Page 23 of House of Lilith

So I give him a slightly shy, but obviously flirty smile.

He pulls away a little, looking at me from an angle, saying, “Wow, youcando something other than frown after all.”

I take a step back and I make my voice as silky smooth as I can. “I guess you’re funny.”

Chapter 4 - Dahrian

Funny,Shadowscapegirlsaysas she takes a tentative step back, throwing me a softer look from those big, dark eyes. I follow her. “Glad you think so,” I say, ignoring my fox nudging me to get even closer so he can get another whiff. “What’s your name?” I ask her.

She just looks at me for a second. “I think you know it,” she says. That makes me frown. “But you first,” she demands.

My lips curl into a smile. So thin and small, yet such a big presence she is, with that mane of tangled black hair framing her sharp face. “Dahrian,” I say as I look deeper into her eyes, “but you can call me whatever you want.”

I think I see her blush and it sends my heart racing a little, my fox grumbling to be let closer.

“Well,Dahrian,” she starts sweetly, my name on her lips sounding so good, but then, just like that, she disappears.

I don’t have time to react. The next thing I know, she’s slamming my body into the shield behind me, her forearm pressed tightly against my chest as something round and thrashing is trapped between my back and the cold stone.

It renders me speechless and unmoving, the close up of her eyes — narrowed and piercing, deep and cold. “Thanks for making this easy,” she whispers with a smirk just as the ball stops thrashing.

My eyebrows shooting up, I open my mouth, but she releases me and deftly catches the ball as it starts falling down to the ground, successfully neutralized.

Still speechless, I watch her zap herself away from me, seeing her reappear right in front of one of the goalposts. The very next moment, she’s leaping into the air, her arm swung back.

Everyone around me seems to stop what they’re doing.

The second she gets the ball through the hoop, a gong sounds and the scoreboard above shows a flashing number one.

I watch her land on her feet, as deftly as a little vixen, as the crowd breaks out into thunderous cheering. One zero for Grimm Academy.

The very next second, she’s zapped out of the Ring and onto the bleachers.

But it doesn’t snap me out of it, not fully.

The little vixen, she set me a little trap, and I walked straight into it.

Color me charmed.

“Hey,” I hear Ricky call out as he runs past me. He turns so he’s running backwards, shoots me a look and yells, “Come on,” right before he turns back around and keeps going.

He’s right, I think as I look down, thinking I'll find the ball she neutralizes first still lying on the ground. But it's gone, someone obviously having grabbed the opportunity. I go straight back to looking for more, scanning the Ring as I jog.

There aren’t a lot of players left. Out of the initial two hundred, maybe eighty or so. And some of them are in their animal form while some are casting magic at this very moment, but they all seem wrung out.

Still, now thatshedid it, it seems that everyone’s caught onto what we’re supposed to be doing in the first place. I can tell by the way most of them stop avoiding the shields, instead starting to crowd the center of the Ring.

Many of them got destroyed and there’s not that many balls left, so if I don’t hurry up, I won’t be catching anything at all, be it a night with a feisty little vixen or one of those fucking points.

Keep the peace and stay until the end, Brogan’s voice rings in my head.

And I finally do it. I get in the zone. And I choose to stick with the original decision, to not even try to shift due to the sheer size of my fox. But then I spot a ball and I come up with the perfect way to make it slam into one of those shields.

*

I’m in the bleachers, sitting in one of the spots reserved for Fiains who’ve finished the Game. My focus is as sharp as a knife as my eyes dart from the Ring to one of the screens showing close-ups of the Game to the audience. It’s all going much faster now, players scoring points left and right, the scoreboards changing every couple of minutes.

I catch O’Malley Senior getting a ball through the hoop. My lips curl into a smile, my gaze automatically flitting over to where the little vixen is sitting.

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