Page 14 of Wings of Ashes (Wings of Ashes #1)

CHAPTER

A male scream echoed around the classroom as Graeves jerked his hand off his dick and flailed his stabbed hand in the air. “What the fuck?”

“Only I get to ridicule the swan,” Bael replied.

“You could’ve pierced my dick!”

“It would have healed.”

Nix stood from the floor, brushed off the back of her pleated uniform skirt, and righted her stool. She did not like how much she enjoyed the pain Bael caused Graeves.

Bael was not defending you , she told herself. He literally just said he prefers to be the one torturing you . Her skipped heartbeat needed to calm the hell down.

To make matters worse, Bael was friends with a dragon shifter. Obviously, Bael and Ryker were not good guys. Nix knew fellow outcasts when she saw them.

“Professor Bowen!” Graeves whined.

“Come to my desk at the front,” Professor Bowen said. “I have a healing potion.”

“Yeah, and bring me back my blade when the hole in your hand is gone,” Bael called after him.

Mara whistled and raised a brow at Bael.

“I do not like what your expression is implying,” Bael told her.

Nix’s eyes were narrowed onto Ryker, tracking his every movement, as she shivered and shifted her stool as far away from him as possible. To be this close to a dragon shifter… Her parents must have been turning in their graves.

Dragons only crave fire and destruction , Elle’s parents drilled into Nix since she was a kid.

Ryker glanced away from the potion to look at her. His gaze darted to where her stool had been, to where she was now.

Yup. He noticed her inch away from him. Not that she hid it very well.

Hurt and anger flashed beneath his cool exterior. The muscles in his broad shoulders bunched; the tendons in his neck tensed. Ryker’s nostrils flared, and his fingers tightened around the vial, shattering it instantly. The potion dripped around his hand as he shook off the bits of glass.

“Damn it,” Bael cursed. “We were fucking finished. What the hell, man?”

Ryker glared at his hand as if he had not meant to break the vial. As if his strength betrayed him.

Dragons are too damn strong , Nix thought to herself. She inched her stool even further away. He could snap my neck as easily as snap his fingers . And he would enjoy it.

The memory of her parents screaming at Nix to run…

“We have enough of the ingredients to start over,” Mara said as the voice of reason. “We can probably still finish in this class period.” She began building the potion again in a new vial.

Bael focused back on Nix. His scorching, narrowed red eyes burned into hers as the incubus leaned over the lab table. Her skin prickled with awareness the way it did when she got too close to the incubus.

His sensual, earthy, and midnight rain scent penetrated her senses as he invaded her space. Her body temperature spiked whenever he neared her.

The sex demon just radiated so much heat , like a sauna or a hot spring, trying to lull her into a relaxed and submissive state.

“Did you enchant him to break it?” Bael growled at her as his body released another wave of heat that crashed over her.

Damn it . She felt her nipples tingle and tighten beneath her academy blazer.

“Did you enchant him to destroy the potion?” he asked, as if her silence suggested she did not understand the first time.

Her mouth fell open. Piqued, Nix took a deep breath when she realized she had started breathing heavier. From vexation or desire? “How many times do I have to tell you—”

Bael leaned in even closer, so close that his delicious, minty breath wafted over her face and blanked her brain for a moment. “You had him break it, so I couldn’t prove what a manipulative bitch you are. To enchant someone when you have a mate —”

Heart beating hard and fast in her chest, Nix stressed, “I. Am. Not. Enchanting. You.”

His face was so close to hers. Too close? Did he notice how just an inch separated their mouths from touching? His fiery red gaze dipped to her lips for a split second, and she felt a consequential pulse between her legs.

“Every word out of your mouth is a fucking lie,” Bael accused.

Hitting her breaking point in annoyance at how all the men kept projecting their own issues onto her, Nix slammed her palms onto the smooth, black tabletop and stood from the stool.

“As if I would waste any goddamn energy to enchant a mentally unstable incubus and a vicious, violent dragon who are both so privileged in their supernatural strength and abilities that they think they can look down on others and do whatever they want and not care who they hurt.”

Bael’s eyebrows furrowed as he frowned.

“Privileged?” Ryker repeated in a low, grumbly voice.

Ryker’s head was bowed down, but he looked up at her from under his long, dark reddish-bronze eyelashes. The melted gold hue of his irises stunned her for a moment as they fully met each other’s gazes.

Nix did not think they had looked at each other head-on like this before. Her chest twinged as her thoughts were swept away by the warm, homey, golden honey color of his eyes.

Ryker lifted his head from the lowered position. He typically always looked down or hid his face in the shadows of his hoodie. But now, the classroom light perfectly illuminated his features.

Ryker was…beautiful. His chiseled cheekbones and round chin reminded Nix of old, erotic paintings of male nymphs who would steal women from local towns to have their wicked way with them.

His eyes were slanted slits, like a mischievous fox up to something. Yet, the shape of his face looked like an angel’s. Soft and virtuous.

Was there such a thing as a sexy cherub? Because that was what came to mind when Nix stared at him.

He did not look bloodthirsty the way Nix always imagined dragon shifters to appear. Does the monster hide beneath a beautiful visage?

“What part of my being knife-happy makes me a mentally unstable incubus?” Bael asked, but Nix could not tear her gaze from Ryker’s face.

“Privileged?” Ryker asked again in a low rumble.

Having lost some of her steam, Nix tried to pick the pieces back up and feign confidence as she added, “Privileged alphas with more strength than anyone needs.”

“Mmm, compliment my muscles more,” Bael remarked.

“Do you know what happens to people with more power than others?” Nix asked. “Corruption. Warped morals. Nefarious actions.”

“Wait, where did you get my to-do list?” Bael interjected, fanning the flames of Nix’s fiery anger.

“You think you can have and do whatever you want to those with less power,” she said. “Including judge and criticize what those without power have to do to survive.”

She sneered at Bael, “This school is full of alphas who classify cygnus shifters as gold-digging sluts—not here for an education, just here to seduce a future husband—and you know why? Because those same big, strong alphas will not protect those who need protection without the promise of getting their dicks wet.”

Nix’s chest moved up and down as she inhaled her first breath after such a speech. “Yeah,” she added. “We are here to find husbands because of the world you twisted alpha motherfuckers built .”

Ryker and Bael—and Mara—stared wide-eyed at her.

Bael’s tongue licked his plush lips as he tilted his head and analyzed her face.

“Professor Bowen!” a student yelled at the next table over, where Graeves’s group sat. “We finished the potion.”

Bael blinked. The contemplative and reflective expression he had worn blanked from his face. He smoothly moved with paranormal speed to the other team.

Plucking the glowing vial of liquid from the hand of the student, Bael blurred back over to Nix.

And he poured the vial onto her head.