Page 52 of Legacy Wolf: Semester One (Legacy Wolf #1)
HOLDEN
I blinked repeatedly, trying to clear my eyes. I’d failed miserably. I’d been sitting here too long, staring at piles of papers, trying to make sense of them. This was the one part of being a TA I truly despised—grading shitty papers.
Looking down on my partially finished work, I half wondered if the students even pretended to try. So many of them were legacies, and even if they handed in crap, they would graduate and have a good job with prestige, so these papers were a complete facade.
I mean, sure, they mattered to the scholarship students.
They were held to a much higher standard than the other.
No professor would admit that out loud, of course.
But it was true and we all knew it. They couldn’t just skate by on their family name.
They were expected to try twice as hard, be three times as good, and be grateful for the opportunity.
“Gods, I’m fucking grumpy.” Sure, it was all true, but to sit here and dwell on it like that wasn’t me.
On most days I would have these all graded by now.
My grades weren’t the final ones, of course.
The professor would go through and alter them as he saw fit.
I only made his job easier, the entire point of my existence in this position.
I piled everything up and shoved them all into the “to-be-graded” pile. There was no point in staring at them for the next few hours accomplishing nothing when a clear head in the morning could get them done in thirty minutes. Technically, I had a couple of days before he wanted them, anyway.
Putting them down and walking away didn’t upset me, the reason why I couldn’t stay on task did. Rawling. It always came back to Rawling.
Had I handled things with him shittily? Absolutely I fucking did. And I felt like a jackass for it. And seeing him not looking great, like he was perpetually sleep-deprived, that only made it a thousand times worse. But I wasn’t cocky enough to think that was because of me.
This wasn’t some freaking teen movie where the couple breaks up and one is so heartbroken they sit at their dining room table eating pint after pint of tear-coated ice cream. We weren’t in love or anything resembling it. But we liked each other, and I was an alphahole.
And for me it had become more than like or at least was heading that way. I missed the guy. That didn’t mean we belonged together. Of course it didn’t, but it did add to the wretched guilt I had over my behavior.
I shot the professor a message letting him know I was leaving for the day and locked up the office. At first I thought maybe I’d head to town and grab some decent coffee. It would be a distraction and right now I could use one.
Shaking my head, I chuckled at myself. It was more of a distraction of a distraction. And that realization had me seeing clearly what I needed to do… apologize to Rawling.
Want to grab some coffee? I want to talk to you about something. I stared at the message a few seconds before hitting send
No . We aren’t seeing each other. His reply didn’t surprise me, and I should have left it at that, respected his boundaries, but I needed him to know I wasn’t trying to booty call his ass.
Nothing like that. I promise. I expected an instant no to come back, but like always, Rawling kept me on my toes.
You need to get Jack her favorite cupcakes.
Done. I’d buy her the entire store if it meant that I could make this right. Now that it was on my mind to apologize, I was desperate to get it over with, like I needed to breathe. It was weird and I didn’t question it, just raced to the car where I promised to meet Rawling.
He was there when I arrived.
“You got here fast.” I unlocked the doors.
“I was out for a walk.” He shrugged. “This is not a date.”
“Absolutely not,” I assured him.
The drive to town was awkward as fuck. We both attempted small talk about nothing, such as the weather and the new soup the dining hall had started serving. Nothing of any consequence.
We grabbed our coffees, and instead of sitting down at the shop, we took them to go. It would be easier to talk when we knew there were no humans around us. Not that I planned to bring up my beast, but my apology would have to include my work if there was to be any sincerity to it.
“Why did you bring me here?” he asked as we walked into the small public garden.
“I was a dick.”
“This I know.” He didn’t bother to look over to me, instead still focusing on his coffee. “It didn’t take a cup of joe to break that to me.”
At least he still had a sense of humor about it.
“That’s not it. I mean it is, but also… can we sit down?” I pointed to a small bench.
He agreed and neither of us said any more until we were there.
“You know how I’m a TA?”
He twisted his body to half face me. “Yeah. And if you are going to say your job was why things went down the way they did, you can just buy those cupcakes and take me back. This conversation is over.”
“No. I mean it does, but not in the way you think.” I sucked at this. “The thing is, I want—no, I need you to know that I did like you, but…”
“But I’m just a latent?” His side-eye game was fierce.
“No. I mean yes, but not like that.”
He started to get up.
“Please. Hear me out.” And by some miracle he sat down and let me tell him all about my thesis and how I battled liking him while also wanting information.
I admitted fully to wanting deets, focusing on my academia more than I desired him.
I waited for him to throw his coffee at me or cuss me out, but he didn’t.
Instead, he leaned back and took it all in, letting me know that I had made the right decision to bring this up instead of letting it sit there between us.
“It’s weird, but I feel better now.” He took a last long sip of his coffee. “I thought you were ashamed of me.”
“Fuck. I really sucked at this dating thing, didn’t I?”
“You kinda do.” Rawling stood up. “I don’t really feel comfortable talking to you about how it feels to be latent, but it’s nothing personal. It’s a me thing. But I will say, having to always worry if people at school think I’m worthy stole a lot of my headspace for a while.”
“I understand both why you don’t want to talk about it and what you are saying.” I got up. “I hope someday we can be friends.”
“Yeah. Maybe.” It wasn’t a no, and I was going to take it. “Let’s get Jack’s cupcakes before they’re sold out. Jack really hates me,” I noted.
“Yeah. She really does,” he sassed, but we both knew it was true.
Unlike last time, there were plenty left, and I bought her an entire dozen. Overkill? Absolutely.
“You know a lot about shifter lore, right?” Rawling asked as he buckled in, and I crossed my fingers he wasn’t going to ask me about some of the old “methods” of fixing latents, because as much as means were listed in old texts, they didn’t exist. It was always an excuse to murder the latent. Always. Thankfully, he didn’t.
“Yeah. A bit.” I started the ignition. “Why?”
“I just ran into a text that mentioned hunters while I was researching for a paper, and my godfather never said anything about them.”
What he failed to say was that he’d been digging in Professor Shaw’s office. Hunters weren’t mentioned willy-nilly in everyday textbooks. I was aware of the book he talked of as I’d seen it on the bottom shelf of the professor’s bookshelf.
“It’s the boogie man for shifters, is all.” I forced a laugh, not wanting to talk about this. It was true. Hunters were the boogie man of shifters. But also—my grandfather was terrified of them and never said why. My parents brushed it off as him being old, but I never quite bought that.
“I thought we were friends or trying to be. I’d rather you say that you don’t want to talk about it than lie.” Rawling stood his ground, and I respected that.
“I wasn’t lying, but also, they are the boogie man of shifters, that’s true.
That’s why Sombertooth students and staff shift in the woods without worrying if a hunter will appear.
But also, not everyone believes they are pretend.
There are some people, especially the older generations, that fear them—for real.
My grandfather is one of them. But that’s really all I know. ”
And suddenly I was curious about hunters. Maybe I would look into it more over the summer.