Page 27 of Shifting Tides

I froze in my tracks, suddenly ten years old again.

“You will face me when I’m speaking to you!”

I turned slowly and set my jaw, bracing for the lashing.

“Tobias, you are adisgraceto the royal Dracul line.” Arthur’s voice was low and cruel. “I would have doneanything,andI would have sacrificedanything,to protect our people.”

He threw the door open and stomped out before slamming it inches from my nose.

Despite how small and dejected I felt, I knew one thing for certain: I would have nothing to do with Arya.

Chapter 8

Caesar

The final steps of the departing students left the classroom quiet and peaceful after a long day of teaching. I rubbed at my temples as I glanced down at the screen built into my desk. Another set of assignments had been graded. Reaching down, I tapped theSubmitbutton, sending off the newly posted grades to their respective students.

Running a hand through my hair, I let loose a heavy sigh.

Why couldn’t I shake this feeling? Why couldn’t I get her face out of my head?

“What has your feathers ruffled?”

I jumped at the voice that disrupted my peaceful silence.

“Kai!” I called in annoyance. “Why do you find it so hard to knock?”

“The door was open. Why would I knock?”

“A tapping on the door is a lot less jarring than your enthusiastic voice.”

Kai Inari, the math teacher, made his way toward my desk. He was wearing a button-down tan shirt, the top button undone,and a cardinal tie pulled a little loose around his collar. He was Japanese-American and my oldest friend. We’d known each other so long that I could almost see Kai’s fox features in the sharp angles of his face.

“I think the door was ajar-ring, but that’s just me,” Kai replied casually.

I rolled my eyes. I wasn’t in the mood for his corny humor.

“Besides, I could have just phased through the closed door anyway,” he added. “On a more serious note, I just wanted to swing by and talk to you about some new tech we’re developing. It’s just about ready for field testing with the shifter military.”

“I’ve got a lot on my mind, my friend,” I replied wearily, looking back down at my screen. “Now isn’t a very good time.”

Kai tilted his head, his ears flicking. “A vampire tracking system. The latest and greatest.”

My eyes made their way back up to his face. “Better than the ones your team has come up with in the past, I hope.”

He moved forward, taking my words as an invitation to explain things.

“We’ve been using ineffective methods up to this point. Our current gear picks up patterns by searching reported attacks on news and social media databases to locate large groups of them. But the problem is, we’re tracking the attacks, not the vampires themselves.”

My heart rate increased as I realized what this could mean. “And your new tech could locate any vampire, anywhere, anytime?”

Scrunching his brow, he sucked in a breath between his teeth. “Not exactly. But we’re getting closer to that ultimate goal.”

Waiting expectantly, I raised my eyebrows.

Kai cleared his throat. “The new tracking system has been fine-tuned to detect the chemical that vampires expel when they need to drink. You know, when their animal instincts are kicking into gear, so to speak.”

I nodded slowly. “That’s getting us a bit closer to what we really want to be able to do.”

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