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“Look at that,” Ms. Ebon states. Her voice has far less pinch to it, even though she’s hanging onto her air of indifference. “Lovely.” She arranges some folders on her desk and clears her throat. “Miss Walker spoke of you to me.” She leans back in her chair, fingers steepling in front of her. “Miss Adams, I hate to be the bearer of bad news but....”
Oh God. My heart takes off like a pack of stampeding wolves on the hunt. Did Ms. Ebon draw the short straw? Is she about to tell me Sean finally decided my fate?
I try to take a deep breath, and then another. Before I realize it, I’m drawing in short, quick gasps, air whistling through my chest while stars dot my vision.
Suddenly, Ms. Ebon is in my face, pencil skirt straining around her knees. “Deep breaths, Miss Adams. In,” she dictates, sucking in a lungful of air. “And release.”
I follow her, watching as her chest rises and falls with each slow, steady, exaggerated breath. I do as she tells me, mimicking her rhythm until I sigh in relief when I can breathe normally again.
Wonderful. Make her think you’re a total whack job.
“Okay,” Ms. Ebon says, gaze darting to me. “Good?”
I nod, sitting back in the chair and placing my palm over my beating heart.
She moves behind her desk again, her huge chair scraping against the wood at her feet. She places her hands on the flat surface before her, face softening now as she regards me. “I’ve had a visit from Lydia Greystone concerning you.”
My wolf bares her teeth inside me. I do my best to hide my own reaction, but when my wolf and I are on the same page, sometimes that’s impossible.
“I’m afraid it’s not good news,” she states. “She’s given your mate a time limit to make a decision.”
The floor opens up beneath me, and I fall into a hell, the depths of which I’ve not previously known before—and that’s saying something.
3
Panic flutters in my chest. It isn’t as bad as Sean already deciding to send me Feral, but it’s up there. There’s a time limit now. I’ll actually know the date I have to leave this place. I never liked Greystone Academy much, but the alternative is worse.
“Does that come as a shock to you?” Ms. Ebon asks.
Honestly, nothing comes as a shock to me anymore. I nibble on that thought to see if I should say it out loud. Whatever Kinsey thinks, Ms. Ebon does still work for Greystone. I’m not sure how far my insolence will get me.
“Should it?” I ask, trying and failing to keep the bitterness out of my tone. “I’ve been the longest matriculated student here ever. There had to be a day when that ride ended.”
Ms. Ebon glares at me. The look is so fierce that I’m almost taken aback by it. I’m the one that was told I’m on death row with an execution date, so shouldn’t I be giving her that look?
I wonder how long I’ll last outside the pack boundaries alone?
My mind swerves to Nathan. He’ll be here all by himself. Well, if he doesn’t follow me soon after.
“Miss Adams?” Ms. Ebon’s sharp tone makes me focus on her again. She leans back in her seat. “You seem resolved. I assumed since you were a friend of Kinsey’s you might be more....”
She weighs her next words, but I don’t give her a chance to voice them. “More prickly? Kinsey and Jonah didn’t have the weight of a year’s separation between them.” When I first came here, I tried so damn hard. I can still conjure the sting of his rejection as if I were feeling it for the first time. But lately, everything circles back to the standoff we’re having. “Sometimes, it’s even hard to remember Sean before he was an asshole to me.”
Inside, my wolf winces, and I don’t try to cover up the hurt. I have a working hypothesis that for wolves, the feeling of rejection is much more acute than for us as humans. For instance, when I’m fully shifted, I feel the tether pulling me back to Daybreak more than when I’m a human, but over the year, it’s lessened.
“So, you’ve decided to accept your fate?”
Just from the tone of her voice, I can tell Ms. Ebon thinks I’m wrong. Like I haven’t tried for a year to get Sean to see me as his mate instead of whatever the fuck is blocking him from accepting me. I’ve spent every ounce of my being on getting him back. I’m. Fucking. Exhausted. By it all. “What do you think I can do that I haven’t already tried?”
Ms. Ebon purses her lips as she regards me. My skin awakens at her inspection. Nathan is the only person who really sees me anymore. The shifters who walk these halls are just another statistic to manage for the authority figures here. Ms. Ebon, though, is actually looking at me as if I matter. She licks her bottom lip and pulls out a folder. “I wasn’t going to say prickly earlier. I was going to say fighter. Kinsey was a fighter. A stubborn one at that.” Her words come out on an exasperated sigh, but I’m pretty sure there’s some affection there, too.
“I’m a fighter,” I tell her. “I’ve been fighting.”
“Not with me in your corner,” she says flatly.
I rear back in surprise, my fingers sinking into the purple velvet of the armrest. “You’re going to help me? Is that even allowed?”
“I don’t have a student right now, and I have a very good success rate. Lydia Greystone herself asked me to take a look at your folder.”