But the same-sex bonds thatdohold are some of the strongest, I’m told.
The curiosity passes, however, and I shake my head. “No offense, but you’re not my type.”
“Not wild enough for you?” Neel jokes, laughing when I punch his arm. “Seriously, though, you should let off some steam before heat season starts. I don’t care who with—just get it out of your system before that true mate of yours gets hot. She’ll be clawing at your door and hating herself for it. Unless...” He tilts his head back to stare at the fading daylight. “She hooks up with that other guy.”
My eyes flash as burning rage pumps through my veins. I clench my fists to keep from lashing out. “He wouldn’t dare.” Then again, if we go off past experience, hedefinitelywould. Fuck. Revyn having sex with Sienna makes me want to claw my eyes out. My body temp soars as the scent of her desire fills my mind.
“Whoa, dude, calm down.” Neel’s grin makes me even angrier. “You’re gonna poke someone’s eye out with that thing, damn.” He stares at the thick outline of my cock—nowthrobbing inside my pants—and whistles. “Shit, now I know why Veronica’s all over you. Goddamn, you’re hung.”
I force my body to move and pace the small enclosure, steam rising off my skin as I inch closer to overheating. “Shut up. Keep talking.”
Raising an eyebrow, Neel grunts. “Uh-huh. Because that makes sense.”
“I need a distraction.” My eyes shift, and I start to sense Sienna clearer despite our distance. She’s breathing hard, muscles loose, running?—
Running?
Leaning over the balcony’s edge, I search for her presence. “Why would she be running?” Is someone after her? Gods, if Revyn can’t protect her, I’m going to scream. And what about the vampire? Does he enjoy observing chaos as much as he likes sowing it? Why doesn’t he lift a finger to actuallyhelpevery once in a while?
Neel grabs my shoulder and hauls me away from the ledge. “Shit, man, my bad.” He shoves the roll between my teeth and clamps my jaw shut. “Take as much as you need. We’ll restock tonight.”
The doors to the conference room choose this precise moment to open, and I curse every single ounce of my luck. Taking another hit from the roll, I blow smoke in Neel’s face and hand it back to him. “Sit tight. I might need you.” As the elders and advisors on the academic council file out, my father’s voice echoes across the rotunda.
“He should be dealt with, Loreander. I know that he’s one of your students now, gods forbid, but that does not change his nature. He istainted.”
I walk to the edge of the room just in time to watch steam billow past the dragon shifter’s lips.
“As is your son’s mate,” the headmaster counters, his eyes glowing far brighter than my father’s as both men stare each other down. “Is that what you truly wish to say? If so, do not hold your words, Alpha Dire, for I will not hold mine.”
“This is not about my son!”
“That would be a first.” Headmaster Loreander’s head inclines toward me, and I brave the first few steps into the conference room. Whoever else lingers inside quickly disappears, leaving me alone with two of the most powerful men in the realm.
My father grinds his teeth, a trait that I unfortunately inherited. “You know that they arebothstains on this academy’s reputation. Alphas are already pulling their unmated from next year’s enrollment pool. Is that what you want? For your academy’s existence to cease on account ofonemistake? Expel them immediately, and perhaps we can erase the damage already done.”
“Expel them so you can send more assassins after them? I think not.” The headmaster smiles, but the warmth radiating off his body becomes a threat rather than a comfort. Scales appear, starting at the highest points of his cheekbones and trailing down his neck, across the exposed portions of his chest, and flaring to life down his arms as though suddenly branded on his bronzed skin. “If you want to kill my students, Thaddeus, you must attack them with your own claws.” To emphasize this, the dragon shifter stretches his own deadly talons and scrapes the sharpest tip beneath my father’s jaw. “Unless you intend to send another son to his death?”
The Dire pack’s alpha doesn’t flinch, shudder, or falter, standing as resolute as our tallest mountain facing down the sun. “Only the strongest survive,” he snarls. “And if my own flesh and bone is foolish enough to die at the hands of an abomination, he is no son of mine.”
The cavity inside my chest collapses. A harsh ringing fills my ears. I forget the reason why I entered this chamber to begin with—a plea, perhaps, for access to the Dire pack’s restricted histories in regard to the wilds and its rot—as I walk around the columned tables, past the headmaster’s perch atop a raised platform, and approach my father.
“Viserys was the best of us!” I shout, shoving my father’s massive chest. I may have alpha blood running through my veins, but it has yet to manifest in my body the way that it has for my father. He stands resolute, a solid wall of stone. I shove him again, growing even angrier at the disrespect. “He went out there onyourorder! To makeyouproud!”
My father’s lip curls. “How can I be proud of a man whose mate was—” He bares his fangs. “—unable to bear pups? Not even a wolf, but aswan!A goddamn bird shifter! Inmyhouse?”
“You’re lying.” I glare and clench my fists. “Viserys never mated.”
“Not for lack of trying,” my father laughs, the cruelty of it echoing off the walls. “He and his lover would disappear for the entire week surrounding the full moon. Don’t you remember, Alistair? How tired he was every time he returned home?” Another laugh, this one a broken tumble of rocks in a landslide. “He’d stretch his jaw and say he was merely tired from lack of sleep, but I know—” Disgust laces his tone. “—that he was really trying to force a bond.”
Nothing my father is saying makes sense. Viserys would have told me if he’d found his mate. I force my hazy brain to focus, immediately regretting how hard I hit the witches’ herbs. “The only reason Viserys went in search of Sienna was to bring her home—to prove that even a lone wolf can survive inside a pack. You wouldn’t relinquish the title of Alpha for just anyone. He needed to prove himself worthy.” My frustration mounts,climbing higher with each ragged breath in my lungs. “He wasalwaystrying to prove himself to you!”
Graduating top of his class wasn’t enough for Viserys to claim the title of Alpha. Am I supposed to believe that it will be enough for me to do the same?
Whatelsewill my father require of me before finally relinquishing his seat of power?
“You cannot choose my mate,” I say suddenly, the fear of it rising like the ocean’s tide. “That’s what Viserys was afraid of, isn’t it? That unless he became alpha, you would lord over me the same way you lorded over him for his entire life?”
Shit.
