I blink in surprise. Dimitri Ivanov was the Beta Councilman from the Kingdom of Russia. He’s now a vegetable, hidden away somewhere in the recesses of the academy.
“The day you two were participating in war games, when the executions happened, he was there.” Mira shakes her head. “Ivanov made him kill one of the captured packmates.”
My mouth gapes, brow drawing tight. “That’s… terrible,” I breathe.
To be forced to kill one of our own…
Yet, we’re forced to do so every day once we’re sold off. He isn’t alone.
Arlowe’s chair scrapes loudly as she stands with her tray of uneaten food. “Catch you later.”
Without another word, she brings her tray to the trash and vanishes in a puff of smoke.
I turn back to Mira, who looks regretful. “I shouldn’t have said anything,” she whispers.
That’s when her Alphas rise and take the empty seats at our table, Colt bringing his own chair over to sit beside Mira. He pushes his dark blond hair off his forehead and peers at me with those mismatched green and blue eyes of his.
“He didn’t want to do it.”
“I wouldn’t have thought he did.” I let out a long sigh, turn back to the Alpha, and find him gone.
Not surprising, really.
I frown at my friends. “No one is giving him a chance, I take it?”
Colt gives me that glinting playboy grin of his. “He only cares about Arlowe.”
I squint at him, lips going flat with thought. If he only cares about Lowe, then…
The stalking, the protecting. Why hadn’t I thought of it?
I blink, eyes going wide. “Well, shit.”
Andrew
“Another shipment of texts came in from the bunkers,” Jory announces, a glowing tablet in his grasp which he taps on.
It’s taken me months to get used to calling this man, whom I’d thought for years was a Major in the GBE’s soldier force, “Jory Timms.” He’d always been Major Tomlin to me, and all the students who’d passed through the academy since I’d been brought on as the token Cursed faculty member.
He smells like an Alpha more and more now, although his scent is still muted. The drugs the rebellion had used on thousands of Cursed to disguise them as Betas and help them infiltrate the GBE ranks apparently lasted a long time, and tookjust as long to wear off once they stopped taking it. I suppose that was the best way to go undercover safely.
“Good,” Willow’s smooth voice is approving. “Our people have finished removing the propaganda from the library, so we can fill in all the space.”
“What will you do with the books you’ve removed?” I ask.
Willow smiles kindly at me, her blue eyes calm. “We are going to use them as teaching tools for future students,” she explains. “We will not destroy our history, but learn from it.” Her smile widens. “There will come a time when this era of oppression will be a distant memory, and we must not let anyone forget what was done to us.”
She’s so… assured. “You truly believe that.”
Her bead bobs in an affirmative nod. “I know it.”
“Here,” Caius, a man of few words, hands me back my tablet that he’d taken when I arrived this afternoon. “All updated.”
I blink down at the glowing glass, filled with images and text, ready for me to study.
We do this every time new information comes into the academy. I’m the first to get a look at it all, so I can help the students process during our sessions.
I’d been reinstated as the counselor, and the number of students coming to my office has more than quadrupled since before the rebellion took over.
