by Gray Holborn
“I’m fine,” I said, the bravado drained from my voice now. “How did you know we were in here?”
Eli’s dark brow arched into a crisp peak, his eyes traveling between me and Atlas with a teasing curiosity. “Am I interrupting something?”
“I got your text about boundary patrol and went to find her so that she could join us,” Atlas said, his voice gruff and laced with just a hint of the anger he’d unloaded on me moments before.
So that's why he’d left his brother so quickly. He must’ve followed me.
“Boundary patrol?” I asked, directing my question to Eli and trying desperately to ignore Atlas behind me. I wasn’t successful though. I could feel his eyes boring into my back like a pair of sharp daggers.
“Yeah,” Eli said, dragging the word out as he met Atlas’s glare. “Alleva had a conversation with all of the teams today, wants to make sure the apprentices are properly shadowing whenever possible. And I just got word about half an hour ago that our group is on boundary patrol. A team has been taking patrol once a night since the attack near headquarters. Just to be safe and to monitor for any suspicious activities or signs of other beasts getting too close to where we all eat, shit, and sleep, you know?”
“And I get to come?” I asked, slightly annoyed with myself for how eager I sounded.
“You do, gorgeous. We can split up and you can take my half of campus.” He nodded to Atlas who was still stewing silently behind me. “Cool with you if you and Dec team up?”
He grunted a response that I guess could be considered an adjacent yes before leaving the room without so much as glancing back at me once.
“He okay?” Eli pointed his thumb behind him, a shadow of anxiety across his face. “He seems even more surly than usual.”
I exhaled, hard enough to send a few stray hairs flying around my face, before walking out the door and following Eli’s stride towards wherever it was we were going. “He caught me downstairs trying to see Ralph, but I accidentally wound up in a room with a child vampire, so he dragged me all the way up here like a caveman. And then when he yelled at me, I called his attitude out and—boom—extra surly Atlas.”
A low, warm chuckle filled Eli’s chest and he swung his arm over my shoulders, the weight heavy in a comforting way, as we marched. “You’re a blast to have a round, you know that? I would pay good money to watch somebody tell Atlas off. I don’t think it’s ever been done before, not really.”
While it was a weird thing to be complimented for, I found myself smiling slightly. I hadn’t really had to set boundaries before and it felt good to stand up for myself. I shouldn’t have been in that part of the research labs, sure. But that didn’t give Atlas permission to be an asshole.
“So,” I started, shaking off any lingering discomfort about my conversation with the leader of Six, “what exactly does boundary patrol entail?”
“Unfortunately, it’s not particularly exciting. We’ll walk around and through the grounds to see if anything looks suspicious. We won’t find anything, of course, but it’s good to be proactive with the increase in attacks. Plus, this time of year it’s actually kind of peaceful. The rest of campus is tucked inside, so it’s just you and the great outdoors, wandering through the woods and listening to the sounds.”
When he put it that way, it didn’t sound too bad. “Do we have time to swing by the cabin? I’d like to grab a jacket.” It also wasn’t lost on me that I was still wearing a sports bra crusted over with blood, but I didn’t want to postpone our duties too long—a shower would have to wait unfortunately.
Eli shrugged out of his hunter green zip-up hoodie and draped it around me. A warm, intoxicating scent filled my nose, and I shivered at the way his body heat still lingered in the fabric.
“Won’t you be cold?” I asked, hoping like hell that it was too dark outside for him to see the blush covering my cheeks.
“Nah, I run hot,” he said, with an exaggerated wink. “Now that we have a pleasantly long walk ahead of us, you can spill all the details on your fight with Reza and how you kicked Atlas’s ass.”
“I didn’t kick Atlas’s ass,” I said, rolling my eyes but grinning nonetheless.
“Hey, a guy can dream.”
I filled him in on Headmistress Alleva’s chilly disposition towards her daughter, catching a thoughtful, almost sad look on Eli’s face several times during that part of the story. I wanted to ask what he was thinking about, but Eli seemed quieter than usual, more interested in just listening to me as we carved our chaotic path through the trees.
