Page 356 of A University of Betrayal

Those last words were just a breath before his hand slipped from mine. The gleam escaped his eyes. All expression slipped from his face.

Another love – slowed + reverb

slo, twilight, Tazzy

I stared at him.

“What’s going on?” Amara Blair’s voice sounded behind us, and I heard more people enter the campus.

I stared at my father, who was looking up at the sky with open eyes.Empty.Lifeless.

“Damn it,Graham!” I heard Alarik gasp, immediately falling to the ground next to Miles and lifting the head of the man I’d calledDadfor nineteen years.

I couldn’t even break out of my stupor as Alarik shook him. Not when he looked up at me and said something that passed my ears.

“Oh, God,what are you all doing here?” I heard another voice behind me. It was Diana.

Alarik continued to shake Dad.To no avail.

“Graham!” Diana Adams screamed a short time later as she came rushing to kneel down beside him, just like Alarik.

“What have you done?!” the Alpha’s voice suddenly rang out behind us, and I heard Larissa answer him before I saw her being snatched away by Adrian DeLoughrey in the corner of my eye.

“We didn’t do it!” Larissa said angrily.

“Graham…” Diana sobbed and began to cry hard. She laid her head on his chest, but was pulled up by Amanda Westcode. She struggled, but the other Quatura was stronger.

“Take her away before Gloria shows up!” I heard Amara say angrily.

I heard a thousand voices behind me.

Gloria’s voice. “What’s going on?!”

The voice of a Ruisangor,Bastien.“Who killed the police chief?!”

Miles’s voice. “He was shot!”

Bastien’s again. “What are you doing here, boy?!”

And then Gloria’s. “What is your brood doing near our children?!”

A thousand voices, but not the one I needed most.My father’s.

I stared at him. The man I had wanted to say so much to. I hadn’t had another chance. Would never have another... Oh my God.

Something in my chest tightened so violently that it felt as if it would burst at any moment. But it didn’t burst. It just continued to contract until I couldn’t breathe anymore.

“Julian?”

And then I looked up.

There she was. My little sister, surrounded by the Senseque, who made room for her. Her eyes wide, her face pale. Not as pale as our father’s... but pale enough. And then she looked down.

“Dad?!” she screamed and rushed to me, pushing Alarik aside and shaking my father, just like me and Alarik had done before.

“Dad!”she cried more and more desperately.

“No!”Her cry was so heartbreaking that my heart only tightened further until I thought it might cramp up so much at any moment that it would stop beating.