Forging the Guild (The Protector Guild Book 2)

by Gray Holborn

  And then there was Sarah. My mind couldn’t stop spinning up versions of her all night. Who was she? What was she like? What were Atlas and Wade like when she was around? Was Atlas more...human when he was with her? I saw the way he looked at Wade—stern and serious as always, but with a heavy undertone of legitimate affection. It was the way that Ro often looked at me. Was Atlas capable of shedding his professionalism in small, isolated moments? Did Six ever crowd onto the couch after a long day, watching bad movies, eating greasy food, and laughing uncontrollably—attempting to soothe the pressure and fatigue that came with being protectors?

  I turned, ready to leave, when I found what looked like a stack of blueprints. With a quick glance at the door, I listened, making sure nobody was coming. For a moment, I stood still, debating whether or not to look more closely, to see what they were working on. Eventually, my curiosity won out. I’d be joining them on missions soon enough, so the sooner I was up to speed, the better I would be at aiding them. I shuffled through the papers, feeling like a proper James Bond, until I found one with a lazy ‘Lab’ scrawled in the upper right corner. I studied the piece of paper, and the numbers written along the margins. Were these codes? My heart pounded, racing with the thought of what this was.

  I looked down the page, flipping through several more until I was certain I found the spot I recognized—Ralph’s jail cell. Committing the piece to memory, I backed away with a shit-eating grin on my face. This was step one if I wanted to break him out. I turned, ready to leave until I saw a folder sitting below one of the monitors. My name was printed in large letters along the label. Unable to resist the temptation, I walked towards that side of the desk and flipped the manila file open. What did they have on me? Cyrus was always so cagey about how he found me. Did The Guild know more?

  “Do you frequently go snooping through other people’s things?”

  Startled, I dropped the file and saw Declan standing in the doorway, a thunderous expression on her face.

  “I uh—” I started, searching for an explanation until I realized that Declan was very very wet, and very very naked. Well, almost naked. A white towel was perched precariously low across her chest, the cloth folded casually. So casually, that if she breathed too deeply, I was convinced it would fall to the floor. Her long dark hair was an even deeper shade when wet, and I stared at the way it clung to her neck and chest in long waves.

  Her intense green eyes were framed by her dark lashes, the individual strands clumped together and highlighting the color even more than usual. I’d seen beautiful girls before. The Guild was full of them. And I was no stranger to shows and movies with stunning actresses. But somehow they all seemed to pale in comparison to Declan. There was something so otherworldly about her beauty, the way it was filtered with an intense strength and intellect. Everything about her was intimidating and made my skin tingle with an unusual anxiety. Wherever she was in a room, my eyes seemed immediately drawn to her, like a moth to a flame.

  I sucked in a breath, the scent of strawberries clinging to the air around her, all but completely erasing the smell of musty paper and coffee from before.

  She cleared her throat and I jumped. How long had I been staring?

  “S-s-sorry,” I said, moving quickly towards the door. Until I realized that she was blocking it and I couldn’t get past until she moved. “I was looking for the bathroom.”

  Declan looked slowly from one side of the office to the other before meeting my eyes. Deep, intimidating green stared back at me. “I know you’ve lived a sheltered life, Max, but in case you haven’t figured it out yet—this is not a bathroom.”

  I swallowed, absolutely still while Declan watched me. It felt like I was being stalked by a predator, like she could pounce at any second. Sometimes she seemed approachable, almost friendly, but other times, like now, I could all but feel the way her eyes peeled me back, layer by layer.

  “I’m sorry. Really. It’s just, I’ve never been in a team’s office before and it was hard to turn away. I thought I might be able to familiarize myself with some of the stuff you guys are working on, so that I could be more helpful and jump in where needed.” Honesty. Maybe honesty was the way to go here. “And then, I saw a file with my name on it and got curious. I know almost nothing about my history, about where I came from. I don’t even know who my birth parents are, and I just thought—”

  Understanding crossed her face, the lines of her expression softening just a touch as she leaned against the doorframe. She pulled the wet strands of her hair back into a top bun, and I tried not to watch the way the movement pulled her towel a breath lower. “You thought you might find the answers in there.”

