Dean Felling gawked at her forthrightness.
She leaned forward in her chair, never breaking eye contact with the dean. “Your tactless insinuation—that I am only taking those classes to ‘seduce’ an alpha—is offensive and dense. I thinkI have an idea about the ‘esteemed student’ who complained about me,” Nix stated, foldingherhands onto the dean’s desk.
Calmly, because she knew he would call her something demeaning like “emotional” if she raised her voice, she said, “Mr. Graeves accused me of changing my courses this semester to ‘seduce’ a husband out of my classmates—”
“And is that not what you have done?” Dean Felling nodded to Bael, Ryker, and Thierry’s presence in the room.
“No, it is not. It ends up that trying to learn and better myself led me to my fated mates.” Nix added, “I assume Graeves complained about me now that his ego is hurt that I burned his little list.”
“List?”
“Of all the female students he has ‘sampled’ and ranked.”
Thierry coughed and muttered under his breath, “Asshole.”
“Professor Thierry,” the dean pleaded for professionalism. “Honestly.”
Thierry blinked and deadpanned, “I didn’t say anything.”
The dean exhaled and turned back to Nix. “Do you know who Mr. Graeves’s family is, Miss Oadess?”
“No, I do not. Do you know who mine is?”
The dean waved off her question as if it were silly. “Of course, I do. I have been friends with Kellan Oadess for many years.”
Nix said, “I believe the Oadess family donates a lot of money to the academy for the ‘good treatment’ of the cygnus shifters who attend. Top education. Respectable futures.”
Even though the assumed respectable future was marriage. Cygni shifters had the same respect among alphas as filthy rich “new money” humans had among “old money” inheritors.
The dean rubbed his fingers over his chin. “That is correct.”
“Then, Dean Felling, I hope you will help me understand why, when someone broke into my dorm room last night, vandalized it, then lit it on fire with me in it, I never got calledinto the dean’s office to see how I was after such a traumatic and dangerous event on campus.”
Nix tsked and continued, “Yet, I am called in to be told that a male student said my presence is ‘distracting’ him. My presence in his class does not sound very traumatic or dangerous, but his complaint is takenveryseriously because, I believe, you were about to mention his especially special family?”
Nix removed her hands from his desk, leaned back in her chair, and crossed her legs.
“Damn, that got me hard,” Bael mumbled.
“You’re always hard,” Thierry muttered.
Dean Felling scowled at Bael, then at Nix. “Young lady—”
“Dean Felling, I would also like to comment that I did not ‘dye’ my hair as you suggested, thus forsaking my cygni community. I believe you know, as well as I do, that the Oadess family is myadoptivefamily.”
“How ungrateful,” the dean murmured under his breath.
“They were the ones who wanted me to lie to help me ‘fit in’ with the swan shifter community. A few days ago, I found out someone has been poisoning me with Evernell, and when I stopped taking the poison, guess what color my hair naturally turned?”
Ryker growled at the word “poison.”
“I might have continued being affected by the Evernell poison if not for Professor Bowen. In fact, the teaching staff at the academy—for the alpha classes—is top notch, as I am sure you know.” Nix shook her head. “Anyhow, it turns out that I am a dragon shifter, after all, which makes me an alpha.Nota prey shifter. And being an alpha makes me a ‘possible young leader’ in your definition, unless you were basing it on gender as well as species?”
Bael chuckled silently.
Ever the cool, stoic bodyguard, Ryker’s blank facealmostflashed a smug smirk.
“As a dragon shifter, I don’t believe it is suddenly ‘distracting’ for me to be in the more ‘serious’ classes,” Nix said. “I’ve never seen a dragon shifter forced to take cooking or family relations.”
