Page 74 of Obsession

The staff dining room's smell held the lingering aroma of spicy stew and yeasty bread, which I usually found comforting. But today, I pushed the remnants around my plate, barely tasting the flavors. My newly healed leg only occasionally tinged, but that wasn't why I frowned as I stared at my plate.

"—need to catch up with them before they reach the first target.” Volten's voice cut through my distraction. "Are you even listening, Kann?"

I wasn't. Not really. Instead, my mind kept drifting back to Britta's face just before she'd left me in surgery—the hurt in her eyes, the tight set of her jaw. But worse than that were the memories that kept surfacing, too vivid to brush away. The taste of her lips, sweet with a hint of citrus from whatever lip balm she used. The soft sounds she made when I kissed her. The way her body fit against mine, as if she had been made for me.

"Kann!" Volten snapped his fingers in front of my face. “Grek, what's wrong with you?" Then my friend cringed and shook his head. “Sorry. I did not mean that. It’s my worry for Ariana that made me lash out.”

“You have no need to apologize to me. You are right.” I ran a hand through my hair, grimacing. “Something is wrong with me. I think I might be going crazy."

Volten leaned back on the wooden bench, crossing his arms. The worry lines around his eyes deepened. “I have known you too long to believe that you are mad. If you did not lose your mind after we were chased by the Carpithian troopers or almost liquified by the Vorgrog mist, you have not lost it now.” He put his elbows on the table, his expression earnest. “Talk to me."

I looked at my friend and remembered how much we had been through together and how many awful situations I had gotten him into. If I could trust anyone, it was Volt. If there was anyone who would stick by me no matter what, it was him.

"It's Britta." The words tumbled out before I could think of the best way to tell him. "I can't stop thinking about her.”

He nodded. “There is nothing crazy about that. She is a beautiful woman.”

“Not just thinking.” I dropped my head in my hands. “I’m having these dreams, these memories, but they can't be real. They're in some room I've never been in, but everything feels so real. The way she tastes, the sound of her moans, the feel of her fingers on my nodes…” I trailed off, realizing I probably shouldn't be sharing quite so many details with my best friend.

Volten's expression shifted, and he twisted his lips to one side. “You are certain you aren’t mixing up memories? There are many females who have rubbed your nodes.”

I shot him a severe look. “You do not think I thought of that? The memories are new, and they are not of any female in my past.”

“When I located you two in the academy, I did wonder if anything had happened. You assured me nothing had, but…”

Had I lied to my best friend? I had never kept secrets from him before, but I might if it was to protect someone else. Had I been protecting Britta?

Then my heart stuttered in my chest. “How did you find us?”

“Kav gave me a tracker to pinpoint your energy signatures in the simulated Academy, I finally located you in one of the cadet dormitories." He paused, studying my face. "You told me you were hiding from the hunters."

I nodded slowly, faint memories returning. “We were. We had been running from the instructors in the Silent Hunt.” Then I pinned Volten with a sharp gaze. “Describe the room.”

Volten shifted uncomfortably but continued. "It was on the third floor of the main tower. Small room, standard issue furniture. The bed was rumpled. There were a few leather-bound books on the desk, like the ones we keep in the Stacks.”

I stopped breathing. Leather bound books on the desk. Exactly like the room from my dreams. Something I would never imagine in a room I dreamed. Because it had not been a dream.

Volt had found us intheroom. The room where I'd kissed Britta until we were both breathless, where I'd held her close as she trembled in my arms, where I'd told her…

I pushed back from the table so quickly the bench nearly toppled behind me. "It was real. It happened."

Reality and simulation snapped into place in my brain, the true memories crashing over me like a ferocious wave—not just fragments anymore, but complete and overwhelming. How I’d pulled her into that room, both of us breathless and terrified. How we had waited, barely daring to breathe, to be certain the hunters were not going to burst in. The first brush of her lips against mine, tentative then hungry. Everything I'd dismissed as fantasy suddenly crystallized into reality.

"I have to find her." I was already moving toward the door, the wound in my leg forgotten. "I have to fix this."

My mind was already racing ahead to where Britta might be. The Stacks? The School of Engineering? Her quarters? I'd search everygrekkingroom in the academy if I had to. I'd forgotten once—let myself forget her—but never again.

And when I found her, I'd make sure she knew that nothing about us had been a simulation. Not the way my heart raced when she smiled, not the words we'd whispered in that dormitory room, and not the way I felt about her. None of it had been fake. Not for me.

I just hoped I wasn't too late to prove it to her.

Chapter

Fifty-Three

Britta

The sautéed padwump on my plate had long since gone cold, but I couldn't stop pushing it around with my fork. The cadet dining hall felt eerily quiet without its usual cacophony of voices bouncing off the vaulted ceiling. Now it was just Jess and me at the end of one of the long, wooden tables, our voices barely echoing in the vast space.

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