Page 30 of Lock Up the Darkness

7

~Aurora~

The calm before the storm.

That was what I had been experiencing for the last week, ever since the incident with Killian fucking Carmichael in the parking lot.

The pathetic attempt at bullying had ceased at Hexwood, not even a single hostile glance had been thrown my way. Not even from him. He actually hadn’t looked at me once.

Liza had chalked it up to the peace she believed the Infidels wanted to make with me, as per that Blowout invitation.

But I knew better.

I hadn’t told her about my encounter with him. It wouldn’t have exactly gone down well, given how obsessed she was with him. She wouldn’t be able to see that she was pretty much brainwashed, or how dangerous he really was, that if he actually gave her his attention, he’d break her into pieces. She’d just see it as some sort of betrayal because she could only see the shiny façade version of him, the prince.

The fact that it had gone to a sexual place with him had been bothering me more than I would’ve liked. It was a mixture of guilt toward her and regret from my end.

If that was the extent of it, things would be a lot simpler, manageable. Staying away from him from here on out would be the solution, plain and simple.

But there was also something else nagging at me.

The fact that I’d taken some pleasure in it.

That parts of that night kept playing on my mind and evoking the opposite of derision and disgust.

That side of me I’d tried to keep buried had been awakened and shoving it back down wasn’t exactly proving an easy task.

It complicated things in a way I didn’t care for, in a way I couldn’t allow.

That shithead was under my skin.

And I knew this sudden calm wasn’t the end of it.

Not after his actions had pushed me into responding with a show of force.

He wouldn’t let that lie and those pulling his strings in the Infidels certainly wouldn’t.

Something was coming and it’d had me on edge, the longer this calm had dragged out.

It was obviously what they’d wanted, the reason for this. It was some sort of psychological warfare, trying to unnerve their latest enemy target.

As if that wasn’t irritating enough and stressing me out majorly, there was also the fact that taking things as far as I had because of Killian’s escalation meant I could no longer use him as an in to the Infidels.

My goal was to get to the head of the Hexwood faction.

Asher Monroe.

The Chameleon.

Three years older than the rest of us, at twenty-four, he was more than halfway through his Masters at Hexwood U, his classes over on the other side of campus, separate from us undergrads. It wasn’t as easy to simply run into him. Not that it had been with the other one I’d yet to meet, Jonah, because he had a very different set of classes with his Engineering program, spending a lot of time in the labs that were nowhere near mine and Killian’s classes. Although, Killian was very visible to begin with, purposely putting himself in the spotlight.

Asher most definitely wasn’t that person.

He wasn’t somebody you could simply approach.

Especially not about the sort of thing I had in mind.

You needed an opening.

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