Turning, I ran as quickly as I could through the dimly lit corridors, finally making it back to Dorm A.
When I got inside, however, an insane sight greeted my eyes.
Jorn-o was down on his knees eagerly sucking a Second-year cadet I knew only as “Greer.” He was stroking my friend’s face and murmuring,
“That’s right—take me nice and deep.”
Jorn-o looked up at me and I saw shame and need mixed in his eyes. He pulled away with a noise I knew I would hear forever in my dreams.
“I tried,” he said, his voice hoarse and needy. “Tried to resist. But I’ve always wanted him.”
“I’ve always wanted you, too. Pretty little First-year.” Greer ran his hands through Jorn-o’s hair almost lovingly. “How about if you stop talking and start sucking again?”
Jorn-o nodded and was about to start servicing the older boy again when his eyes suddenly widened.
I saw that he was looking not at me, but at something over my shoulder.
“Auri,” he said in a hoarse voice. “Run!”
Instead, I turned and saw Chud Larson standing in the doorway of the dorm.
40
AURORA
“Knew I’d find you here,” Larson snarled, entering the dorm.
“Leave me alone!” I put out a hand to stop him as I slowly backed away. “You can’t touch me! Ryse will kill you!”
“No, he won’t. Mating Flights are the one time he can’t lay a finger on me, no matter what I do to your pretty little body. I’ll just blame it on the dragon lust—nobody can argue with that.”
He looked at me with a savage lust in his tiny, no-color eyes and I felt my blood run cold. Was it true that no one could be blamed for anything that happened during a Mating Flight?
I thought of how no one wanted to explain it to me and how Jorn-o’s father had warned me to “make myself scarce” when a Mating Flight happened. Was this the Academy’s dirty secret—the other side of the honor and order they espoused during the day?
I didn’t know but it seemed very likely. In the space of a few minutes, I felt as though my whole world had been turned upside down. Everything I thought I knew was gone, replaced by a nightmare world where my body ached and yearned, but my mind was stunned by horror and betrayal.
“Leave me alone,” I said to Chud Larson, backing away and almost tripping over a boy who was laying in the middle of the floor, self-pleasuring. “If you touch me, Ryse will come for you—Mating Flight or no Mating Flight.”
He let out an ugly, barking laugh that had no humor in it at all.
“Skoren isn’t coming for you! Every time there’s a Mating Flight, he takes a draught of calming tea. Knocks him the fuck out and he doesn’t wake up until the next morning when the flight is over. Scream and cry all you want—he’s never going to hear you.”
I felt cold horror growing in the pit of my stomach. I wanted to shout that he was lying…except I was pretty sure he wasn’t. Of course Ryse would take something to help him sleep through the Mating Flight. He would be even more affected by the dragon lust than I was. I could only feel dragon emotions—he was part dragon himself! How much worse would this all be for him with his bloodlines?
I was on my own with nowhere to run. Still, I wasn’t about to give up.
Turning, I dashed towards the end of the dorm. I knew that Jorn-o had a blicket under his bed—a long, heavy, wooden paddle used in playing a game called “tursk-ball.” He and Toady and Leaper and Bugs had gotten me to play with them several times, but the blicket was so heavy I had a hard time swinging it with accuracy.
But that was before I’d started working out with Ryse. Now I was certain I could swing it—and I fully intended to.
Dropping to my knees beside my friend’s bed, I scrambled under, reaching for the blicket. But just as my fingers closed around its wooden handle, I felt a hand wrapping around my ankle and Larson pulled me out from under the bed.
“You think you can get away by hiding under the bed?” he snarled. There was an evil light in his piggy little eyes, and he was already pulling down his pajama bottoms to reveal something short and squat and ugly. “Think you can stop me, you little shit?” he went on, as he yanked me all the way out. “I’m gonna pound your tight little arse tonight. Gonna stretch you out on my big, thick?—”
But I didn’t let him finish his threat. As soon as my arm was completely free of the bed, I hefted the heavy blicket and chopped him in the face.
I say “chopped” because I used the thin edge of the flat paddle, rather than the flat side of it. It hit him right in the nose and I heard a crunching sound, followed by a howl.
