Page 3 of The First Year Continued (Marked Blood Academy #2)

Evander

Besides my neck killing me from sleeping on Roxy’s hard floor, worry ate me up.

Roxy had attacked Odin. If we hadn’t gotten there, would she have bled him dry? No, she wouldn’t do that. Not to mention, she had already pulled away from Odin when we burst through the door.

Then again, maybe she was taking a break. If we hadn’t come in, would she have finished him off?

I shook my head of the thought and hitched my bag higher on my shoulder. I carried too many damned books around but found a reason to pack them in every day. And by the end of the day, my shoulder was killing me and the skin pockmarked with broken blood vessels.

“Hey,” I said, walking up to her as she reached for the opening of her jacket. Roxy’s beauty surprised me every day, but today, she was rosier. Stronger.

From Odin’s blood.

Goddess, this was hard. I didn’t want to think anything negative about Roxy. Considering her a stone-cold vampire bloodsucker was about as negative as it got.

She wasn’t. None of this was her fault. We were sent to fight in a war we didn’t start, and the ends and means would never affect us personally. But we would suffer the trauma and the loss and the mental blows for the rest of our lives.

Such was war.

Roxy didn’t deserve what she was going through. None of us did.

Plus, it was pretty hard to imagine the person I thought was my mate as a killer—an enemy.

The regret had been written all over her face. She didn’t want to hurt Odin.

I dreamed about all the blood. Smeared all over Odin. Running down Roxy’s face.

“Hey.” She looked down. She still felt bad about attacking Odin and probably would for a while, no matter how much we tried to convince her otherwise. She nudged me with her elbow. “Waiting to see if I’m still a wolf?” Her cheeks reddened.

“No. I have class too, you know.”

“Liar.” She stripped her jacket off and toed off her shoes.

My bag landed on the ground with a thump. “Maybe a little curious.”

She laughed, and the sound connected directly to my heart. The damned thing stammered a bit before resuming a natural beat. “It’s okay. I’m kind of curious myself. It’s one thing to talk to her, but quite another to make sure I can still…”

A group of students passed us. The females giggled.

“You three get a lot of that, I’ve noticed.”

She pulled off her skirt and, although nakedness was an ordinary happening for all shifters, I forced my gaze to her eyes. Everything was different with Roxy. Watching her undress wasn’t bland or normal, not an everyday occurrence.

When I watched her undress for the first time, it would be private—and I would have my sights set on marking her as mine.

It was becoming harder and harder to stay away from her.

Odin had a thing for her, I was sure. Maybe Sol as well. Which was crazy because we weren’t a pack. We were friends. Sure, there were harems popping up more and more in modern shifter society but was that the case, or were two of us very wrong about Roxy?

I just hoped it didn’t tear us apart.

“Well, here goes nothing.”

Roxy shifted beside me. Her wolf a stunner just as she was.

“Evander and Roxy!” One of the administrators stepped onto the field. “You’re needed in the office. Now.”

Roxy’s wolf whined and gave the lady a bark. The woman lowered her nose and shook her head. “I said now.”

“Time to shift back,” I said and watched Roxy to the point where her four legs became two and she stood upright again.

We both dressed. I hefted that heavy bag back on my shoulder.

“You know, there’s these cool metal cabinets called lockers here,” she snarked.

“Oh, really?” I asked. “That would be great, but mine’s in the one building where I have no classes. Does me no good.”

“Mine is in the main building. You can use it if you want. That shit looks heavy.”

“I think I’ll take you up on that. But let’s get to the office and see if we’re still students here first.”

She sighed and pulled a black hairband from her wrist. “Let’s go.”

The secretary had us sit down and wait for the headmistress. Who was not there at the moment…or in the next half hour.

“Is there any reason for us to wait like this? We’re missing class,” Sol finally said.

“No talking,” she snapped.

We all exchanged a look then slumped back in our chairs.

Clearly, we were in trouble and not going to be let off the hook simply because the headmistress was too busy to see us right away.

The chairs we were seated in offered a view of the gate and the gravel drive, not that we could expect a lot of traffic out there.

Delivery trucks came in another gate, and parents never came here.

But, to my surprise, the gates opened and a long, black car drove through the opening and approached the buildings.

Interesting. Possibly menacing for those of us who were waiting for the other shoe to drop.

I elbowed Sol, and all of us watched the car stop and the headmistress hurry down the steps to meet the suit-clad man who emerged from the back seat.

He clearly had a driver, but not one who got out to open his door. Seemed odd.

The secretary noticed our attention then and got up to close the blinds. What the heck was going on?

Almost another hour passed while classes changed, and everyone went to lunch before the door to the hallway opened to admit the headmistress and the man in the suit as well as another man who clutched a tablet and wore a shirt and tie but no jacket.

Maybe the man was PA, but if he’d also been in the car—which he logically would have had to be—we hadn’t gotten to see him get out. Maybe he’d been the driver?

None of these were the questions we really needed answers to, but the others were far more alarming.

“Thank you for the excellent meal,” the man was saying. “Not what I expected from academy cafeteria fare.”

“As if we’d feed you that swill,” she joked, opening the door to her office. They headed inside, closed the door behind them, and again we were left to wait.

But not for long.