“Can we not...” Phelan put a plate of sandwiches on the table.
“Can we not what? Talk about the facts?” Jack asked.
“Can we not pretend hunters are real?” Phelan snapped at her.
“But if they are real,” Jack argued, “he can’t stay here.” Her words were barely a whisper. “If they are real, you guys aren’t safe here.”
“One of my biggest fears...” I started.
“He’s your mate,” Jack said. “He’d be safe. And I’m latent, so I’m probably okay. If those are your biggest fears, put them aside.”
They were near the top, but I had so many fears right now, putting them in order would be impossible.
“Let’s go by the premise that they’re real.” Phelan grabbed a sandwich and handed it to me. “Eat. You’re growing our pup.”
I took a bite, not wanting to argue. Tonight was stressful enough without a fight.
“If hunters exist,” he continued, “the hunters of this generation are gone based on the stories we’ve heard. Which means you’re not one of them.”
The truth was, whether I was a hunter or human, I didn’t really know. What mattered was that neither of those things belonged at Sombertooth. But where else were we going to go? We’d been looking for other schools, but even if we found one, we were probably going to be here until at least Christmas, maybe a full year.
“And if I’m a hunter, I don’t belong here or anywhere we’ve looked at.”
“Wait, you’re looking at other schools?” Jack asked.
“Yeah. It’s not as easy as it was for me to come here. The application flyer was just in my mailbox waiting for me.”
I’d forgotten about that, and I didn’t think of it as a big deal until Phelan’s jaw dropped. “Sombertooth doesn’t send flyers. There’s a long waitlist. They don’t need them. Plus, they don’t want their information getting out to the human realm by accident.”
“Well, then what does it mean that I got one?”
“I don’t know,” Phelan said slowly. “But it sounds like you were selected for Sombertooth, and not the other way around.”
Fuck.
NINE
JACK
I meandered along to class, holding hands with Knox.
Being with him was nice and the sex was good, not as great as with Atticus because that man knew how to use his enormous cock to his full advantage. Too bad he was an ass and we could never be together, but when I was alone at night and needed an orgasm, I’d replay sex with Atticus in my head. It was a fantasy, like any other. Not that I wanted to be with him, gods no, it was just a way of getting off.
Knox kissed my cheek and strolled into his classroom while I daydreamed about playing soccer professionally or perhaps having my own art exhibition. Knox didn’t feature in any of those futures. He was my just-for-now guy, and though he hadn’t said it, I figured I was the same for him. We weren’t each others’ great loves, and I had no idea if that person existed for me, and if so, would I find them.
I still grappled with Rawling, my Rawling, being pregnant and mated to a wolf shifter. And not just any wolf shifter. Phelan was equal to Atticus in the Sombertooth wolf hierarchy. That my friend and his mate were keeping a secret, one I’d kept for most of last semester, and Bardoul was also keeping along withChannon, weighed on me, though it hadn’t bothered me much when it was just me.
Perhaps it was because those in the know were expanding and someone would slip and let it out, and with Rawling being pregnant, he was vulnerable in a way he hadn’t been before Phelan impregnated him.
I covered my mouth as I giggled, because when I used to talk about Atticus and me having sex, Rawling was grossed out. And though Phelan and I weren’t friends and I’d been a witness to how his assholery behavior had hurt my best friend last semester, I just shrugged off any mention of them having sex. Maybe it was Rawling being human that made him grossed out about others having sex.
“Hey.”
Gods, I was just thinking about him and he popped up in front of me, though with his big belly, he wasn’t doing much “popping.”
“Hi, yourself.”
“Do you want to pair up for that astronomy project we have to finish by Friday? Professor Stanton said we have to finalize our partners by today.”