He was surprisingly easy to talk to, so I mentioned my dream with Wade and happening upon the girl in the lab. He took in every detail with rapt attention, like every syllable I uttered was of utmost importance to him.
Eventually, we made our way to a familiar spot.
“Your lake,” I said, my voice low and hushed as I walked up to the large pond and studied the way the moon reflected onto the obsidian glass-like water. It was just as peaceful as I’d remembered—maybe even more so after such a turmoil-filled day. I watched as small fish created tiny ripples of concentric circles, as the gentle breeze blew wind and debris around my feet. “I forgot how beautiful it was.”
Warmth spread through my right hand and I looked down to see Eli’s fingers laced with mine. He didn’t say anything for a long moment, but he pulled me down to the ground so that we were seated together, my side pressed up against his like we were glued.
I contemplated the way that he watched the water. So much focus, so much awe. But underneath it all, there was a layer of something nefarious, something dark, like he was being haunted by something, my hand an anchor keeping him grounded.
“When my mother left us, this is where I would come. Every night, for months, I’d sit out here and try to imagine the places that she was traveling through, the monsters she was fighting. I tried to imagine what kind of life she was living, what kind of life would take her away from us. It had to be great, right?” His voice was so soft, nothing more than a whisper, and I held my breath as he spoke. Tightening my hold on his hand so that he knew that I was here, that I was listening. “I snuck out successfully for weeks, until one night my father stopped by my room but couldn’t find me. He went sick with worry, waking up every member of his old team, trying desperately to figure out where I’d gone.” He took a heavy breath in, his teeth worrying over his bottom lip. “He told me years ago that he thought I’d left too, that my mother had come back in the dead of night to steal me away, to make his isolation complete. Eventually, of course, he found me here. And for weeks, we’d meet here and sit, until it was so late we couldn’t tell if it was night still or if the day had crossed into morning.
“He doesn’t come back here often, not for the last couple years anyway. But it’s still our spot, still the space where the world goes quiet, just a little, just for a moment.”
“I’m sorry,” I said, even though I hated when people said that—apologized as if that would bring the person they missed back, provide some balm for an impossible wound. But it was all I could think to say.
At first. Because in some ways, it was a familiar story.
“Sometimes,” I started, “when I was growing up, I would imagine that my mother—wherever she was—was living these grand adventures, or that she was kidnapped by rogues, waiting for me to save her. When Ro moved in, he’d build the stories with me, until eventually we had this whole mythology about who she was, and why she’d left me with Cyrus. Never once did he allow me to sink into the despair that she was dead, or that she simply didn’t want me. He couldn’t stand me feeling that pain, dealing with the heavy agony he went through when his own parents died.”
“What was your favorite story you dreamed up about her?” Eli asked, leaning his weight against me like I was his wall, built for no other reason than to keep him steady.
I shrugged, turning to face him once more, focused on the way his eyes transitioned from brown to amber. “I don’t remember any o
f them. Because while those stories were necessary for me at one point, eventually, in building them, Ro became my family. And I didn’t need them anymore. Didn’t need to know what happened to her or why she left. I just needed him—just Ro and Cyrus. And before I knew it, I was happy. And I felt safe. Loved, even.”
It felt strange, to say these things out loud, to whisper them into the dark with a boy I barely knew, with a boy who typically seemed so focused on using his cheekiness to keep people at arm’s length. But Eli was different here. He was stripped down somehow. And after his story, after showing me his own wound, it seemed like the thing to do—to offer my own for him to see.
I looked down—for no longer than a moment—to stare at the way our hands knotted together, to soothe the fluttering in my stomach. When I looked back up, Eli’s face was several inches closer to mine. He looked into my eyes with a heady focus, a silent question in his eyes.
And when he found the answer he was looking for, he closed the distance between us, until his lips were hugging mine, skin against skin.
