I nodded.
“You got distracted?” He let out a humorless laugh as if not quite believing his own words as he rubbed his eyes beneath his glasses. “What the fuck were you thinking, Jack? Do you know how important this mission is? How important that meeting was? And you just got… distracted?”
I opened my mouth to respond, but Julian kept going.
“What am I supposed to tell the president? What am I supposed to tell Antoine?”
I winced at the sound of my dad’s name.
“Do you have any idea what you’ve done?” Julian shoved up from his chair, pacing back and forth in front of me. “We were this close to having the information we needed. And you,” he placed his hands on either arm of my chair, “got distracted.”
“I know, I’m sorry, I—”
He shoved off and threw his head back a hard laugh. “Oh, you’re sorry.” He pressed his hand to his face and sucked in a breath. “You’re sorry.”
“I am.” I leaned forward hoping to show him how much I regret my mistake.
“When you found out about this meeting, you were lucky,” Julian continued, his eyes anywhere but on me. “Most hunters would have to interrogate someone to get that kind of intel, but you just wandered upon it in the library.” He shook his head and then finally looked at me. “How likely do you think that’s going to happen again?”
I shrank back into my chair. “Not likely.”
“Exactly,” Julian scoffed. “You fucked us, Jack. Really and truly fucked us.”
“But I have contacts,” I countered, shifting forward in my seat. “Xinyi told me about vampires who didn’t like the council. I could prod her more for names. I can still do this mission. I can do this.” My words were more of a reassurance for myself than for him.
Julian’s eyes landed hard on me. “You think so?”
I nodded eagerly.
“Then tell me it wasn’t that vampire and his wolf that distracted you,” he spat out, almost disgusted by the very mention of them. He came in close, his hands on the arms of my chair, forcing me to lean back. “You want to be a hunter so badly, and yet you let them touch you, let them fuck you—” He cut his words off, his jaw tightening. “You let them distract you for the whole reason you are here.”
“I… just…”
Julian let out a low growl. “You’re not a hunter. You’re just a lost little girl pretending to be one.”
My eyes burned at his words as he stepped away. Julian turned his back on me, his hand on his hip while he rubbed his temple.
“You’re dismissed.”
I didn’t stay a moment longer than I had to. I shoved out of my seat and stalked out of the room. My eyes burned with unshed tears that I wouldn’t let him or anyone else see.
Thankfully, I didn’t run into anyone I knew on the way to my dorm room. I found my helmet and bike keys before bending down beneath my bed and pulling out my bag of hunting gear. I hadn’t needed to use it until now, but that didn’t mean I had forgotten about it or who I was.
Julian thought I wasn’t a hunter? Well, I’d remind him how fucking wrong he was.
Chapter thirty
Tate
AfterwatchingJackrunout of the room, I couldn’t help but feel like something was wrong. She hadn’t reacted the way someone normally would from missing an appointment with their advisor. When she pulled away from me, it almost killed me.
My head turned to my boyfriend still watching where Jack had run out. “Kyren, are your shadows still following her?”
He shook his head. “No, I was… distracted.”
I huffed, fingers curling into the sheets. “So we have no idea where she is going or what she is doing? Great.” I fell back against the bed, staring up at the ceiling. “If I’d known she’d freak out like that, I never would have —”
“No,” Kyren’s voice cut me off. “This isn’t your fault.” His shadows wrapped around me and pulled me up the bed, his hands finding the sides of my face. “Do not feel bad for this.”
