Total pages in book: 121
Estimated words: 114617 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 573(@200wpm)___ 458(@250wpm)___ 382(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 114617 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 573(@200wpm)___ 458(@250wpm)___ 382(@300wpm)
Frustration burst out of my pores. So desperately I wanted to scream the truth. Their small, limited minds had no idea of the noble purpose I had to achieve. They whined about losing their chance at being clan alpha or getting their ears cut, when there were real enemies out there. Enemies I would take out if it was the last thing I did.
Chest heaving, I dropped the leg, spun around, crossed my legs, and waited for class to begin.
The laughs and taunts died down as everyone got an eye full of me sitting blank-faced and serene, ignoring the shapely ass shaking in my face.
Nyx was saying something. No doubt it was insulting nonsense designed to get another rise out of me, so I’d be slapped another demerit or detention.
It wasn’t going to work. Nothing my fates said or did would distract me from my goal. If I couldn’t use any of them to achieve my purpose, then they had none. They had no point. They had no use. They had no function.
Edric, Badr, Orion, Paxton, and Nyx were nothing to me. Like nothing is how they would be treated.
Something caught my eye.
I flicked down to the space between my knees. Something—was it water?—collected on the floor. Water droplets spun, raced, broke apart, and reconnected before my eyes, forming a message.
Thanks for having my back. I’ll have yours too. Promise.
I held my breath, barely believing what I was seeing. It was a message from Paxton. It had to be.
A slow grin stretched my lips. Maybe the first day from hell wasn’t a waste.
Chapter Three
Iflipped through my textbook resting on my whole desk while reclining back in my upright desk chair. Third class of the day and the guys already gave up on their making-me-sit-on-the-floor game. Bullying is a lot less satisfying when the target doesn’t give a shit.
It also helped that Nyx wasn’t in this class with me. We all had the same schedule, but split up across different blocks. Paxton and Badr were gone too, leaving me with Orion and Edric on either side of me.
I wasn’t sure why these guys were crowding me. The hatred wafting off them was thick and heavy. You’d think they’d want some distance, but class after class, they shoved others out of the way to claim the seats closest to me.
The result was my wolf had been going out of her mind for the last four hours straight.
Orion’s pen rolled off his desk. He stood, rounded the desk, and bent over to pick it up—flashing me a devastatingly nice ass.
“Mmm,” I moaned, and my eyes bugged.
His wolf picked it up and spun on me, but I was already laser-focused back on my textbook, reading the same sentence for the tenth time.
Orion chuckled. Out of the corner of my eye, I watched him kick his feet up on his desk and hang his head back. He looked like he was getting comfy for his nap.
With him heading off to sleepland, I glanced at Edric.
These two were definitely the most enigmatic of my fates. I knew what Badr was thinking when he looked at me—homicidal rage tinged with grief. Paxton—lust and confusion. Nyx—resentment and disgust. But Orion and Edric... I didn’t know.
I mean, sure, I sensed they were just as disgusted with me, their psychopath fated mate, as everyone else. Plus, Edric didn’t waste a second giving me up to the mob, and telling them the truth about my pointless, one-sided conversation with Sunella.
But when you’re a priestess wolf, especially the priestess wolf, you spend a lot of time listening to people’s problems.
All day long, I’d stay shut up in my father’s home under heavy guard. The only times I was allowed out was to venture across the town square to the temple. There I would sit on a hard, concrete throne under a thick veil of gauzy curtains while wolves from all over Wolf Nation came to pour their hearts out to Luame’s chosen—the child born from the goddess herself.
I sat on that stone throne and heard things the average person couldn’t imagine. Heartbreaking things, joyous things, shameful things, and vile things. I heard things that made me stumble out of the temple, wishing I could take a rock and bash the memory out of my head.
After a decade of hearing everything wonderful and terrible someone can do, people were pretty easy for me to figure out.
Beyond what I did to Castor, Edric hated me because I got him ripped away from his mother’s side during her final moments. Orion hated me because his clan exiled him and told him he either regained his honor by graduating top of the academy, or he took his disgrace out the fucking door with his cut ears and new, forced life hiding among the mundanes.
I glanced back at Orion. I knew from years of listening to unwanted confessions that an enemy was never more dangerous than when the motive was personal.