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Ornix addresses the class. “My mate is under the misconception that her connection with me makes her above the need to be polite in her classes. She is wrong, and I told her as much, but it has become obvious that a demonstration is necessary.”

I want to beg him not to do this, but begging him not to do this is more embarrassing than what is already happening, which is his hand meeting my ass with swift, hard slaps.

The class is dead silent. I stuff my hand into my mouth so I don’t cry out, so all anybody can hear is the sound of a massive dragon hand meeting my rear. He’s letting me keep my skirt down for the moment, but I have a feeling that could change.

Two dozen of those damn hard slaps land, pushing me past the ability to stay entirely quiet. I start to grunt, and then to whimper, and finally I am crying out as the entirety of my haunches start to feel like he’s turning them to molten lava under the world’s scratchiest silk skirt.

He puts me down on my feet, abandons me to my own balance. I don’t want to rub my ass, but I also want to rub it more than I want to do literally anything else in the world.

“Behave yourself, my love,” he says, dropping a kiss on my head. “I will see you at the end of the day.”

“Back into position,” Wraith says, following up as Ornix leaves.

I shuffle to the back of the class, ignoring everybody studiously, wanting to sink through the floor. I really wish I could just fucking disappear right now. I know I was running my mouth, but being spanked like that is the most humiliating thing that has ever happened to me.

I feel like I was just laid bare in front of everybody, as if everyone knows how ashamed I am. I hope they don’t know how wet that made me. It might have been a spanking intended to discipline, but I am the sort of girl who gets turned on by anything rough.

“Are you okay?” The girl next to me whispers the question.

“Thank you, yes,” I say, blinking back tears.

I can’t believe Ornix did that. No aftercare. No tenderness besides the little kiss. Just discipline and leaving me to my humiliation. I am definitely going to run the fuck away first chance I get. I am going to make them all regret this.

We get a break and I leave immediately, looking at nobody. I scoot up the stairs as quietly and unobtrusively as possible. I am absolutely burning with fury. How dare he correct me in front of others, how dare he turn me into an example. Just because I said something slightly out of pocket, he gets to publicly whip me? I don’t think so. I am not going to be disrespected like this. I amnot going to have to earn my place in a place that I was fucking abducted to in the first instance.

I push the door to Nox’s room closed behind me as soon as I sneak inside.

“Fuck!” Nox jumps up from his new bank of computers, which are now located further from the door, but not far enough to stop him from startling like a frightened gazelle when someone comes in.

“I thought you were him. Fuck!”

He looks nervous and skittish. But given what I know about Ornix, I don’t blame him. Everybody in this damn keep lives under the oversight of his whims and wills.

I wipe my eyes quickly and shake my head. “Not him.”

He stands up and walks over to me, frowning slightly. “What happened?”

“I got beaten because I didn’t want to act like Wraith is some genius and we’re all the sorry people,” I say. It doesn’t really make sense. It doesn’t have to. Tone contains the emotion.

“Yeah. I don’t know why he’s putting you through that. He could have organized private tuition for you. The whole thing seems designed to make your life as hard as possible for no real reason.”

“I want to go back home,” I say, nervous because I know what I am about to ask him to do is fully insane and he will get in more trouble than either one of us can probably fathom if he actually does it. “I know you got in a lot of trouble last time, but… could you… open another portal for me? Shit, I’m so sorry, no, forget I asked. That was fucked up of me. I’m just…”

Nox shrugs, reaches out and ruffles my hair. “Don’t worry about it,” he says with a smile that’s way brighter than I expected. “I’m happy to help. I’ll get you out of here. I was always going to get you out of here.”

Hope rises in place of the shame I was carrying for daring to ask.

“You’ll do it? Really? He’ll fucking kill you.”

“Not this time,” he says with a reckless grin that makes my hope lift and nervous butterflies start dancing in my stomach. “This time I’m coming with you. You’re not the only one who is done with sitting here, being at the mercy of a king who does not care for anything besides maintaining tradition, separation, and his own rule.”

“We have to do it now. They will come looking for me when I don’t go back to class after the meal break, and then Ornix will probably come and look for me and whip me again, and fuck that.”

“I’m not ready just yet,” he says. “This time, I need to prepare properly so I don’t end up in his fucking dungeon again. You might have to go back to the class until I can prepare properly. And you might need to think about what you’re going to do this time. Because I won’t be the only one he comes for. He will hunt you down, and there is now a dungeon cell with smaller bars that will fit you perfectly.”

“There is not.”

“There is. Go look for yourself. He saw how you walked in and out of my cell and he had adjustments made. Why would he do that unless he intended to confine a human? There’s only one human in this entire realm.”