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24

Summer

“ Y ou’re okay,” Connor says again, looking me over. His gaze snags on the bandage around my thigh. “Shit.”

I exhale wearily. “What are you doing here?”

Connor gently shifts Alice out of the doorway and walks into the dorm. He closes and locks the door before swooping me into his arms. “I’m taking care of two insane freshmen. Go to bed, Alice,” he says.

He carries me into my room and lays me on my bed before looking around. His brows furrow a little, and I can practically hear him questioning why we never come here.

“We didn’t start it,” Alice grumbles from the living room. I can hear the pout in her voice and then the soft click as she pushes her door shut.

“Connor, I’m okay, as I said in the text. You should go home,” I say, pushing at his shoulder.

“Shhh. I’m here to take care of you.”

I sigh, feeling my muscles tighten. “Con…” He glides his fingertips just beneath the bandage. “You should leave,” I say. The guilt is already sinking its claws into me, deeper than Fergus ever could.

“No,” he replies simply.

I cross my arms, glaring at him.

“You’re already healing or I would wake up Luke,” he continues, unaffected by my anger. He tilts my leg slightly and when I don’t react, he looks up at me. He finally seems to notice my ire.

“You’re being stubborn. Why?”

“Why are you here, Connor?” I know I’m being an asshole. He just cares about me, but I am already very overwhelmed, and him being here and trying to take care of me is intensifying everything. I’m not ready for this.

Connor blinks, hurt lining his eyes. “Because I heard you were hurt?” The question in his voice makes my heart squeeze, but I don’t reach out to comfort him. His uncertainty is a vulnerability that I can use, and it’s better this way.

“Why? You’re not my boyfriend.” The words are like acid on my tongue, and I force myself to swallow down the emotion that’s threatening to crack my voice. Just leave me now, Con.

A flash of hurt crosses his face, but then his features relax into a serene smile. I can tell it’s not a coverup. Something has just happened in his mind that has justified this, and that’s honestly more terrifying than his hurt because it makes me wonder if he might actually know a little more about me than I’d like him to.

“Ah, I see. All right. Then, of course, I’ll head out.”

I blink at him, confused. This is exactly what I wanted, isn’t it? Why do I feel so disappointed?

“Whatever. Later.” I tug at a stray thread on the bandage.

Connor leans down and kisses me softly. “Bye.” He stands and winks at me, a broad smirk on his face. I frown, watching him leave the room.

A few minutes after the front door closes, Alice calls through the wall, “Did you kick him out?”

“Yes,” I admit, the same heavy disappointment settling over me.

“Good,” Alice replies, her voice muffled. “Night, Sum.”

“Night, Al.”

With another deep sigh, I grab my phone off the bedside table and open my messages with Connor. I start typing out a message but delete it. My fingers fly over the keypad, composing another message. This one is much angrier, but I stop and delete it all again. I growl, the cursor taunting me as it winks at me from the screen.

I whisper a curse and open the Nexus app, mindlessly scrolling through posts and trying to avoid all the videos and photos of my fight with Fergus. Instead, I focus on catching up on what everyone else was up to while I was standing up for a baby shifter. A notification flashes at the top of the screen.

1015 liked your post.

Tapping on the notification, I frown when it pulls up a photo of me from a few days ago that Alice took when I was in the library, searching through the stacks. The post has over 500 likes, but only one intrigues me. I open the option to see the likes and there is the username 1015 right at the top. I go through my other posts to see if 1015 has liked any of them, and then I go through Alice’s profile to see if they have interacted with any of her posts. This single image is the only one that 1015 has reacted to. I scroll through my stories, checking who has viewed them. 1015 has watched every single one of them.

I click on the icon for the blank profile, hoping there will be more answers this time, but the account is still just as blank. Puzzled, I lock my phone and place it back on the bedside table. Who is this person and why are they watching my stories? How do they have a blank profile when it shouldn’t be possible?

Staring up at the ceiling, I inhale deeply and then exhale heavily, hoping my mind will eventually quiet enough that I can drift off.

Alice and I enter the canteen at lunch, chatting about our previous class. She scrolls through her phone, moaning about how boring runes are and how she’ll never understand them anyway, so what is the point? I have long since given up on trying to convince her that while runes are complicated, they are wildly interesting. Every time I brought it up, she usually replied with some insult about being a teacher’s pet.

We walk to our usual table, and I’m unsurprised to see Connor and his brothers already there, chatting away. It’s the seating arrangement that makes me pause. For the past week and a half, Connor made sure there was a spare seat next to him for me to sit in when I arrived. However, today, he is sitting between Zach and Zane. Nothing else is different. He still gives me the same bright smile that fills my chest with warmth. He still winks at me in that devilish way, making my belly clench with need.

Alice glances at me and then takes a seat between Luke and Rafe. I sit down on the other side of Rafe, and Alice tips her head, looking at Connor. She obviously expects him to move to the vacant seat next to me, but he just continues to chat and laugh with Zach, who is talking animatedly about some video game that’s just come out. Alice and I share a look.

When Zach finishes his story, Connor looks at Alice, directing his attention to her.

“Heard you’re on suspension,” he says. I know that if he’s heard about Alice’s suspension, he’s heard about mine too, but he doesn’t even glance my way.

Alice wrinkles her nose, violently stabbing the straw into her blood bag. “Yeah, no fun stuff for the next two weeks.” Alice glances at me. “Summer is also on suspension.”

