Then he’d kissed me hard for a few seconds and vanished. When I tried reaching out to Maverick via the bond, the door remained shut from his end.
Maverick rarely closed his side of the bond. He’d told me early on that monitoring my emotions helped calm his bear because he’d know if I was in danger. Zane liked to check in with me for an entirely different reason. The minute something or someone turned me on, he was there, in my head.
Kai was the only one of my mates who maintained a respectful distance.
Alaric did, but I didn’t count him as my mate.
“Is Maverick not teaching us this afternoon?” Glynda looked almost as miserable as I felt when we surveyed the slushy field.
“No.” We reached the assembly area where the rest of our class huddled in small groups, the shifters shirtless as per usual. Kai jogged over immediately.
“Lightfoot’s in charge again,” he told us in a low voice.
“Lovely.” Memories of doing circuits on the obstacle course while the wolf shifter professor scrolled a dating app on his phone made me want to smite him.
“At least we won’t be doing the obstacle course today. The forest is off-limits now,” Glynda reminded me.
I huffed out a sigh of relief. Running laps of the sports field was both tedious and hideous, but I’d still choose that activity over an obstacle course designed for burly shifters, not pathetically unfit witches.
“I’ll stick with you.” Kai laced his fingers through mine. “I don’t trust some of these wolves not to harass you with Lightfoot in charge.”
Glynda nodded. “He’s right, plus Demelza’s here, and she definitely has it in for you these days.”
“Gosh. I feel blessed to be so popular.” Stars above, Kenji’s sarcasm was rubbing off on me.
The storm mage stood with his friends on the far side of the group. He laughed at something before slanting a look in my direction. Was the asshole laughing at me? It wouldn’t surprise me.
Demelza obviously thought so because she smirked at him. But to my surprise, Alaric looked right through her, as if she didn’t exist. The witch flushed and huffed before muttering to her friend and pretending she didn’t care that Alaric had snubbed her skanky ass. Then they both turned and sneered at me.
I gave her a finger wave and smiled. Beat the bullies with saccharine sweetness was my motto for today. It had never worked in the past, but I was too cold to start a fight.
“Gather round, everyone!” We shuffled closer as the female wolves preened and flicked their hair at Lightfoot.
“I thought student-teacher relationships were banned?” I watched the professor flex his muscles and wink at a female wolf with shiny blonde hair and enormous tits.
“They are unless it’s between soul-bonded mates. But Lightfoot is related to the guy who’s in charge of the Shifter Council, so I guess he thinks he can get away with it.” Glynda rolled her eyes. “Nepotism rules.”
“Since Professor Wilder has taken unexpected leave, I’m in charge of today’s lesson. That means we’re going to have some fun!” The wolf shifter contingent all hollered and whistled with excitement while I silently prayed for a demon to attack so we could go back to our dorms and hide. I’d rather deal with an ugly demon than run laps any day of the week.
“Instead of laps around the field, we’re going to play a game called Capture the Flag. You’ll each have a flag to carry. The aim of the game is to capture as many flags as possible. Anyone who loses their flag by the end of the lesson will do an hour of circuits each morning for the next seven days. The student with the most flags wins the game.”
“Can we use our shifter forms, sir?”
“Yes. If you can shift or you have magic, use those abilities. Anything goes in this game.” He paused for dramatic effect. “Apart from killing a fellow student…obviously.” He chuckled as if killing a student was the punchline to a joke.What a psycho.
“But accidents happen, sir,” Demelza piped up loudly while looking directly at me. “And if someone dies in an accident, that’s not our fault, right?”
“As long as nobody can prove you deliberately set out to harm a fellow student, then you should be exonerated.”
“What the actual fuck?” Glynda and I looked at each other in alarm. This didnotsound like fun. Was Lightfoot really saying killing was fine as long as nobody saw it?! Surely not.
Even Alaric looked worried, and he had no reason to be alarmed with his magic abilities.
He glanced my way, all traces of amusement gone. Did he think Demelza would try to murder me and claim it was an accident? It sure looked like it.
“Fuck, this is insane.” Glynda said what we were all thinking.
“We stick together, no matter what.” I was more worried about Glynda than about myself. I knew I could handle the likes of Demelza, but Glynda didn’t have fire magic like me.
