We burst back inside. The door flies open with such force that it slams into the wall.
“A bear—” Octavia gasps.
“A wolf,” I say at the same time.
I turn to Octavia.
“If you’d ever paid attention in class, you’d know bears hibernate during winter. So it was most certainly a wolf.”
I shudder, trying to shake off the fear.
“Oh, for fuck’s sake,” Adelaide says, rolling her eyes. “It is possible for some bears not to hibernate. Hibernation is a flexible process…”
She’s interrupted by the door slamming open behind us.
All of us scream.
Ophelia appears from nowhere with a rolling pin in her hand. Adelaide grabs a barstool.
Ophelia says something to Octavia and, a second later, the rolling pin sails towards the door. Adelaide hurls the barstool after it, and Octavia throws a... boot.
“Go away, you monster!” she shouts.
For a second, there’s complete silence, but then a voice breaks it.
“A rolling pin I can handle. Good thing it wasn’t a bloody dildo this time.”
Chapter 25
Piper
I stand frozen, staring at the doorway.
I’m convinced I’ve lost my mind.
Because they’re all here.
The Ferrum Syndicate men.
Arlo Vass, who has just said something about a... dildo.
Heat creeps into my face.
Isaak and Milo Markev. And then there’s Hunter.
My professor.
My eyes find his and refuse to move.
Everything else fades away. The voices, the chaos, the questions. I barely register any of it as I look at him.
He’s dressed in jeans.
Actual jeans.
And a hoodie.
For some reason, that shocks me almost as much as finding him here in the first place.
