Page 30 of A Shadow of Betrayal

“Fuck you, Lennox!” she snarls, jumping to her feet and glaring at me, leaning forward and making Razar shift the smallest step closer. I try not to roll my eyes at him, keeping my attention on the infuriatingly beautiful woman glaring at me. “This is kidnapping! People will be looking for me.”

I snort and stand up straight, adjusting the silver bands I wear on my wrist for protection while ignoring her disrespectful comment. “Who? Milo?” I ask, making her jaw tense with anger. She doesn't give me an answer, but I wasn't expecting one. “No. I don’t think so. I already had your life completely inspected, and you have no one. No one will miss you, and there is no one to come after you.”

I watch with mixed feelings as Meyer flinches like I have physically struck her. Then her shoulders roll in, making her look more petite than she had only moments before. “No one will find you here, Little Hunter, and if by chance some poor unfortunate soul manages to wander all the way up the mountain, I’ll be sure to kill him myself,” I continue, hammering into her the finality of her situation, hoping she will understand this is it for her.

If she runs… if she tries to leave here without becoming a fully blooded Umbra Hunter… I will go after her, and I will end her. I wait for her to respond, the hopelessness I feel coming from her setting me on edge. But when she says nothing, I know our meeting is over.

“I have pushed back our next Ranger game to next week. You have ten days to learn enough to survive here, Ranger Smith. You will need to work twice as hard as everyone else, which is why I left your physical training to Ranger Johnson. He has the skill set needed to help you. It wasn't a punishment as much as I'm sure it might have looked like one to you.

“If you try hard and give it your all while you are here, you will find that you will live a better life than you ever thought possible, alongside other people like you. You were never meant to live alone, Meyer. You need an Umbra unit to survive this fucked up world of ours. But you have to want it,” I finish, sitting down and nodding at my door when she looks up at me through those thick black lashes.

“We’re done here. Get your ass to hand-to-hand training before you fall further behind. You're dismissed,” I mutter, watching her closely, waiting for that snark to come back to the surface and for her to do something stupid like curse me or flip me off. But she only stands and walks out my door, shutting it softly behind her.

“You think she’ll make it?” I ask my brother, not bothering to look at him as he moves out of the room's shadows.

“No.”

I sigh and nod. “Yeah, that's what I figured.” I narrow my eyes on the door and then look to my right, meeting my brother's dark eyes. “Who’s Milo?” Razar doesn't answer; he simply shakes his head in response. Irritation burns through my chest as I lean back in my chair and crack my neck to the side. “Find him,” I demand, unable to stop the jealousy that I feel at the thought of a man looking for Meyer. I know she has no one but her father still alive, but they have been estranged for years. There was no report of a husband, so Milo either has to be a friend or boyfriend.

Razar nods, his eyes flickering with excitement as he turns to leave my office, his steps silent as he glides over the cold gray stone of my office floors. “And Razar?” I call after him, making him pause as he opens my door. “Make sure there is nothing left of him when you are done.”

FIFTEEN

Meyer

“What is this?” I ask, setting the gray tray I’m carrying on the table before I gingerly lower my body down to one of the small round seats, eyeing the weird yellow food in front of me. My glutes scream in agony as I put pressure on them, and I wince, shifting on the seat, trying to find a position that won’t set off any sore muscles.

After a moment, I give up, deciding my entire body hurts and there is no way to sit without something aching. So I pick up the big metal fork I had set next to the bowl and push the yellow goop around, trying to find something familiar in the weird-colored sauce.

“Curry. It’s actually pretty good,” Jordan says between mouthfuls, leaning over his much larger helping of food as he shovels it in with a spoon. I bring a small forkful up to my mouth and then taste it, letting the new spices flow over my tongue before shrugging and eating the whole bite. I’m way too damn tired and hungry to be picky over the food these people give me.

