Page 57 of A University of Betrayal

Marten was new to the pack, having just moved to Blairville this summer, and he was the tallest in the group. But he was weak and had only just made it into the Delta rank. I had secretly given him training – I had promised him that – and he had developed really well.

One might think I was arrogant or overconfident. But all I was was a female Senseque: naturally stronger than male Senseque, but at the same time quite alone, as female Senseque were hardly ever born.

Sometimes, I believed, if there were gods – like the witches or my mother’s tribe believed – that they had given us female Senseque all that strength so that we could fight alone when in need.

“What’s up, guys?” I looked up and met the gaze of my brother, who seemed to have just come from his morning running workout and placed his cell phone in his gym bag before stepping over to us, not without vigilantly looking around campus for any possible threats. “Emy?”

Undecided if my brother should know about my daring plan to defy a Legacy Ruisangor, I bit my lower lip.

“A DeLoughrey wants to compete against her,” Noah simply blurted out, and I watched Nash’s face fill with worry. “And she’s going to give him a good face-bashing.”

The worry was there, but it disappeared noticeably until Nash grinned proudly at me.

“Then I hope this Ruisangor realizes soon enough when it’s time to run away from my sister.”

I lay on one of the benches under the oak tree and gazed pensively at the gloomy, stormy sky while the guys around me studied or talked.

I loved watching the clouds, especially at this time of year when they would ball up and pile up until they hung dark blue or even purple over the town, the thunder sending a low hum through my sound-sensitive body.

We Senseque reacted differently to thunderstorms. It was as if it electrified us, energized us, even made some of us nervous, like Julian, for example.

I straightened up to look around for him, but he wasn’t on campus yet, and I didn’t see his rusty red jalopy in the parking lot. The mere thought of him bringing Bayla here stirred a strangely dull feeling in my chest, but I quickly pushed it aside.

“An apple a day keeps the doctor away, Noah,” Cody laughed, and I looked over at him, only to see him holding a piece of apple under Noah’s nose.

Noah hated fruit, so he stood up and snorted, knocking the piece of apple out of Cody’s hand.

“An apple a day keepseverythingaway if you throw it hard enough.”

Noah grabbed the whole apple on the log, and I was expecting him to smash it at Cody, but he turned and threw it... toward the parking lot.

Blood In The Cut

K.Flay

Startled, I jumped up.

“Noah,”I gasped.

Noah looked at me with a grin, then after the apple, which flew in a high arc across the meadows. And when I realized whose car the apple was heading for, I didn’t know whether to grin gleefully or drop my jaw in shock.

That apple was going to destroy Miles DeLoughrey’s car’s hood…

But before the apple could bounce, someone gracefully reached over the hood and… caught the apple in flight.

People in the parking lot began to murmur, and the catcher had attracted everyone’s attention.

I realized that Noah had thrown hard and that the thing would havecrusheda mere mortal’s hand.

My glee finally disappeared when Miles started to turn the apple in his hand, threw it up once and then… bit into it.

Then he looked at us, or rather at Noah, and grinned with amusement. But there was something cold and devastating about it that sent goosebumps down my spine.

And then he started to move.

“Great,Noah,” Hunter murmured darkly. “Now he’s coming for us.”

Something inside me tensed. With every step the Ruisangor took toward us, a part of me wanted to run away, as if my body sensed the danger he radiated.