Page 107 of A Knight’s Revenge: The Complete Series

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

JOLIE

I t was an odd feeling, remembering that it was only about six months ago that I sat where our classmates did, watching with something like awe—or trepidation—as the Heirs entered the dining hall for the first time, striding down the aisle between the long tables like the royalty they were in this City.

Despite the massive shift in the City at large since then, not much had changed in this hall, and those awed eyes were now on me just as much as my boys as we entered, ready to grab breakfast and get back in the swing of school after our blissful week locked away in my tower.

“Still getting used to it, Princess?” Zach murmured from next to me, his fingers threaded lazily through mine as we walked. “Hate to break it to you, but eyes were on you like this even when you were pretending to be a mouthy brat from the Southside.”

I elbowed him. “I was not a brat.”

Bennett tossed me a hard look over his shoulder. “You were and still are.”

Noah chuckled from beside him. “She behaves for me.”

We reached our table at the front, the seats on the end near the aisle left vacant for us as usual. We sat, and Bennett’s dark look in my direction intensified before he shot a skeptical glare at Noah. “Seriously?”

Noah shrugged, a smug grin now on his lush lips. “I ask her nicely. ”

Mari was already in her usual spot, and a few friendly faces were with her. “Ugh, chica, make them stop. We all get it, you kinky jerks. Be considerate—some of us are in a dry spell.”

I felt the color hit my cheeks, which only put cocky smiles on the faces of all three of my boyfriends. I glanced across the aisle and found Harper nestled among her remaining diehard Family-worshiping friends and staring at me with a look of such profound hatred that I almost shivered.

Almost—because Harper Jansen didn’t fucking scare me.

“That deluded bitch is still wearing her ring,” I muttered to Bennett, who had just returned to the table with a plate of bacon and eggs that he slid in front of me.

His jaw tensed, but he didn’t spare Harper a look. “My father has probably promised the Jansens that I’ll return to the fold well ahead of the actual wedding date set in the contract. He thinks I’m having some kind of temper tantrum.”

I cocked a brow at him. “I believe you accused me of the same thing at the beginning of the semester.”

He grinned—a little sheepish, at least—before reaching for my hand and lifting it to his lips to press a sweet kiss there. “I remember, and I was wrong, Angel.”

I was about to request that he please repeat that statement while I recorded it for posterity when we were interrupted.

“Spencer!” a happy, deep voice boomed, then Hatcher Robicheaux bounded up to our table, his twin brother Hans in tow.

Bennett rolled his eyes almost affectionately at two of the only guys on the men’s crew team that he seemed to actually like as they swarmed his spot at the head of the table.

“Dude, the lacrosse team has challenged the crew team to a paintball battle,” Hatcher said, punching Bennett playfully in the shoulder while the rest of our table tried not to look mildly horrified by that.

“Those little bitches have been talking a lot of shit, and we need you to play. Hans says he heard you’re a fucking crack shot. ”

“It is what they say,” Hans agreed with a cheeky grin.

“I’m alright,” Bennett replied with a casual shrug. “I’m not as good as Noah, though.”

Hatcher pouted. “It’s crew team only, man. Hargraves is out. ”

“Bummer,” Noah muttered as he sipped his coffee, not sounding bummed in the slightest.

“But,” Bennett went on, a slow, evil smile spreading across his handsome face. “You know who’s almost as sharp as Noah? Jolie Knight—and she happens to be on the crew team.”

“ Bennett ,” I grumbled. “Paintball? Really?”

Hatcher’s dial had already been cranked back up to exuberant. “Jolieeeee! Come on, we need you. It’s gonna be super fun, and Spencer will play if you will—I know it. Pleeeeease.”

Bennett was really grinning now. “Come on, Angel. Live a little. A pretend gun battle—how exciting .”

I glared at him over Zach and Noah’s snickers, but now Hatcher and Hans were both giving me some serious puppy-dog eyes.

“Sure,” I said, capitulating after about five seconds. “Let’s go spray the lacrosse idiots with paint pellets. I’m so pumped.”

I stared across the wide expanse of the farmland that made up Rodney Blaze’s Paintball Park. It was nearly dusk, but the waning light of the clear spring day afforded me enough visibility to take in the course before the stadium lighting that bordered the field would be switched on.

It looked like someone had raided a junkyard and scattered every item across the field that could conceivably be used to shield a human body.

There were rusty metal feed troughs, several canoes, numerous pieces of metal siding out of which a bunch of huts had been constructed, and even a hollowed-out school bus painted in brown camouflage like it would somehow blend into the trampled, dying grass.

The course extended through the tall trees that bordered the field, and the soft bubbling of the nearby creek was just perceptible over the symphony of insect noises playing us into the evening.

