“Stop. Just… just stop.” He was pissed. I could hardly blame him. It was raining, his bag was now wet, and I wasn’t his favorite person. I used to think I was, but something had changed since I mated and got pregnant.
“I didn’t mean to hit you,” I said. “I was just?—”
“It doesn’t matter.” Everything about his tone said it did matter.
And this was when I had either my most brilliant idea or one of the dumbest ones yet.
My head had been reeling since I found out that Charlie Dempsey was Rawlins’s sister. That discovery left me with far more questions than I had answers to.
Without thinking, I opened my mouth and said, “Charlie Dempsey was Rawlins’s sister. He never told me.”
Maybe it would catch him off guard and have him tell me some new information? Or perhaps he’d invite me to tea. Fine, I knew that wasn’t in the works. But even a small fact would be helpful.
But him grabbing me by the arm, dragging me back into the school building, into his office, and slamming the door shut was not on my bingo card.
“Charlie left the country. You need to keep her name out of your mouth.”
“But—”
“No. Out of your mouth. Good riddance to her. She didn’t belong here.”
I went to push more, but then his eyes flashed. They weren’t human anymore. They belonged to his beast. If I kept pushing him, I was going to end up being the one paying the price.
I should’ve known better. If Professor Shaw really thought Charlie was his mate, as Phelan’s father suggested, of course he’d be bitter about this, especially if his rejection was for a human. I couldn’t even imagine rejecting Phelan and I wasn’t a shifter, and yet, she rejectedhim. I couldn’t imagine Alphonse Shaw being Rawlins’s brother-in-law, but I suppose she didn’t either, since she left.
“You need to keep your nose out of business that’s not yours. Got it?”
Flashes of when I overheard Coach talking to the professor about me being nosy last semester flashed through my head. What was everyone hiding? One thing was for sure, Sombertooth should be renamed Secret University.
There was so much more I wanted to know about Charlie, but poking at the professor was not going to do anything but make my life harder. It was time to leave and do so without pissing him off any more than I already had.
“I gotta go. My mate’s waiting for me.”
His eyes flashed at me again. All I said was I was leaving, or was he upset I said “mate” after bringing up his one that got away? I needed to be more careful now that it wasn’t just me and think my words through.
“Fine,” he said, “but remember what I said.”
As if I could forget.
Jack
“Hey, Jack!” Bardoul caught me at the front door. “l was thinking about going to get some coffee in town. Wanna come?”
I hated town. No, that wasn’t altogether true, but I wasn’t in the mood. “How about I just make us some cocoa in the room?”
“That works.”
Something was off with him, but it had been for a while, so it didn’t surprise me. Once back in the room, I made the cocoa out of some packets. It was the crappy powder kind, not like what we could get at the coffee shop, but it would do. I handed him his mug.
“We’re friends, right, Jack?”
Crap. Nothing good ever started with that phrase.
“Yeah, we are.”
“Then please know that I’m saying this not to hurt you.” And that made me dread this conversation more.
“Just spit it out, Bardoul, because whatever is going on here, you’re making it exponentially worse with this lead-up.”