His tongue pressed against my bottom lip and I gasped in surprise—an invitation for Eli to deepen the kiss. A heavy weight started to build in my chest, like a grip against my ribs, and I matched every stroke of his tongue with one of my own as we eagerly learned the feel and taste of each other. His left hand moved behind my back, drawing me closer to him, as his right snaked up my arm and tangled itself into my hair. I could feel the light sting of him ripping a strand or two out as he tried to reposition himself, a sensation that strangely sent a tingling feeling through my body. He bit my lip softly between his teeth, creating an intoxicating blend of pleasure and pain. I gasped into his mouth, and he swallowed it eagerly, until a low groan seemed to climb up his chest.
Wanting to reposition myself, I opened my eyes, just a crack, and every muscle in my body froze.
Bright yellow eyes peered out at me from between the trees behind us and I could just make out the large, beastly shape of a wolf.
Noticing my stillness, Eli stopped and pulled away, his lips plump and red, his eyes glazed with lust. “What’s wrong? Was that too much?”
“The wolf,” I said, pointing behind him. “It’s real.”
Fast as lightning, Eli spun around and stood, every muscle in his body edged with tension. “Where?”
I looked into the woods, staring at the yellow eyes, and when I opened my mouth again, they were gone. “It was just there. You didn’t see it?”
“No, I didn’t see it,” he echoed, his voice distant, like he was distracted all of a sudden. “Must’ve been a play of light or maybe you saw just a regular wolf. They’re known to go through these parts on occasion.”
“No I—” I thought back, to the first werewolf I’d seen. I was sure this one looked like that one. That it was real and not some figment of my imagination.
“No, Max. There’s nothing there. I don’t hear anything large stirring in the trees. You’ve had a long day, it’s possible your body is just exhausted from healing and then—” He didn’t finish the sentence, letting the memory of our kiss linger. His eyes dropped from mine, as he stared at the grass. “I’m sorry, we shouldn’t have—I, I shouldn’t have done that. Do you forgive me? Can we just forget it happened?”
Stunned, I nodded. Did he not feel that? How good we fit, locked together like that?
A small, sad smile tipped the corner of his lips and something in his eyes flayed me alive.
Regret.
He wished that we didn’t kiss. Hell, he probably wished he didn’t tell me about his mom either. About this place.
He shoved his hand into his pocket and turned around. “We should go.”
A loud rustling filled our quiet scene, as I tried to untangle the past few minutes into something that was familiar, that made sense.
Declan emerged from the trees, her piercing green eyes studying Eli with complete concentration, like the two were locked in a silent conversation or battle.
“It’s clear out here,” she said, her words crisp and cold, like steel. “Atlas said we can head back home after another round.”
Without so much as looking back at me, Eli walked towards her. “Dec, why don’t you take Max for the last pass, I have to go take care of something but we’ll talk later.”
Chapter Twelve
Max
My nightmares were filled with a pair of vibrant, yellow eyes stalking my every move. And when I woke up the next day, the house was filled with a chilling silence. Stretching, I walked to the door to search for everyone, but all that I found was a hasty note taped to my door. No information, other than the fact that they had protector business to handle today and I was to stay out of trouble and be home by nightfall.
Who the hell did they think they were?
Be home by nightfall.
I wasn’t a child. And why didn’t anyone wake me and ask me to join them? Alleva made it abundantly clear yesterday that we were supposed to accompany our teams on all protector business, whenever possible. That’s the only way we were going to learn—by observing and doing. It was Sunday, not like I had anything else to do with my time. And the last thing I needed was another reason to be on Alleva’s bad side.
My stomach tightened with the weight of a heavy ball at the thought of last night. Had Eli mentioned the wolf? Did he really think I was seeing things? Were they afraid that I wasn’t good enough—capable enough? That I couldn’t be taken seriously?
Too many of those possibilities rang with an unsettling truth that made me itch with discomfort.
