his office now? I’m… wild with curiosity.”
That was one way to describe it.
“I’ll walk you.” Lex offered, rising from the table.
“Then you won’t get the chance to eat,” I pointed out. I didn’t want to eat after being called to Clearborn’s office.
“It’s Meatloaf Monday,” Lex said. “I’ve eaten the same meatloaf every week for the past three and a half years. I can afford to skip once.”
Of course Lex would pretend that going without lunch was no big deal, despite how much I’d seen him put away at most meals. The shifter metabolism was no joke. It would be nice to have him with me.
“Don’t worry, Maddie,” Lex said as we crossed the dining hall.
“Easy to say,” I retorted. I couldn’t help replaying the memory of my arms trembling as the tawse burned across my shoulders.
His lips pursed. Something had been bothering him for a while, and suddenly I wasn’t scared for myself anymore. What was going on with Lex?
I bumped his shoulder with mine. “Or maybe not. Something worrying you, Jacob Alexander?”
His demeanor changed instantly, his posture straightening as he stuck his hand in his pocket, as if he’d realized that I worried about him.
“You, always,” he glanced at me, his eyes twinkling as a teasing smile crossed his lips. My heart rose at the affectionate way he looked at me.
“Anything else?” I asked.
“Graduation is three months away.” He glanced around at the empty quad as the two of us headed down the stairs from the cafeteria, then gently bumped my shoulder back. “What am I going to do without you and the rest of the dorks?”
“You’d be lost without someone to torment,” I agreed, thinking of that morning’s Physical Training session, but yet another knot formed in my stomach.
What would we do without Lex and Rafe? Our positions would all shift: new first-years under us, Tyson as our cadre leader. The thought of any change in the team felt wrong.
“I can’t imagine life without you either,” I admitted as the two of us headed through the academic building, our shoes echoing off the polished floors.
We were almost to the wooden door to Clearborn’s office. Lex stopped and faced me, his hands in his pockets. From the walls behind him, framed photos of every graduating class stared down at us. The unsmiling faces of the seniors reminded me that when we graduated, we went to war.
As eager as I was to do my part in the war against the covens, sometimes I thought about how people I knew and cared about here at this school would fight and die, and it made me sick with dread. There was no escape. The only way to end this all was to defeat the covens. Then maybe my men and I could have another, calmer life together.
If we all survived.
“You’ll be all right,” Lex promised. “You and the rest of the team have each other.”
He sounded sure, as if he’d thought before about what my life would look like without him in it, and tension curled through my chest like smoke.
“Don’t sell yourself short,” I said softly, “about how much you’re needed, Lex.”
He glanced down the hall at Clearborn’s office, and I jerked my head in a nod. This was no place for the two of us to have a deep conversation.
When the two of us walked into the anteroom, Clearborn stood by Cormac’s desk, talking to him. He glanced up at us. “Ah, two of my favorite cadets.”
He said that to everyone. We were quite sure that none of us were actually his favorites, given that Clearborn was both fair and frightening to everyone in equal measure.
“Good afternoon, sir,” we both chorused. Then I added, “You wanted to see me?”
“Yes, please.” He raised a hand toward his office. He was always so polite. It didn’t make him any less intimidating.
Lex mouthed, “I’ll be in the hall.”
I smiled goodbye at him and followed Clearborn into his office.
“You can close the door and take a seat,” he said, sitting behind his desk.
When I closed the door, the room seemed eerily quiet. My oxfords barely sank into the thick rug as I padded across it silently.
I sat on the edge of one of the chairs in front of his desk. The sun was shining brightly through the windows, despite how cold the day was.
“You’re not in trouble,” he said. “Should I lead with that?”
“Yes,” I said, pressing my hand over my heart. My heart really was racing, but I didn’t try to hide it because I had a feeling Clearborn would find my anticipation amusing. “Yes, definitely lead with that.”
“How was your winter break?”
“Amazing. I think I slept for fourteen hours straight the first night I got home.�
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“Yes, me too,” he said. “You all exhaust me. You took some of your team with you?”
“Jensen came home with me. Then we came back early to be with Chase and his family for a few days.” I’d missed Penn and Ty; Penn had reluctantly chosen to stay with Ty and his pack, choosing who needed him over what he needed. Of course, being Penn, he had texted me some wisecrack or another every day we were apart.
“Celebrating the holidays together,” he noted. “That’s significant.”
“Did you spend the holidays with anyone special, sir?” We were all so curious about Clearborn.
He smiled faintly. “Yes, I did. How is your mother doing?”
“She’s…comfortable.” Her memory had more and more holes these days. She’d begun to lose not just the year I was born, but other swathes of time.
My sister’s magic helped keep her calm, because otherwise, those gaps sent my mother spiraling into panic.
“And how are your fellow students treating you these days?”
“The same way they treat everyone else, for the most part. Which is all I ever wanted.” It was hard to imagine anyone tripping me or throwing food at me, as had happened when I’d first arrived. My guys would tear someone apart. Possibly literally. I would not test them.
He leaned back in his chair, studying me. “I didn’t bring you in here for small talk, of course. I met with the Alpha council this weekend.”
It was a good thing he hadn’t brought me in for small talk, because Clearborn had positive qualities, but small talk expert definitely did not make the list.
I stared at him, waiting for him to go on. I dreaded what link there was between alpha council and Maddie Northsea.
“The witch your teammates captured?” he went on. “She told us all about the Day. Most importantly, the warlock running the Day believes that you are his daughter.”
Winter. Winter believed that I was his daughter. The memory of him looking back at me over his shoulder rose like a ghost. “I have to come back to my children.”
The room lurched around me like the floor had fallen from under my feet. Maybe Clearborn wouldn’t let me stay at the academy anymore. Or maybe it would be worse. Maybe the council would think I was working with him, especially given all the strange things that happened around me.