Page 349 of A University of Betrayal

I would have loved to tell Nickolas how much I didn’t care about his opinion, but all I could do was stand there in silence and let his rebuke wash over me because I knew he now had something he could use against me. Until he finally decided he was done with me and marched back to the pack.

I must have stood there rooted to the spot for a while until someone shook me by the arm.

“Julian, hey. I’ve been looking for you.”

Bayla had finally reappeared and was looking around frantically in all directions.

I would carry her out of here myself if anyone from the Circle came and wanted her. Maybe my anger was getting the better of me, but I didn’t care.

“You should dance with her,” I heard Bayla’s voice next to me and looked in a daze in the direction she was pointing, and then I caught sight of Emely standing there like a pillar of salt, looking at me.

After that conversation with her father, she reminded me even more of what I most wanted to avoid. That miserable pack of wolves!

I turned my back to her and held out my hand to Bayla. “Distract me.” She placed her hand in mine, confused.“Please.”It was almost a whisper.

Say You Won’t Let Go

ItsAMoney

With those words, I pulled my neighbor girl, who I never expected to become my best friend, onto the dance floor, and we began to dance.

She didn’t say anything, just watched my facial expressions, and I was grateful that she was here, even if I couldn’t bring myself to say it. I felt like a pile of broken shards, and Bayla glued me back together, just for the moment, but that was enough for half an eternity.

I looked at Bayla, taking in her scrutinizing gaze. “I hope you won’t hold it against me if I can’t dance.”

Bayla just laughed and came closer, making it easier for me to lead her across the floor while counting the freckles around her nose to calm down a little.

“Don’t worry about it. I can’t either.”

Her words made me smile, and so we danced the easiest dance I’d ever danced without it feeling like it.

As we repeated our steps over and over again, I felt what was living inside me, what I wanted so much to separate from me, relax and disappear back into its dark hole.

A shadow suddenly flitted past me and I looked up to see that it was Miles. Another shadow followed him... Emely. I watched them pass, looked at Emely, and didn’t understand why they were suddenly dancing.

Hadn’t she hated him? And hadn’t he tried to make her life difficult?

I saw Emely’s overwhelmed look and felt the urge to go to her and get her out of this awkward situation, but Bayla pushed me further away so that another couple could get between us and them.

“Don’t do it,” she whispered.

“She looks like she’s uncomfortable,” I protested, searching among the dancers for Emely, who was – for whatever reason – at war with this Ruisangor. She had probably gotten herself into trouble, and now he was out for revenge. And that in front of the damn pack...

“Emely can take care of her own problems. If Miles pisses her off, she’ll just leave. He can’t do anything to her. Not here. And he wouldn’t.”

Bay seemed to think well of him and, so far, he hadn’t made any notable missteps in my presence.

I had overheard an argument between the two of them, but I didn’t know how much they really hated each other. But judging by Emely’s principles, she loathed Ruisangors just as much as her father and the rest of the pack did.

“I have a feeling you’re confusing her.”

I turned my head to Bayla and found despair in her two peculiar eyes.

“In what way?”

Bayla spoke in a calm and understandable way, as if the words themselves were getting to her.

“She always comes to you, you reject her,” images of the campus flashed through my mind, where Emely had come to me almost every morning. “Then you ask her out, but leave her standing there, and instead of apologizing, you make her wait...” More images of her sitting next to me on the tree house... and eventually giving me angry and sad looks.