Page 63 of Rage

“Oh shit, Batya. I’m going to come. I’m going to…”

They came and cried out together. When Batya slumped on his chest, Sebastian wrapped his hands around her.

“You know?—“

“Don’t say it, Sebastian.”

He sighed. It wasn’t that Batya didn’t sense his feelings simmering below the surface every time they had sex. She just didn’t want the awkwardness that would come with having that conversation.

She didn’t have those kinds of feelings for him, but shedidwant to schedule a quickie on graduation day. He stroked her back some more.

“Maybe I should go.”

Batya pulled away from him and rolled over on the bed. Even without the words, he was still searching for some confirmation that he was…more. Not just one of the group of guys she’d always been upfront about.

She wouldn’t do that.

“Yeah. This was great as always. Have a good night.”

He nodded and got dressed in silence. Once he was out the door, she scheduled her quickie with the next lover on the list. If she was going to be recruited, it might be a while before she found a lover or two.

Chapter Three

Batya’s eyes flicked from one corner of the graduation hall to the next. At her side, her mother, Adelaide, fidgeted with Batya’s certificates. She’d lost count of how many she’d received. It wasn’t a surprise she was first in her classes, but that wasn’t her focus.

Is anyone from Castille’s squadron watching?

It was a futile exercise. She’d never paid enough attention to her classmates to know who their family was. For all she knew, her potential recruiter could be the strapping bald man sitting ramrod straight in his chair. Since the other military schools had taken in women before, it could even be the woman with her afro barely contained by a headband.

Instinctively, Batya touched her hair. The wayward curls were too light to hold an afro, but too curly for stylish twists. She wore her hair as she always did: in micro braids. They took forever to get done, but she could go months without worrying about it.

Her mother swatted her hand away.

“Leave your hair alone, Batya. It looks fine.”

Batya turned her attention to the deep blue dress sticking to her skin. It was as plain as her mother would have allowed butit still made her skin itch. The uncomfortable thing was another remnant of the tradition she hated. Would it have killed her mother to let Batya wear a shirt and slacks?

The headmaster droned on and she checked the program again on her tablet. It was almost over, thankfully.

When the ceremony wound down, Batya took her mother back to her dorm room. It was the first time Adelaide had been to the school without Batya’s father. While Clarke had survived years of military service, the giant of a man had been felled by heart disease a few months prior.

In her younger days, the only thing Batya feared was that her father’s death in battle would put her plans to be a soldier on ice. But her father had survived and so would she. Better yet, she’d thrive.

“It’s…still so bare,” Adelaide noted as she looked around the dorm room.

Batya frowned and tried to see the space through her mother’s eyes. That was part of the joy of having a single room. She didn’t have to put on the shroud of normalcy in her own room.

“It’s close to graduation so I just put everything away. It’ll be easier to pack.”

Adelaide smiled, indulging her daughter’s lie. The dorm room looked like her bedroom used to: neat and functional. It was nothing like her sister’s room that overflowed with her hobby of the month or her brother’s obsession with politics.

Shrugging, Batya changed the subject.

“So, I haven’t made my mind up about what I’m going to do.”

“I thought you were going straight into military service. Wasn’t that the whole point of this?”

Adelaide waved her hands around the room.

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