  I nodded.

  “Hate to disappoint you, kid, but the only info in there is what Cyrus and Seamus have told us. And I have a feeling that’s even less than what Cy has told you over the years. That, and there’s also info recording most of your stats since you’ve been here.” Her eyes moved from my face down to my neck. “And some pictures of your attack.” She pushed away from the door and walked into the hallway. I followed, certain that I’d outworn my welcome in the office. She stopped at the next door and pushed it open. “This is the bathroom.”

  Damn. One door away from finding it on my own. Rotten luck.

  She took a long breath and quietly exhaled, her eyes studying my face with renewed focus. “Not knowing where you’re from must be really hard. I have a few contacts across different Guild locations, so I can put some feelers out there and let you know if I get any bites. But in the meantime, I’d try to spend more energy focusing on your future, not your past. As impossible as that may seem—” she paused and glanced over to my—to Sarah’s—room, though I don’t think the movement was conscious.

  “Thank you. I’d really appreciate that.” And I meant it, though I doubted I’d be able to outright ignore my desire to know more about my past, about where I came from.

  When her eyes landed back on mine, I could feel every ounce of air leaving my lungs. Suddenly, I was excruciatingly aware of how close we were standing, the fibers of her towel whispering against the skin of my arm. Every inhale brought us momentarily closer, and I could feel my skin come alive with a tingling energy. I studied her face with a new awareness, the soft curves of her full lips, the high ridges of her cheekbones. I wasn’t exactly sure what feeling was rushing through me. A desire to befriend Declan, to be close to her. But I couldn’t decipher or untangle the thoughts beyond that.

  Suddenly unable to handle the building tension, I took a step back and glanced around the hallway. I cleared my throat, waiting for my heartrate to drop back down. “And I’m sorry,” I said, thinking back to last night. I wasn’t the only one with a past. “Eli told me about your cousin. I can’t imagine how hard that must have been. To have lost someone so close to you.”

  Her green eyes glazed over as she took a step back, like she was making room for whatever wall she was building back up between us. While her face was guarded, I knew what lay beneath that wall—Declan was in pain. A piercing, excruciating pain. “Death is a part of this life. What happened to Sarah will happen to all of us who take the field path. We are naive if we think otherwise.”

  I nodded, suddenly feeling ridiculous for bringing this up. It was clear she wasn’t comfortable talking about her cousin, least of all with someone who was practically a stranger. And I couldn’t blame her. Ro and Cy were the only family I had. But if I lost them—I wasn’t sure how someone could survive that sort of grief. The thought alone was enough to shatter me.

  “Still,” I said, gripping my towel and toiletries to my chest for comfort, “that doesn’t erase the pain. And I just, I want you to know that I appreciate you letting me borrow her room. I promise that I don’t take that gift lightly and I will take great care of everything in it while I’m around.” With a soft smile and a nod, I walked into the bathroom before quietly closing the door, as if afraid of shattering the moment.

  When I heard Declan walk away,
I let out a long, impossibly heavy breath and tried to still my racing heartbeat. I couldn’t tell if my pulse was racing from being caught snooping, from the conversation, or from the way my eyes seemed to glue themselves to every inch of Declan’s skin. Was it guilt or fear or something else entirely? Unwilling to linger too much on my discomfort, I readied for a shower. And, just in case, I’d make it a cold one.

  Chapter Nine

  Max

  When I returned from my shower, it was to a series of texts from Izzy. Apparently in light of current events and moving in with teams, we no longer had the afternoon off. We were expected to be in the gym within the hour for a meeting with Alleva and some extra training sessions. By the time I pushed my limbs into my workout clothes and braided my hair into a long plait, the cabin was completely empty.