Connor nods, still not turning to look at me. “I also heard that Draco personally handed down your punishment. Rough.”

I bristle at being ignored by him, though I’m not sure why.

Alice narrows her eyes at him, leaning back in her chair. “For both of us, yeah.”

Connor smiles at her and then goes back to speaking to Zach and Zane about video games, and I roll my eyes, stabbing my fork into my salad a little too forcefully. The table shakes a little, and I swear I can see Connor’s lips quirk ever so slightly from the corner of my eye. I try to start a conversation with Rafe, but he just broods down at his burger, curling his lip slightly. I sigh and turn back to my salad, getting more and more irate at the stupid fucking angel sitting across from me. One second, he’s smothering me, and the next he’s ignoring me? The fucking gall. Pick a lane.

There are still ten minutes until the end of lunch when I decide I’ve had enough of being ignored. The chair scrapes noisily against the floor as I lunge to my feet and storm away from the table. I’ve barely made it halfway across the cavernous room when Connor’s large, warm hand wraps around mine, stopping me in my tracks. I turn to look at him, fury radiating off me. Connor just smiles down at me and leans in, brushing his lips over my cheek.

“Got to run,” he whispers and starts to pull back.

I tighten my hold on his hand, my brows drawing tight. “What are you doing?”

Connor tilts his head and gives me a boyish grin. He looks so endearing that my chest squeezes a little, but I don’t miss the mischievous twinkle in his eye. “What do you mean?”

I lift my chin, searching his eyes, trying to read his thoughts and motives, but I have no fucking idea how to read people. So I push to my toes and brush my lips over his, the barest of whispers against his lips. “Bye.”

He melts a little from that small, intimate action, and his arm snakes around my waist, pulling me close. He brushes his nose against mine, and I hold his gaze.

“I’ll text you,” he says, his voice low and smooth like honey.

I nod and lean in to kiss him again. I’m not sure what’s come over me. Kissing him in public like this? Kissing him completely sober and in the middle of the cafeteria? But at this moment, I need these tiny reassurances. I’m not entirely sure what he’s reassuring me about. I just know I like it.

Connor’s big hand cups the back of my head, his lips still moving on mine and his arm holding me tight. I press closer, savoring the heat from his body and searching for more. What is he doing to me?

“I have to go to class,” he groans into my mouth.

I deepen the kiss a little, and I know we’re drawing attention, but at this moment, I don’t care.

Connor tightens his arms around me. “You have class too…”

I bite his lip, pulling a deep groan from him. “You better get going, student body president.”

Connor smiles, and I can taste it on my lips. “I’m also on the honor roll.”

Something about that drives me wild, and I move onto my tiptoes to deepen the kiss more, wrapping my arms around his neck. Connor moans but pulls back reluctantly.

“Okay, I really have to go.”

I pull back as Connor loosens his hold on me. “See you later, big guy.” Connor smirks, looking down at me, visibly thrilled at the endearment.

I watch him leave, waiting for the undeniable urge to push him away, but the panic that usually surges inside me when I am near him is nothing more than a trickle of unrest. What is happening to me here?

Alice appears at my side, linking arms with me. “Well, that was quite the show,” she quips.

“Please, it was just a kiss.” I roll my eyes, my lips still tingling from the feel of his.

“It was borderline indecent.” Alice laughs as we head to our next class. As I sit down, my phone buzzes in my bag. I discreetly pull it out and glance at it as the professor walks in and begins class.

Connor

You’re going to be bad for my reputation.

My lips quirk and I quickly type out a reply.

Summer

Why is that?

Connor

I was late to class and someone asked if I was too busy making out with one of the disaster duo.

“As I mentioned last week,” Professor Draco begins, “sprites are tricksy creatures, but since the fall of Faerie, they have become somewhat of a rarity. It is believed that a small population of them live in the wetlands of Notoria, and during the wet seasons, they are known to realm jump. From your reading, can anyone give me a characteristic of a sprite or a sprite colony?”

Summer

I wonder if they thought that because you turned up to class hard as a rock.

“Miss Tuatha De Daanan?” Professor Draco’s eyes are on me, his ire from the night before still clear. Fuck. I think back to my reading about sprites, trying to remember literally anything about them.

“They prefer to live near water areas. They can breathe easier in water and absorb energy from the river beds.”

Professor Draco lifts his chin, obviously displeased that I was able to answer his question when he believed me not to be listening. He nods once. “Correct.”

My phone buzzes again, but I tuck it away, deciding it’s best not to provoke Professor Draco any further.

The class on sprites ends up being fascinating. I learn a lot about their history in Faerie. Many subspecies of fae had to migrate from their source realm, spreading to others before the Fall. It was the only reason they had survived the event. All fae that still live, even our subclasses, are a part of a lost realm. My chest aches for a home I’d never know, yet yearn for. It’s comforting that its history continues even when it does not.

As soon as class ends, the emblems on our uniforms glow faintly, reminding us and everyone around us that we are suspended and need to return to our dorm immediately. Everyone stares at us, and I know that I should feel embarrassed. It’s as if we have the word SHAME tattooed on our foreheads. Yet, I don’t. The darkness swirls inside of me, a delicious reminder of how it felt to fight, to push back, to be punished, to succumb to the deep, depraved instinct.

And I crave more.