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“Yes, when there is a city at your back. What would you do surrounded by rutting males ten times your size with no one to keep you safe? What would follow is unspeakable. Is that how you want to die?”
Swallowing, I shook my head, and a shaky exhale rattled out. I needed a moment to formulate a rebuttal. A moment to gather myself and prepare a reasonable argument.
Yet, he ruined that… all by broaching the subject—the inspection, the comments on my appearance—he must have been leading to from the start. “You’ve grown into a beautiful woman.”
And I had been of age for four years. If I couldn’t have the fog… yet, if I wanted out of the academy, there was only one other way.
Humans got to tour the city, go to restaurants, dance, and mingle without armed guards acting under the pretense of their protection. Hybrid females had only a single alternative to graduation.
Cutting my suspicious gaze back to the bastard, I found him measuring meagainin that way that made my skin and scales tingle.
And it was getting to me. I was blushing and uncomfortable in an instant. “I have no intention of adding my name tothe list.”
A list of willing breeders registered to meet every unmated male until one of them recognized her as his mate. There was no undoing it once that was done. Like the vorec we hunted, hybrid males mated for life. I would go from one choiceless hell to another.
A mate was not the answer.
And adding my name tothe listwas one thing even Cyderial could not command. Females of my kind had full autonomy over reproduction. Gestation only occurred with female intention. Bearing children could not be forced. If it could, God only knew what would have happened to girls like me in humanity’s desperation to survive a world they didn’t belong to.
“You do not need to be afraid of your mate.”
I scoffed. “Don’t I?Youcame to the academy and ordered girls to no longer engage with their brothers. You tore our family in half, creating rules stating that if a boy so much as looked at us, they could be killed, and we could be punished for enticing them.Youtaught me about rape.Youmurdered a boy for doing math with me. Math! Eluding that my life would have been ruined if he’d gotten his appendage inside me. Why would I want to hand my life over to someone who chose me from a catalog, but I could not be alone within my home?” Eyeing him with the full measure of my anger, I spoke his truth with my lips. “What fragment of my life has been improved by knowing men?”
The look on his face, that hint of astonishment as the cold veneer cracked, fed me to go on. “You want me to let some man change me to such a fundamental point that wild animals will know that I have been claimed? No. And knowthis. Enjoying children does not mean I want to birth one, only for it to be taken away and forced to live in this hell. I should have been with my mother. We all should have. We are people! Even if I were to be forced to mate one of you, I will never give a child to the academy. Send me out into the fog, because I am useless on every other level. I would rather die, crushed by rampaging, horny vorecs.”
If the monster had a heart, it looked like it might have just cracked. Voice gravel, he said, “You misunderstand the role your male will play in your life. Just as you fail to grasp that men aremade—through rigorous training and self-discipline. Boys are not the same. They are as unpredictable as their vorec counterparts. And just as dangerous.”
“Bullshit.” I was more than just a cunning, deceitful student. I was a woman with nothing to lose and nothing to look forward to. “Let meclearlyexplain that I will not fornicate with one of the males to maybe, just maybe, get to explore the fog one day. I deserve the post of surveyor, and I won’t whore myself out to achieve it. Do you understand me,sir?”
Whatever had come over him faded as quickly as it came. Cold-blooded, disinterested, he stared his stare and stated, “I think you should sit down and catch your breath before you pass out.”
Okay, I’d been tearing at my collar in my rage, talons catching the fabric and making space for air. The damn thing was so tight. The whole ill-fitting jacket a nightmare of confinement. “Women have breasts! These stupid coats are cut for male bodies. You think I want to bind my chest to fit into this ridiculous uniform?”
He moved as if to stand. “I can get you some water.”
“I don’t want water!” I could not have screwed up this meeting more, the tragedy of it bleeding away my sanity. Grief was very real. Visceral. I could literally feel my hearts sinking in my chest. I’d gone from distraught, to rabid, to full-on hysterical.
Even the tight binding constricting my ribs could not fully muffle the pulsing, loud drumming that warned all who could hear it that I was unsafe to be near. That I might attack. My vorec call stuck between hissing and aggressive thumps.
Cornered animals were always the most dangerous.
Despite my protest, a cold glass of water was pressed into my hands—a sheer relief to swallow when breathing would allow. Fervently, I sucked it down, negligent of my strength and accidentally shattering the glass in my grip into bits.
That startled me enough to snap me completely out of madness.
The drumming ended.
Looking at my hands, the little cuts and the droplets of water, I watched my skin mend itself and lost all hope.
Cool and collected, as if I hadn’t just signed my own death certificate and gone stark raving mad, General Cyderial ordered me away. “I am placing you under one week of confinement in the women's dorm. Cry if you want to. Shout. Steal another rock from my shelf on your way out, if that’s what it takes. But understand me—you arenotgoing into the fog.”
I could not risk making the mistake of looking at him again. Dignity exhausted, I staggered toward the door. I only allowed myself to marvel over the fact that, for the last ten years, he’d known I stole something right in front of him. I had never been punished for it.
My pretty pink geode hadn’t been a fun secret after all.
This time, there was no haphazard snatching of one of his fancy rocks on my way out. Instead, I took hold of one of his precious display cases and pulled until it fell away from the wall. Pretty little baubles cracked and scattered all over his polished wood floor.
The tiny bit of destruction did make me feel slightly better.
