Page 31 of Starlight Mates

All I hear is Hollis’s shout before he disappears in the waves, and I grasp the side of the cliff as I look for him. “He’ll drown!”

Rhodes leans down to me, and he takes my hands in his. “No, he won’t. He’ll be pissed and soaked, but he’s a very good swimmer. Come on, I want to show you a gift I got you.” He wraps his arms around me and picks me up.

We are silent on the walk back to the academy, and Rhodes leads me to a part of the academy I haven’t seen. It’s high up in one of the towers, and we pass through a door that clearly says No Students Allowed on the door. “Where are we going?”

He nudges another door open. “My room. I moved into the academy this year.” He doesn’t say to be closer to me, but I get that feeling anyway.

“I’m sorry, I… It was a bad memory. The water on my face. It really wasn’t Hollis’s fault, I just…”

“It was Hollis’s fault. It always is with him, and if you want to tell me the story of why, I’m listening,” he offers, but he doesn’t push. He doesn’t demand anything of me.

“Maybe one day,” I hedge. How can I ever explain it to him by telling him everything?

Rhodes puts me down in front of a red oak door, and he uses a key in his pocket to open it up for me. It’s a small apartment with views over the sea, an enormous bed at the back of the room, and in the cage in front is the golden retriever puppy from the shelter. The one with a limp. “She’s yours. The academy let me have her stay here or in your room whenever you want, when she is more trained. We can take her with us to work too, and Helen is going to give her private lessons to help her limp. But I’ll give you a key, and you can come here—” I throw myself at Rhodes, squealing as I hug him as tight as I can. He laughs, holding me right back. “I was worried you’d say you don’t want her.”

“I always wanted a golden retriever and…” I drift off as he stares down at me. I lift myself up and brush my lips across his. A soft kiss, which I break away from quickly, but it makes my whole body buzz to life with just that brush. “Thank you, Rhodes. I wasn’t allowed birthday gifts or Christmas presents, but I always asked for a puppy of my own.”

“Fuck.” He rubs the back of his neck with a cheeky grin. “If a puppy gets me a kiss, I’m going to have to adopt more just for a chance of another kiss.”

I laugh with him as I head over to my puppy and take her out of her cage. She looks up at me with her bright hazel eyes, andI kiss the top of her head. I can’t stay in Starlight forever, but I am going to let myself have something. “Hello, Nibbles. You’re mine.” I glance at Rhodes, and he smiles at me. We both know he is mine, too.

Chapter

Fourteen

Iwas wrong to thank Annie for buying me an outfit. Absolutely and completely wrong. I’m wearing ridiculously tight green shorts that barely go to my thighs, and they show off all of my ass. At least the rest of the outfit is a slightly oversized white top with a crest right in the centre of it, which is apparently Rhodes and Onyx’s team crest for Starlight City. The crest is dark green with a silver snake wrapped around a dark wolf.

My hair is down and straight, despite Annie wanting to braid it for me like hers in pigtails. I’m actually wearing a little make-up that Annie helped me choose, with green and white stripes on my cheeks. I look like I’m going to an American football game. Annie’s mate, Kosma, is waiting outside the front of the academy with his car and is wearing a green shirt. To my surprise, Alek is with him. Alek is in an all-black uniform and looks like he is attending a fight instead of a game.

They’re both talking quietly, but Alek lifts his gaze to me. His eyes widen as he slowly runs his eyes up my bare legs, over the tiny, tiny shorts and the rest of me until he meets my eyes. A slow smirk fills his face, and it’s sexy. Annie is charging intoKosma’s arms as I walk to Alek, where he is leaning on the dark blue Porsche. He locks eyes with me. “Are you ready?”

“Oh, so, you are talking to me?” I innocently ask. His expression is guarded as he opens the door for me, and I slide in. Annie gets in the front with her mate, so Alek sits next to me in the back. There isn’t much room in the Porsche’s back seats, and Alek is a huge guy. He’s so big that his entire thick thigh presses against mine, even with the middle seat between us. It’s a fast enough car to get us through the streets of Starlight with ease and small enough to head down the side roads to miss the bulk of the traffic. Alek finally answers me after a long pause. “I was never not speaking to you, Gwen. You’re just not coming into my class until you start using those powers of yours. The same rules apply to every student of mine, and I can’t make special arrangements for you.”

“Lies,” I mutter. “I know it’s personal.”

“It isn’t,” he snaps, and we glare at each other until Annie turns on the radio to fill the silence, and I decide to focus on the view out of the window instead of Alek’s stubborn mood. I’m here to support Rhodes and Onyx, not to argue with Alek.

The car ride is awkward, even with Annie singing songs on the radio nearly the entire way there until the news comes on. “No suspect has been found for the murder of Lewis Masters, in the early hours of Saturday morning. We remind the public of Starlight of the curfew in place and the one-off restrictions tonight for the?—”

Annie turns the radio off and sighs. “Everyone is going to be nervous being out tonight, even with all the rangers on the streets my dad put out. That murder makes twelve.”

Kos clears his throat. “I’d only be nervous if I was an asshole. My parents are interested in this, for obvious reasons, and my mum told me every Nexus dead has turned out to be right dickheads. Lewis Masterton was reported to the school forbeating his kid a few days before he was found dead. So, I’m sorry, but if a Vian is killing them, he or she can continue. We don’t want them either.”

Annie sighs. “It’s still not right to go around murdering people. The boy woke up and found his dad. Now he is traumatised.”

My stomach drops and I beg for someone to change the subject. Kos suddenly straightens. “We are nearly here. Look!” When we pull up at the giant stadium to the north of the city, my eyes widen. There are green and yellow beams of light dancing in the sky from inside of the stadium, which is one gigantic oval white building with big screens sticking out of the very top.

There’s a massive queue from the car park, and I wince, knowing it’s going to be a cold night while we wait to go in. Annie and Kosma walk ahead of us, leading Alek and me round to a side entrance, where someone opens the door from inside and lets us in. After we climb a million and a half stairs, we wait to be let into our seats in a balcony area that overlooks the stadium.

Annie looks back at my questioning eyes. “Perks of having my dad be my dad.” We both know she wants to say something like “one of the only perks,” but she winks at me instead. Alek stays close to my side the entire trip, his scent washing over me like a drug, even if he doesn’t speak a word. The stadium is what I’d imagine an American football game to be like. Rows of plastic seats rising high up into the skies in all directions, and every seat faces the massive stadium centre.

In the centre is a pitch, but it’s not like any pitch I’ve ever seen. There are two massive goals on either side, big golden rings that are a hundred feet in the air, and behind them are the huge screens. Drone cameras are floating around the sky above, and I bet they capture every inch of this game on those screens.

The pitch itself is on four levels: the bottom level is pretty much all sand, and the second one curves up with dozens of rowsof steps. Some are broken, some are not. The third level above that has a river streaming around in loads of different directions, but that’s all there is, and the river current looks fast. Magic for sure. There is a Nexus controlling that water somewhere close. At the final level, there are fires bursting into the sky from pits of lava in random spurts, and the rest is rock. My stomach drops when I realise two of my Nexus mates are going into this arena to play a game soon.

“This isn’t like football,” I mutter.

Alek coughs. “You thought Nexus ball was like football? You know they shift, right?”

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