And I wouldn’t let myself so much as think about the kiss, or the way I fell asleep with the soothing tingle of Eli’s lips still on my skin. As if things weren’t already awkward and tense enough in this house as it was. Boundary crossing created a whole next level of complexity. And between Eli’s direct rejection after the kiss and Declan’s almost silent patrol following it, I didn’t think I could handle much more emotional whiplash where Six was concerned. If the three of them weren’t already begging Alleva to kick me out, I had a feeling they would be soon.
I took a deep breath in and out, trying to practice some of the meditation techniques Cy was always rambling about. They never worked on me. My mind was an annoying beast that wouldn’t shut the fuck up half the time.
Fuming, I crinkled the paper into a ball and tossed it into the hallway, happy to let them find it. Generally, I wasn’t a very passive aggressive person, but in my current mood, I was willing to make an exception.
I left the house, in search of Ro or Izzy. If my team wasn’t going to include me in whatever they were doing today, maybe theirs would. I didn’t want to sound needy, but wasn’t the whole point of this apprenticeship that we were supposed to shadow our teams and learn from them?
I found Izzy, Ro, and the rest of the members of Ten sitting at our usual breakfast table and I clamped down on the jealousy pooling in my belly. My eyes briefly lingered on the table where Atlas and his team usually sat, but they weren’t there. After piling my plate high with eggs, bacon, and some pancakes, I sat down with the group, letting myself be enveloped by the positive vibes radiating from Izzy and Sharla.
They were planning a movie night for later this week and invited me along. For a moment, I thought about seeing if Declan was interested in coming by too, before remembering that she didn’t seem to want to be around me at all. Which sucked, because she seemed to fit in great when she came to our last one. She got along well with Izzy and was able to dish out witty movie commentary just as quickly as Ro. What had changed since then to suddenly make her so distant?
All of a sudden, as if my body could sense the tension, I turned around and saw Cyrus and Seamus in what looked like a heated argument with a man. He was short and rather stocky for a protector, and his body was draped in what appeared to be a large lab coat. Though it was thinning on top, something about his deep red hair seemed familiar. His posture was stiff and haughty, which surprised me. I’d be buckling under
Cyrus’s mood if I was him.
Nothing about Cyrus’s stance and tense face probably read as unusual to most of the people in the room. He was generally a pretty standoffish guy and I hadn’t seen him around too many protectors other than his brother since we arrived. But there was something lethal in his stance now, in the stillness surrounding him. It was like every nerve in his body was on edge, frayed somehow.
I didn’t know Seamus very well, but his body language matched his brother’s like a mirror, inch for inch.
Something was off. I’d shared a house with the man nearly every day of my entire life and pissed him off more times than I could count—daily. The level of anger radiating around him was like nothing I’d ever been on the receiving end of before.
Who was he talking to?
“Dear old dad,” Jer said, as if I’d asked the question out loud. The heat of his breath brushed against the shell of my ear. I pushed back a few inches, not comfortable with the proximity, but he didn’t seem to notice. A darkness sank into his normally playful eyes, his posture more rigid than usual. The familiarity of the man’s hair made sense now.
In all the hours I’d spent around Jer, which had been considerable over the last few weeks, this was the first time his expression was anything but laid back, flirty, or friendly.
“I take it you don’t get along,” I said, cocking an eyebrow. I was intrigued to know the details but didn’t want to pry. Family stuff could be tricky.
“That’s putting it lightly,” Sharla said, her curls bouncing as she laughed at something Arnell said to her right. She continued speaking to Jer, but I more or less tuned them out, trying to discreetly study the older protectors without craning my neck too obviously. Stealth took practice and I had not mastered it yet. And if I was really being honest with myself, at this point, I wasn’t sure if I ever would.
I opened my mouth to change the subject, in case Jer didn’t want to talk about it, but instantly stopped. Hadn’t Izzy mentioned something about Jer’s dad being high up in research here? What if he and Cy were arguing about Ralph?