Page 188 of The Blairville Legacies

But I got up.

In the corner of my eye, I saw that more people had their cell phone cameras out.

I looked at Nash, who was grinning slyly at me.

I didn’t know when he’d started acting like this, but I knew he’d become a real bastard over the years. He was definitely no longer the quiet boy of three years ago who wrote poetry alongside all the sport and mostly stayed out of all pack affairs. He had become one of them.

Back then, I had thought we were so different because I had always been the rowdy wild one who broke all the rules. I would never have thought that we could become even more different by turning the tide.

“Take your place!” the blonde Senseque guy shouted from the edge of the pitch.

We got into position.

But Nash wanted to get something off his chest.

“Don’t be so weak this time, Bardot!” He looked at me challengingly. “Your mother would turn in her grave if she saw what you’ve become.”

My whole body tensed up. I dropped the ball, and slowly, my hands clenched into fists. I felt the anger creeping into every fiber of my body. With a deep, angry roar, I threw myself at Nash.

His words had been a mistake. He would pay for it.

I yanked him to the ground and my fists smashed down on his face. Blood sprayed from his nose onto his tense upper body.

Nash didn’t just lie there. He threw me off him with force.

I jumped up and immediately sat on him again.

My fists hammered at him and helped to suppress the emerging transformation.

“Julian! Stop it!”

Emely stood next to us and pulled on my arm. I pushed her away. A little too hard, because she stumbled back.

I looked back at her to make sure I hadn’t hurt her, but then Nash’s fist hit me right in the face and I felt the taste of metal in my mouth.

Nash pinned me to the ground and went to punch, his face covered in blood, his hair all mussed up, and he was pulled off me.

I was about to jump up and lunge at Nash again when Hunter and Emely grabbed me from behind.

“Boys!” Alarik stood between the two of us, arms outstretched, his jaw tense. “Enough!”

He gave us both angry looks. Then he looked into the crowd.

“Stop filming! Damn it!” he shouted loud and clear and the crowd seemed to disperse immediately.

“And you two!” He looked first at Nash, then at me, his eyes still full of anger mixed with disappointment. “In my office!”

I had never seen Alarik as angry as he was now. I had grown up with him on the Copeland estate and had gotten to know him there as the quiet and idealistic, as well as a bit of a nutty professor.

He was usually very patient. But his nerves must have been so shattered by what had just happened that he was now out of his mind with rage.

His huge office seemed much more peaceful than the atmosphere was at the moment, with the large windows overlooking the campus letting in the soft light.

Nash was sitting in one of the chairs in front of Alarik’s oak desk with a compress over his eyebrow and some tissues held to his nose.

I had sat down on the couch, trying to suppress my transformation, but the dark veins on my arm wouldn’t go away.

If Alarik hadn’t been here, I probably would have torn Nash into a thousand pieces. I would have become the beast that lay dormant deep inside me. Because mentioning my mother wasbelowdignity, even for someone like him!

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