“Hey guys,” Theo says, dropping his tray next to my own and sitting down, earning a glare from Billy and Sabrina when they look up from their own trays a few seats down our table, eyeing Theo with a hint of distaste in their glances. The big cafeteria is loud, which thankfully helps keep our conversations private, and I give the two Rangers a small, friendly smile which they don’t return.

“What’s up?” Jordan asks with a full mouth, grinning at Theo, who is yanking books from a big black backpack.

“Not much, but I brought some books for our Angry Girl. I heard Umbra Regalis talking with Cap at lunch, saying she has to be brought up to speed on our history and that Axford is making him and his brother do the task.” My stomach drops at the reminder of the conversation I had with Lennox earlier, and I moan, letting my head fall to the black table as Jordan winces in sympathy. “So I brought the books my dad made me bring up here to study. I outlined all the important shit you might need to know,” Theo continues, either unaware of my misery or simply unbothered by it.

“You seriously have the worst luck,” Jordan whispers, taking another big bite of curry as I peek up at him through my disheveled hair, resting my cheek on my arms.

“Lennox told me I would need to work twice as hard as everyone else in the Regalis bloodline and also that he had our first bloodline competitions moved out by an extra week in order for me to have some more training time.” Whatever that means.

Insert eye roll here because the people in this damn Castle seriously need to work on their communication skills. It’s like they only give me the smallest amount of information possible, then get mad when I ask them to go into detail about it.

“Then, he emotionally dragged me through the mud before telling me to leave his office and get my ass to hand-to-hand training, so I don’t fall further behind,” I add, making Theo snicker in response. “There, I ended up with a weird zig-zag blade Umbra Monroe tossed at me and was told to defend myself. That’s it! Defend yourself and go.” I flick my wrist, mimicking Monroe's and making Jordan smirk behind his fork, his eyes glinting in amusement. He had been there during my poor attempt at defending myself and had been the only person in the room not laughing at me.

“That seems rather cruel,” Theo says with a frown, looking to Jordan, who nods in agreement.

“No joke, Theo. The man literally chucked a deadly sharp knife at me, and if it hadn't been for all the years of throwing knives at one of Gramp’s trees in the backyard, I'm pretty sure I would have cut a finger off or something. Then Monroe proceeded to tell me that the Kalis was only on loan from him until Senior Regalis could give me my own.

“There were no instructions on how to hold the damn thing or stand in the correct position. Thankfully, Jordan taught me when I took a water break after getting my ass handed to me in under four minutes,” I mutter, stuffing a bite of food into my mouth. Unfortunately, that did little to help the sting from the shallow cuts Sabrina inflicted at that time or the embarrassment when she stopped smacking me with the damn thing to ask if I was trying to make her look bad in front of our Seniors.

Looking back, I know I need to thank the girl for not skewering me during our fight. She held herself back, smacking me with the flat side of her blade and drawing back the moment blood was drawn. I thought she was crazy for a bit and was breaking in the ‘new Hunter’ with a good old fashioned ass kicking, but then I saw the eight-inch gash that looked like it needed stitches on Jordan’s side and knew she had taken pity on me.

I close my eyes and try not to die of embarrassment as the events of that lesson play out in my mind like the world's worst movie. Needless to say, it has been a horrendous first day, and I'm ready for it to be over. So, being reminded that I will now have to study with Lennox and try to learn all about the Umbra history on top of everything else, sucks.

My mind immediately goes to how the hell I can get off this mountain before I have to put myself through that torture. My eyes rove around the cafeteria, looking for something that I can easily pilfer that might be helpful in an escape. Unsurprisingly, my search comes up as empty as my searches of all the other rooms I’ve been in. The whole room is spotless and in military-like order. I sigh and slump down in defeat and wonder if Lennox was being serious about the whole Umbra Hunters chasing me down or if he was using that to keep me here and under his thumb.

I make a mental note to ask Jordan once we are away from all the ears in the cafeteria.

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