Just… doing all this and not alerting anyone when I was being watched so closely in so many ways by so many people… it wasn’t exactly easy.
Thankfully, my attention was pulled from my heavy thoughts when I watched how Zayn was operating.
Huh.
He was still staring, but his magic wasn’t being impacted in the least, working instinctively, much like peripheral vision could at times.
His fuchsia blasts were hitting the magical plates dead-center even as they shifted at irregular intervals without a predictive pattern.
He’d been practicing it on and off since he’d discovered he could do this in ourSynergyclass and Vax had explained how incredible a feat it actually was.
Bursts of yellow sparks hitting the ceiling of the Combat Conclave space had me turning to see our professor for thisApex Magic Theory and Practical Applicationclass, making controlled magical fireworks to draw everyone’s attention from the activity we’d all been working on for the last twenty minutes.
That activity had involved us lining up in two rows spanning the length of the mammoth space with magical apparatus between us, which the professor had set up beforehand.
A wide-spanning platform separated the two rows of us, one facing the other, and consisted of a floating array of shifting hexagonal metal-like panels. They hovered in mid-air, rotating and sliding across invisible paths like gears in motion. Vector Panels were what they’d been termed. And since the start of class we’d all been striking them using controlled blasts and pulses of our magic, adjusting for the movement, focusing on precision and adequate tactile output. If you hit too hard, the contact wouldn’t be registered, the same with hitting too softly.
I’d been using my frost, because with my mind awhirl, I’d needed to compensate. There was an imperceptible trick I could do where, once my frost blast was in range, it would calibrate to the movement and pressure emanating from the magical apparatus—it could essentially read it. Well, with a little spellwork on my end that I’d developed on the fly that fused my Necromancy with it imperceptibly.
Yes, I was essentially cheating.
For good reason, though.
Obviously, given how I was about much, it was distasteful to me.
But so was a lot of what had happened recently—and what I still needed to do.
I needed to… acclimate to that.
We all called our magic back and dropped our hands, focusing on Professor Rupert Wiseman, an experienced sorcerer, as he walked up and down the space, speaking. His shaved head caught the reflection of the sparkling yellow fireworks overhead, before they began to dissipate now he had everyone’s attention. He rubbed at his goatee, and his moss-green turtleneck pulled taut across his broad torso as he walkedwith a confident glide, navy jeans tucked into a pair of scuffed boots that clapped on the stone floor.
“Now we move to fusion coordination,” he spoke. “Tactical synchronization, modulation and aligning your magic with others under some light pressure generated by the apparatus dictating your timing and positioning. This will mirror the type of controlled and precise coordination required in real-world combat scenarios.” He smiled. “While having the benefit of a safe environment in which to learn, practice, and evolve as needed.”
In the next moment, he flicked his magic at the apparatus, and the panels shifted into a formation that enabled them to be shared by two students now.
“Assemble into pairs,” he instructed.
A musical whistle reached me through the noise that erupted as everyone began finding a partner, forty-odd students pairing off quickly.
I swung my head to see the whistle had been directed at me, and Zayn was signaling me.
“With me, Win?” he called over across the apparatus and the aggravating noise all around interfering with my thoughts.
“We agreed at breakfast that we’d work together. Didn’t need the whistle. I’m not a dog.”
“Are you my puppy, though?” he asked, grinning.
Little—
“Nah. I’m fucking with you. I’m all for being yours, though. If you want.” He held up his hand. “Not in that… kink sense. Not my thing. Not our thing, right?”
I gave a nod. “Right. Besides, you already are my puppy, and you know it. You’re all of ours, fireball.”
The fact he was uttering any of this, that we could have this discussion in a room full of people, was a huge thing for him. Hewas no longer ashamed of his sexually submissive nature, of any of his needs. He was all in. And I loved this for him. I loved it all.
“Looks like my girl borrowed yours,” I heard River say.
Zayn and I looked to see him talking to Vax and partnering up with him. Vax was two students down from me on my side of the room.
