Page 147 of Wicked Heirs

He was being so fucking intense.

After claiming the title of hertutorwith Professor Edgar Marlowe’s agreement in theirMagic in Combatclass—something I had no doubt had been pressured by Professor Callum Cornwell—they’d commandeered the Training Hall right after class for the last few days wherein Orpheus and Alena had been going hard at it.

Hard at it.

Really not the way I wanted that phrase to be playing out.

In fact, this obsession Ore had with training her and pushing her further and further had taken away from any fucking—orlovemakingas Xavier called it and wanted us to refer to it as—and even hanging out in our secret place in the woods at the edge of campus.

It had pretty much become the only thing we did, except for going to class together—those few me and X still shared with hernow that she’d moved into the advanced level of most things—and eating together once a day, usually for lunch.

And it sucked.

I missed her.

I missed us.

The quality time just wasn’t there and it was compromising our emotional and physical connection.

It had been made all the worse by X hardly being around. Any time themissioncame up, he vamp sped off, letting his disapproval be known and his refusal to support it.

It was typical of Orpheus Hart to fixate on whatcouldbe coming, instead of the reality of what currently was. Often, he had trouble being in the moment.

And right now was one of the worst I’d seen.

Because of Saryan.

Because of his dangerous Machiavellian plan that basically doubled as a fucking suicide mission—either figuratively with landing him in prison at Valmont, or even literally with him being taken down by Constantine himself when he attempted his dangerous mission.

As much as I doubted Ore would ever really admit it, his father hadn’t been the same since the blow he’d taken during theCataclysm.

This latest bullshit was proof of that.

He was paranoid, bitter, angry, quick to react in devastating ways, and he was all too willing to risk so much now. Including making Orpheus an orphan.

Yeah, his mom was still alive, but I didn’t count her as being so. She’d left and never kept in contact, so she was dead as far as I was concerned, even though Ore wouldn’t think like that because he had a soft spot and a blind spot when it came to Lenora Hart.

The point was, I knew what it was like to live like that, without family, and I didn’t want that for him. I’d do anything I could to protect him from having to face that nightmare.

And that included supporting this dangerous plan of his.

The one good thing about Xavier not being on board was that if he’d been present during this training, he would have interfered and stopped it from taking place the moment Ore had gotten more aggressive and started kicking Alena’s ass.

“Still holding back!” Orpheus yelled all of a sudden, stepping back from Alena and throwing up his hands with a burst of extreme frustration.

It wasn’t like him.

His patience and capacity for rational thought in the face of extreme circumstances was unparalleled. It just showed how much this situation was getting to him.

His father on a precarious mission, the acolytes back, a way to free that monster, Constantine, now on the table… it was a lot. For all of us. But with his father in play, it was even worse for Orpheus.

“You’re overreacting,” Alena said, calmly. “It’s going fine.”

“Fineisn’t close to being good enough for what needs to be done!”

“Let’s just continue,” she said, resuming a magical fighting stance that he’d taught her, a stronger one than the one she’d randomly come up with, one that enabled her to shield herself, while also dealing out damage.Ifshe’d followed his instructions. But I’d been observing and it was a case of her being hesitant to do more than one thing at once in case she lost control.

So she’d take a hit just so she didn’t risk that.

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