  Or at least, it appeared to be empty. After being caught by Declan, I had no more intentions of snooping around again to make sure that I was, indeed, alone. I tried not to be too discouraged that they’d all left me to deal with figuring things out in the house by myself. No introduction to the kitchen, no ‘you can touch this, but not that’ with respect to items in the fridge. Nothing.

  They were just—gone.

  Rather than try and make it to the cafeteria and back to the gym before the hour was up, I found some bread and peanut butter in the pantry that I helped myself to, along with some leftover coffee in a large, steaming black pot on the counter. The second I took a sip, I let out an embarrassingly loud groan. This was, without a doubt, the best coffee I’d ever tasted.

  Granted, my typical experience with coffee extended from Cyrus’s burnt attempts, the Quickie Mart back home, and the espresso machine in the cafeteria. But still, even in comparison to some artisan shops, I had a feeling this pot held its own.

  I could deal with the cold shoulder from Atlas if it meant this level of superb caffeination all the time. Quickly, I filled a spare thermos with some more, prepared to share with Ro once we were at the gym. Looking around the pristine counters, I tried desperately to search for a set of keys.

  With a shrug, I locked the door from the inside before leaving, hoping that one of them would be home later to let me in. As I carved my way through the woods, trying to gauge where the Six cabin was in relation to what I understood of Guild grounds so far, nerves crawled along my skin. Alleva was an intimidating woman. It was alarmingly clear where Reza’s no-nonsense attitude came from.

  Hopefully Alleva would give me a chance, where her daughter did not. I knew that she was generally in charge of training the academy recruits, and I wondered if that meant that Atlas, Dec, and Eli would no longer be training us. And what would that mean for me? I was technically their apprentice now, so would I be expected to continue my class schedule as normal or would I be going on missions as they were assigned them?

  A rush of adrenaline flew through my veins at the thought of fighting vampires and werewolves alongside the team. A deep, desperate need to prove myself to them outweighed my general discomfort with their moodiness. Declan was, by far, the most badass girl I had ever encountered, and the thought of getting to shadow her on missions made me downright giddy.

  My winding path ended up being severely inaccurate, so by the time I located the gym, I was a few minutes late.

  Alleva’s attention snapped in my direction as the door slammed behind me. Her shrewd eyes took in my appearance, lingering here and there as she scanned me.

  “Miss Bentley,” she bit out, for once making me hate the sound of Cy’s last name. “So good of you to join us.” Her eyes narrowed, the blue visible through thick, lined lashes. “And so happy that you found time to style your hair and make coffee, rather than show up on time.

  My cheeks burned with fire as my eyes fell to Ro and Izzy, grateful for the familiar and warm presence. They both winced slightly, behind small grins, as if my embarrassment had infected them as well.

  “I understand that our world is new to you, but your brother,” she paused, looking down at her clipboard, too quickly to actually have read anything, “Rowan, made it here on time. Perhaps his manners can be attributed to the fact that he spent half his life living in another household.” She cleared her throat, “time will tell.”

  And then, as if I was nothing more than an annoying gnat, she dismissed me and turned back to the other students.

  As silently as possible, I made my way towards the group, wishing desperately that Declan or someone had been around when I left, if only to point me in the right direction or give me some advice on buttering Alleva up.

  “As I was saying,” she said, her voice crisp and echoing across the room, though the volume wasn’t particularly strained. “You will continue your training during typical hours throughout the week, unless your team is scheduled for a mission or specific meeting. On days where that is the case, you will be dismissed from your usual lessons. Make no mistake, however, this will not be an excuse to fall behind on your school work. You will still be held to the same high standards as usual. On evenings where your team doesn’t have a specific field assignment, you will spend time bonding with them and getting a feel for what it means to work in a tight-knit group. You will research when they research, train when they train, and learn how to conduct yourselves around Headquarters as a bonafide member of this community.”

  “What if our teams don’t want to bring us along?” Theo, Izzy’s older and slightly awful brother asked from the back of the room.

