Page 64 of Guarded Rebellion

Now that’s a hell of a way to wake up.

I couldn’t wipe this smile off my face. Through the cold on campus as we walked toward the dorm, I felt so warm inside, full of excitement and something a lot like love.

“You only need to go in and get some papers?” he checked as he walked behind me into the dormitory.

Not many students were around. With this week packed with exams, that made sense.

“Yeah. I’ll grab her notebooks and then I can figure out what she needs to have sent in to her professor.”

No crowds stood in the halls as an obstacle. In less time that it had taken us to reach the bathrooms in our search for Kelly just a couple of days ago, we were there.

“This one,” I said as I grabbed the key that Kelly had given me a few weeks ago, just in case. I really was the only person she had in her corner, the only friend or acquaintance she trusted.

It seemed strange to feel like such an outsider here. I was supposed to have been living here these last couple of months.That exciting day of coming to campus was thwarted when Lev decided to have me live in the apartment away from here, but since I’d come to learn how good it could be to share my space, myself, with Lev, I wanted to bask in the rightness that everything had turned out for the better.

I tried to imagine coming here, seeing this hall as a sense of being “home”. That Kelly and I would’ve roomed together and likely become closer friends.

I wonder if she appreciates the privacy, though.

Seeing the many rooms with at least two students each, I winced at how easy it would be to feel like there was no quiet, no private places.

Like living in an apartment, I suppose.I put the key into the hole.Well, not like our apartment.Lev had chosen the penthouse for us, with all appliances and offerings state of the art and high quality.

“Maybe I can stop by the health clinic as soon as I have what she needs,” I mumbled, mostly talking to myself instead of Lev.

Like always, he was right there. At my back, standing to attention as he looked out down the hallway for any threats.

He nodded, though, giving me the hint that he’d heard me.

I turned the knob, excited to be able to check on my friend at the health clinic again. They couldn’t want to keep her there for too long, I would imagine.

I entered the dark dorm room. As I reached out to find the light switch, I groped blindly along the wall.What the hell? There’s got to be a switch near the door…

Lev followed me in, but the second we were both further into the room, something heavy crashed into me and pushed me back into Lev’s arms.

I opened my mouth to scream, but Lev slid his hand over it in a quick warning to stay quiet. It all happened so quickly, in ablur, that all I could do was struggle to breathe through the rush and pay attention.

What the hell? What the fuck is going on?

As soon as I was standing again, hauled behind Lev, I strained to find the light switch as my guard lunged forward to handle whoever the hell had thought they could ambush me in here, in the pitch dark.

27

LEV

Eva fell behind me, slapping her arm out for the light. It wasn’t necessary.

I could hear him. I smelled him.

The man who’d been in this dorm room to ambush us was within my reach, fighting like hell. I didn’t need the light on to kick his ass. I didn’t care if I could see his face when the fear of my anger registered on it.

“Get the girl,” someone ordered, spoken in Russian.

The voice wasn’t present, though. Despite the roar of my pulse in my ears as I entered full attack mode, punching and trying to get a hold on this man, I heard the distinction of that order. It came from someone not in this room. Not here.

“No,” Eva replied, also in Russian. “You’re not taking me anywhere.”

Lights clicked on near a bunk bed frame. She’d found a switch of some kind, but it hadn’t turned on the lights at the ceiling. It would’ve blinded me, nearly distracting me from keeping myself between this man and Eva, but I was too trained, too conditioned, to be a faulty killing machine like that.

---