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That’s too fucking bad, sweet cheeks. You’re out of here. Gone. You’ll get used to it.
I wasn’t going to say that—I was about to say something like, “Don’t worry, this is a great adventure!” or some such shit. I didn’t get the chance, because just as I opened my mouth, my phone rang. I looked down, saw it was Caelum, and put it to my ear. “What?”
I heard rasping, “Bring her back…” It sounded like Caelum was having trouble breathing or something. I had never heard him sound this bad, and I’d seen him the day after Mardi Gras.
“What do you mean? What’s wrong?” I asked, lifting my brow.
“Bond… It’s the bond… mark… killing me…” he gasped, and then I just heard breathing on the other line, rasping in and out, trying to form more words, but they weren’t sensible.
“You got it, boss,” I assured, then immediately had the driver turn the car around. “We need to go back.”
My mate looked at me, a little crease appearing on her forehead. “What?”
My heart was pumping; I didn’t know what was wrong with Caelum exactly, but I’d known him too well, for too long to think for a second that this was a fuck-around moment. “And go fast,” I barked to the driver.
The sound of my order made Kaci’s back straighten and she sat back in the seat like a reprimanded kid. She sat very quietly while I dialed Rog. I had to try him three times before the call went through.
“You know I’m teaching a class, right?” he asked me in lieu of civilities.
“You think I give a fuck? Go see Caelum now. Something’s up. And then call me and give me an update. I meannow, motherfucker. Not in five minutes.” I hung up the phone before Rog had a chance to respond. I knew that he was a little full of himself, but he was an obedient pack mate. He would do as I asked.
“Is something wrong with Dr. Hawthorne?” Kaci asked, looking at me with those sweet little baby blues.
“No, he’s fine,” I lied. Honestly, I wondered if he’d ever be fine again. WouldIever be fine?
And what the fuck was the plan now? I had no fucking idea—I wasn’t the planner. I was the doer. That was the arrangement. That was why I was in this stupid car being tortured right now.
Now what was I supposed to do? Take her all the way back home? Why? So I could do thisagain? Was that even possible? I was really hoping Caelum was just having a run-of-the-mill heart attack right now. I hadn’t wished that sort of thing on anyone before, but it was preferable to the mating bond being a real thing.
Did males get weird if their female was gone? Yeah, but like, not three hours away. They could put thousands of miles between them if necessary and just get a little squirrely. Maybe Caelum was different—he was more purebred than I was. Maybe that was why?
Still, if Caelum couldn’t have her more than a couple of hours away, then this girl would be too close all the time. This was the opposite of thejoie de vivrelifestyle we thought we had in the bag, and she was a fucking liability to boot. She grew up human, not Lycan. She didn’t understand our ways. She thought that the only rules she had to follow were the ones in Hunter’s Physics 101 class.
I wanted to beat the shit out of someone right now, but I couldn’t figure out who. This was someone’s fault; I could just feel it.
I glanced over. The little female was still looking at me, looking for answers. Well, she could look her little fucking tits off, I had nothing to tell her. On Saturday night, Caelum and I had gone through our plans. He’d thought of sister institutions and special programs, ways to make this work. He’d thought of blackmailing her just to get her little ass on the plane if she didn’t want to go. He’d thought of every angle, and it had almost worked.
My plan had been to just to lock her in the bedroom, chain her to a bed, and fuck her whenever we wanted. I understood why Caelum ignored my plan—it was stupid, it was cruel, it didn’t address a multitude of problems: her family, her friends, the fact that girls couldn’t just disappear off of the face of the Earth anymore. That, and our wolves were going to go apeshit on us for treating our woman like a pet.
But the alternative wasn’t great, either. Our pack was in no way designed to include mates. Everyone was perfectly happy bringing home human poontang. Besides, we’d already had a sit-down with the boys and explained that evenwewere getting rid of our mate in the best way possible. Everybody was happy about it, and this was a pack that was so individually distinct that they were never happy about shit at the same time. It had been a first.
“Where are we going? Back, right? I can just move back into the dorm,” she mentioned, finally interested in a chat, because that was what this moment needed. She was hiking her thumb towards the side window.
“You’re not moving back into the dorm. In fact,” she looked like she was going to say something to that, so I lied, “we reassigned your dorm already.” I felt pretty good about that, even though she obviously didn’t. She was glaring at me now, big time, so I kept thinking of stuff on the fly to keep her from the university, keeping the plan of moving her away in motion. “We’re transferring you off-campus. There’s a mansion the campus keeps for galas and the like. You’ll stay there until your living arrangements in California are figured out. I guess things aren’t moving like they’d planned on their end.”
Not bad. Between events, nobody went up to the mansion except the pack every now and then. We could get this to look normal. We could wait out this problem. Maybe Caelum was just havinga weird heart thing, it wasn’t the mating bond, and then we’d just proceed with his plan.
The only problem seemed to be how my brain was filtering through all the places I could fuck her in that mansion. Oh, it was numerous. I’d always wanted to fuck someone on that kitchen floor. I didn’t know why, it just always seemed like that room needed it…
“This is dumb, everything was going great this morning. How about I just do more of that? Finish out the trimester at the very least? Or hell, I can go home.”
She wasn’t going fucking home. Her home was three hours away. Caelum wouldn’t make it. Well, he wouldn’t make it if she was in California, either… So, we needed time to figure this out. There had to be a way.
“Do you want to lose all your credits from last year?” I asked, raising an eyebrow at her, trying to intimidate her.
It didn’t work and now she was pouting. “No,” she replied.
“Then deal with the plan and be happy with it,” I advised, and my phone finally rang.