  Alleva’s mouth straightened into a line, her eyes pinched slightly as she looked down at him with absolute contempt rolling from her in waves. I knew that Theo had a crush on Reza, and I was starting to suspect that her mother wasn’t too keen on the idea. Then again, from what I’d seen of Reza and her interactions with Theo, she wasn’t too keen on it either.

  “I’ve spoken to the heads of your teams this morning, they all understand that there isn’t a choice where this is concerned. Whenever possible, they are to include you, whether they are particularly enthusiastic about it or not.” She folded her hands in front of her stomach, straightening up slightly. “Unfortunately, the stakes are too high right now for any of us to consider preference when it comes to decisions about how apprentices should be spending their time.” She swept her blue eyes over us, like a queen surveying her loyal subjects. “Now, enough chat. Since you will be losing some valuable training time and since I have missed out on several weeks of observations, you will spend some time today sparring as I walk through and take notes on your progress.”

  She clapped her hands once and then, as if programmed, the room burst into chaotic energy as students shuffled to available mats, pairing up into their usual groups as quickly as possible.

  “Alleva can be a bit of a hardass,” Izzy muttered under her breath as she ushered us towards a mat in the center. “She’s ruthless, but fair. Just don’t get on her bad side,” Izzy glanced at me again and I could see my late arrival flashing through her thoughts, “again.”

  “Ms. Bentley, a word please,” Alleva’s crisp, clear voice echoed behind me and I spun around so quickly that I sloshed some coffee on the floor.

  “Headmistress, I’m really sorry for being late. I got lost between Team Six’s cabin and the gym. You have my word it won’t happen again.”

  She nodded once, her stare traveling to the few drops of coffee now coloring my sneakers. “See that it doesn’t. I stopped you not to drag that out again but to suggest that you pair up with Reza for this exercise. I’ve heard great things about your skills during these sessions and I welcome the opportunity to see you execute them against the strongest female in the academy.”

  Izzy gripped my shoulder in solidarity before grabbing the coffee from my tight fingers and leading Ro towards the mat so that they could get started.

  Great.

  In my brief time at The Guild, I had sparred with Reza exactly once. And there was nothing about the experience I wanted to experience again. She was a solid fighter, that much was obvious. A
nd I generally respected solid fighters, especially when they were women. Girls had to stick together and all. But when Reza sparred with me, there was an angry intensity in every twitch of her muscle, like it wasn’t just an exercise to make us stronger. Like she wanted to leave me weakened, injured, as if to erase me from this place before I could truly leave my imprint on it. And now that I’d taken the spot she wanted with Six, I had a feeling I was in for a whole new level of Reza hate mail.

  That kind of negativity was something I didn’t have room for.

  “Reza,” Alleva said, her voice just above a whisper but I had no doubt that every ear in the room was lingering on everything she said. “Come over here and spar with Maxine please. I’d like to see how you’ve made progress while I’ve been away.”

  There was no warmth in her address to her daughter, and as Reza made her way over to us, her long blond hair swaying with each step, I saw a different girl than the one I’d encountered every day since my arrival.

  Gone was the confident bully. In her place was a girl shaded red with emotion, shoulders hunched slightly as if to make herself smaller.

  “Yes mother,” she said, sparing me one quick glance, absent of its usual heat.

  Maybe this wouldn’t be like our first experience facing off, maybe she’d approach me with the level of detachment most people did in this room—void of personal vendetta.

  I followed Reza to the available mat, setting my water bottle and bag down on the ground. We met in the middle with a nod before moving to our separate sides. Reza bounced from heel to heel in her bright pink sneakers, her hands raised and ready to strike.

  As soon as Alleva said “go,” Reza was rushing towards me, with none of the usual lithe movement I was used to from her. Her steps were clumsy, unsure, and I watched as she glanced out the side of her eyes, like she was trying to observe her mother’s reactions in real time. Her fist came flying towards my cheek, broadcasted loudly enough that evading it was easy and effortless.