Page 73 of A Dusk Of Stars

“I don’t think that’s a good—”

“I don’t care,” I snap. And I can't take it back, but… I come to a stop, I turn to face him and I blow out an awkward laugh. “Sorry about that. Just go back to the party and have fun, alright?”

I don’t wait for his reaction. I turn around again and start rushing down the stairs and straight to Lycan Tower, determination making my blood pump faster. The winter break is officially starting and I know exactly what I need to do right now. I’ll grab a few essentials, I’ll use the emergency Pull Pass and I’ll get the hell out of this placewellbefore all this madness makes me break into a million pieces.

Chapter 23

Feeling numb after yet another sleepless night, I keep sitting in the Junkyard, waiting for the sun to rise and the second term to officially begin. On autopilot, I keep trying to summon those powers I supposedly exhibited at the first-term exam.

I’m a shifter and I can…

I’m a fae and I can…

I’m a vampire and I can…

Nothing happens, not even my imagination starting to work.

I’ve been trying for a whole month, during the entire winter break, with absolutely no success, so why would anything happen now?

“You’re absolutely useless,” I tell my wolf, but I only get silence in response.

I let out a sigh. Only an hour, that’s how much time I have left before I have to make my decision, and I’m no closer to making one than I was before the break.

If I listened to Serra, I’d just do it.

If I listened to Bane, I’m guessing I’d tell them all to fuck themselves.

As if on cue, there’s the infuriating tangle of powerful emotions that rises to the surface as soon as he pops into my mind. I haven’t had any contact with him since the Order meeting, but Ihavefound myself typing his name into my browsercountlesstimes, wondering what he’s doing, where and who with, and whether I ever cross his mind like he does mine.

It’s annoying as hell, especially when I fail to stop myself from getting caught in that same old vicious circle, the one I’ve been a victim of ever since the night of the Ball.

It starts with random, uninvited flashes — the eyes, the mouth closing over my nipple, how it felt to have him inside me… It unfailingly leads to this unbearable urge, not just to have it happen again, but to go andtellhim exactly how out-of-this-world that experience was for me, and to ask him, well…

I don’t know what I’d ask. Maybe the same thing I wondered after that night in the forest. Is that just what it feels like for a shifter?

Of course, that only makes me imagine him turning insufferable, being all like, “You telling me I’m not just your number-oneasshole, Novak?”

Or even worse, it gets me deeper into the vicious circle — remembering what he told me after the Order meeting.Struggling as it is…Whenever I remember that, it gets the memories of the Sobbing Lake rewritten into a story of astrugglingwoman letting herself get carried away with an asshole who obviouslydidwant to have sex with her, maybe still does, but who’d laugh in her face if he knew what kind of stuff was going through her head.

That’s the moment I usually renew my decision of staying the hell away from him from now on, because that’snothow I dothings. I don’t obsess, I don’t fret, I don’t read into things. I take what I want and I move on.

Besides… I haven’t the slightest idea what will happen to my special classes, but my life has become immensely more complicated than it was before the night of the Ball. I don’t need any other nerve-wracking complications thrown into the mix.

Therefore, what I should do right now is to stop letting him pop into my head like this and start focusing on the future.

The Aurora.

It would explain the visions. It would mean they’re flashes of memories from my past lives. They did say the Aurora is a being that endlessly reincarnates.

Still… Me? Was there ever a more pitiful shifter, let alone all three in one? And what, I’m supposed to defeat some Old Norse god?

Yeah, laugh about it, I scorn myself. It’s such a laughable matter. The pictures they showed me flash through my mind. Then the drawing, with the pattern that according to Raven can only be a representation of my tattoos, and the symbols which I’ve come to the conclusion can only be a representation of a ritual.

One which I don’t know how to decipher, not even to see what it is, let alone find out what it does.

What am I supposed to do withthat?

It makes my hand dart to my jacket pocket, where I keep the copies of the only things I found while doing my research. The fairy tale itself — the useless Sleeping Beauty. Information on Baldur, also useless. Yeah, lists and lists of hints that the Aurora could be a sacrificial figure, in the end.

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