Page 80 of Ava: Part Three

Zeke turned to look at her as if she had said something wrong.

“You can’t keep protecting him, Ava. He will die,” Zeke growled.

“Why? You can’t ask me to be okay with something like that if you don’t explain.”

Zeke looked outside again and watched Jared disappear as he headed towards the Fourth-Year block. His fists were clenched, and his eyes shifted between amber and red.

“He could have stopped an attack on our pack, but he didn’t. He’d known his father had been planning it for months, waiting to defeat my father and take over the pack. All he had to do was speak up,” Zeke growled.

He looked back at her, and she felt his pain. She felt Derek’s and Myles’ pain.

“We lost many pack members that day. My mother.Myles’ brother. So many friends. Just because he’s a coward. He’s as responsible for their deaths as the bastard who spawned him. And if we can’t get out of this thing with the Council, he is first on the list. One way or another, he will get what’s coming to him.”

She gasped and brought her fingers to her lips. She couldn’t imagine having to live with a reminder of her pain for years, unable to do anything because they had rules to live by.

“What happened to his father?”

“He already paid for his sins. He and all the pack members who thought they stood a chance of dethroning my father if they incapacitated him by killing his mate.”

So Jared’s crime had been because he couldn’t pick between his father or his pack? Surely he had already paid for that crime by losing his father, too?

But there was too much anger in the car for her to risk saying anything in his defence. She put her hand over Zeke’s and squeezed it gently before she got out. But she could tell by the look he gave her that he was disappointed in her.

Maybe she had not shown enough anger. Maybe her sympathy for Jared had shown. But she felt like crap when she finally walked through the doors of her block to start another day of playing Alpha while she waited for Mr Hansson to make his move.

Chapter 47

Zeke needed a run—something to calm himself.

Did his mate really feel sorry for Jared? Did she think his fate would somehow change just because she didn’t approve of it? She hadn’t been there!

She hadn’t been the one to come back from a hunt and see so much chaos and destruction. She hadn’t been the one to find her mother murdered in the woods and her father tied up when the breaking of the bond had weakened him.

And then to hear Jared whimpering that he was sorry. Sorry wasn’t going to undo anything that his family had done.

It didn’t matter whose sin it was; Jared would still pay for it, too.

“Do you need a minute, Mr Michelson?”

When he heard the professor’s nervousness, he looked up and realised his claws were digging into the desk. Shadow had taken control.

“I’m fine.”

He had bigger issues to worry about. His anger was likely pointless because they were all going to die. He should have been thinking of the beautiful connection he’d had with Ava’s wolf. That moment when her wolf had looked back at him, heard everything he’d had to say and allowed him to demonstrate it physically.

It had been an experience that he doubted anyone he knew had ever had.

But now that was tainted with this anger. This fury.

She was taking Jared’s side? Seriously?

“Mr Michelson...”

He looked up again and realised he was looking through Shadow’s furious eyes. Everything had a red haze.

“Maybe if you take five minutes? Get some fresh air?”

He didn’t wait to be told again. He shoved his chair back as he stood and didn’t have it in him to feel bad when the whole class flinched. After what Ava had done in training, the entire school was wary of him, too. He had never lost control like that at the academy; they only heard stories about him. But Ava had shown them what he could be like, and they didn’t even realise they were capable of so much more.

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