Once the men’s crew team had agreed to meet the lacrosse team’s challenge, one of those entitled assholes had pulled strings to clear out Rodney’s facility a mere forty-eight hours later, so here we were, in the middle of a fucking school week, standing in a field five miles north of the City while a bunch of testosterone-drunk boys got hyped to shoot at each other with pretend guns .

“Don’t look so excited, sweetheart,” Noah called from where he lounged on a hay bale at the entrance to the course. “It’ll all be over in an hour, and then we can get you your fancy dinner sandwich.”

I scowled. “Don’t remind me that I’m hangry, Noah.”

Zach laughed from where he reclined next to Noah. “I fear for the lacrosse team, Princess. Remember your briefing: no headshots allowed.”

Those two, here for guard duty, were enjoying the hell out of this. Bennett smirked down at me, his goggles sitting on top of his black beanie just as mine were, while we watched Rodney, the grizzled old owner of the place, bark instructions at the rest of our group.

“Damn, you guys must be desperate if you’re recruiting from the girl’s team,” one of the lacrosse guys commented to Hans before he shot me a patronizing look. “We’ll go easy on her, though. No one wants to be responsible for bruising the delicate skin of the Knight Heir.”

I bared my teeth at the douche, who was the team captain, I was pretty sure. “Why don’t you ask Cameron over there how delicate I am in a fight?”

All eyes slid to Cameron Murphy, the mullet-headed asshole whose knee I fucked up when he and Chad attacked me after the A Dorm party last semester. He wore a titanium knee brace over his black fatigues, and his face reddened at the attention as he looked anywhere but at me.

The death stare Bennett now aimed at him would’ve had anyone pissing their pants. He let Cameron squirm for a few seconds before turning those intense green eyes on me. “Angel, did he fucking touch you?”

“Not really. I broke his knee and knocked him out cold before he could do much besides call me slum trash.”

Everyone stared at me in wary silence for a beat, then the lacrosse captain spat, “Un-fucking-believable, Murphy. Now Spencer’s going to take your head off in the first thirty seconds. You’re fucking useless to us.”

“Alright!” Rodney shouted at us. “Green team, move out through the trees to the second half of the course. Blue team will start on this side. Remember, if a paint pellet is broken anywhere on your body, you’re out.

Exit the course through any gate in the perimeter fence and return to this spot.

If you get lost out there, I’m not coming to fucking find you. ”

Fair enough, Rodney .

The lacrosse team—wearing dark green vests over their matching black fatigues—dispersed out into the field and disappeared into the trees.

Our team wore navy vests over our own black clothes, and I watched in amusement as they all became very serious as they combed over the junkyard to find the best places to hide.

“Ready, Angel?” Bennett asked, pulling his goggles down over his eyes. “If you manage more kills than me tonight, I’ll reward you by letting you put my cock in your mouth.”

Noah laughed. “So generous, Spencer.”

I gave Bennett a savage grin as I pulled my own goggles down and adjusted my beanie. “And in the unlikely event you beat my kill count, I’ll reward you by sitting on your face while I suck your cock.”

Bennett let out a pained groan, adjusting himself in his fatigues as the other two howled.

“Did that backfire on you, Spencer?” Zach called.

Rodney sounded the starting bell before Bennett could respond.

With one last wave at Zach and Noah, I bolted for the trees, intent on taking out all of our opponents before the hour was up so that I could return to the Academy to finish my homework, eat my sandwich, and snuggle up naked with any or all of my boys.

Sometime later, I stalked quietly through the trees, headed into green team territory like the silent, deadly predator I was.

Bennett and I were in a dead-even heat on kills, and I knew there were at least three more lacrosse assholes hiding in the woods, because I’d seen them flee this way like a bunch of babies after I’d taken out four of their group from behind an old tractor parked at the tree line.

Bennett had indeed eliminated Cameron from the game within the first minute by nailing him with a clean shot right to the base of the throat, causing him to collapse to the ground and gasp for air like he was dying until one of his teammates dragged him across the field to dump him unceremoniously by the fence line.

Then Bennett and I had stuck together for a bit—an unstoppable and frankly unfair force, the two of us—but he’d just peeled off to chase a few stragglers back into blue team territory.

I knew he wanted to beat me, and I welcomed the challenge. I was maybe kind of actually having fun out here, putting my skills to use in a non-life-threatening situation for once.

Later, I’d kick myself for having those sorts of thoughts, because it just wasn’t the life I’d chosen to live.

The snapping of a branch caught my ear, and I whirled just in time to catch a green-vested body duck behind a boulder that sat in a small clearing. I advanced, creeping from tree to tree and working my way around to the side to see if I could get a clear shot.

When I finally darted out from my chosen tree, ready to fire, my opponent did the same, his weapon raised high and aimed right at my head.

That is not a fucking paintball gun.