Page 79 of Shifting Tides

Panic flashed through my smoldering chest. Kendall somehow took heroutof The Dome and into the lake. He knew of an exit that I didn’t. And if vampires had somehow followed them…

He was going to do worse than get Arya into trouble. He was going to get her killed.

“What the hell were you thinking, letting him take you out of The Dome at sunset?” I snapped at her.

Her cheeks flooded with color at the accusation, but her scowl deepened. “Why do you care? What does it matter if we went for a harmless swim?”

I imagined a vampire slitting her throat at the bottom of the lake, her blood coloring the water around her, and true fear gripped me.

“It matters that you snuck out of The Dome, however you managed it,” I seethed. “It matters that you did it as the sun was setting. Vampires have been looking for our school for years, and you could’ve led them right to it, right to you. Or do you want to end up just like your mother?”

Her eyes widened, nostrils flaring, and her mouth formed a perfect O of outrage.

Before I knew what was happening, her hand slapped me across the cheek hard enough to turn my head.

Shit. Why the hell did I say that?

I suddenly wished I had never approached them, never left the sanctity of my room at all today.

I looked back at her, feeling small and fragile under the hatred I found in her eyes.

“Fuck you!” she spat behind gritted teeth, then pulled her arm out of Kendall’s grip and stomped up the stairs without so much as a look back.

Kendall’s dark chuckle reached me through the ringing in my ears.

“Nice going. Looks like I’m going to win our bet. She tastes like candy, by the way.” He put his index finger to his lips and sucked it into his mouth, then flashed me a wicked grin when he popped it out.

I was too stunned by my own idiocy to feel anger at his implication.

“Ta ta, Tobias,” Kendall said with a wave of his sucked fingers before he chased after Arya up the stairs.

What the hell was wrong with me? How had I let this situation get so out of control? I was supposed to be getting close to Arya, becoming her friend, and yet all I seemed to be accomplishing was making her hate my scaly, charred guts.

And pushing her right into fish boy’s arms, apparently. It was clear that the two had been doing more than just swimming out there, and the more I thought about it, the more the poisonous jealousy saturated me.

I gripped the bag of fries in my hand, the paper crinkling in my clenched fist, and jogged up the stairs to my own dorm, trying like hell to pretend this night never happened and eager to drown my wounded pride in chili cheese.

Chapter 23

Caesar

“You’re lucky, you know that?” Kai said as he kept pace with me. It was Monday morning, an hour or so before classes began, and we were walking from the Grand Hall to our classrooms.

“And what makes you say that?” I asked.

Kai snorted. “As a gryphon, you can just slip away like you did two nights ago and fly around in the sky for as long as you want, getting away from the claustrophobia of The Dome.”

I frowned. I hadn’t exactly been flying for fun two nights ago. I’d been meeting with Julian Asher. And if word got out that I’d been communicating and plotting with a vampire—even one who had allied himself to the shifter cause—I couldn’t even imagine the consequences that would follow.

Any vampire was a threat in the eyes of the military, as well as every other shifter I knew, even if they claimed to be aiding shifters.

“Sure, I can go up top and walk the streets of the surrounding cities,” Kai continued. “But I can’t do so in my kitsune form without beingspotted as a freak.”

“You invented this place, Kai,” I said. “You took the possibility of this underwater school and made it a reality. And now you feel its walls closing in on you?”

Kai arched a brow. “Oh, I’ve invented plenty of things I haven’t liked.”

“Oh, really?” I said. “Name one.”

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