Page 264 of A University of Betrayal

“Shit...”

Julian swung himself down from the tree. Then he reached for his cell phone to check the time.

I hadn’t felt this worthless in a long time.

“You’re seriously looking at your watch?” I said disappointedly.

He looked up at me apologetically. “I’m sorry. I have somewhere to be.”

I snorted with disdain.

I knew exactly where he was going. Yesterday, when I had needed to get to my next lecture, I had lingered on the stairs and had coincidentally overheard everything. The diary entries, the conversation. And that they were actually up to something. At first, I had listened in disbelief. A Quatura that had something to do with my uncle. As much as I wished the contents of that diary were fictitious, it made sense now that Alarik was the way he was today.

He was defending the other species, no matter how harmful it was to our pack, based solely on a crush he should never have had.

She had been a Blair witch. And she had disappeared. Surely her Circle had found out about it and donewhateverto her.

I found it all the more naïve that Julian was talking to Bayla andYes– I wasn’t blind – he was literallygluedto her. But he had askedmeout on this unsuccessful date and I had successfully blocked that fact out.

I wondered if he really cared about me or if this was all just happening because Mica was here now to propose to me by the end of March if not sooner... Was Nash behind it?

“We’ll talk tomorrow,” he said quickly, and then he was gone.

And me? I sat annoyed in a tree house and watched fireflies.

If Julian thought I would be able to just talk to him normally after this behavior, he was wrong.

My cell phone rang.

It was Nash.

Had I not known what it was about, I wouldn’t have answered it. But my brother knew how to make things up to me, so this morning he had come up with a very amusing idea to get me involved in something risky.

“So?” I asked, feeling my stomach tingle with anticipation. I hoped he had good news about the plan, but I didn’t expect him to.

“You should come hereright now.We’ll never get this chance again.”

Sneaky

original_soundtrack

I hadn’t sneaked across campus this quietly and discreetly in a long time. On the one hand, I was about to behavereally badly.On the other hand, because I knew that Bayla, Julian, Larissa, and Julie were on their forbidden mission, which I would have loved to prevent my childhood friend from joining. But he probably needed to crash hard, face-first, to finally realize there were rules, that he couldn’t just spend time with two Quatura and a Ruisangor girl without facing consequences.

Only, what would my uncle do if he caught them? Should I call him?

The thought was extremely thrilling. But I wouldn’t have to do that. He was always on campus late on Tuesdays, usually in the library before he came home.

When I heard the rattling of metal, I looked around and spotted my brother holding his backpack up, grinning mischievously at me.

I hurried over to him.

“Don’t be so loud,damn it,”I hissed.

Then I looked around and spotted the matte gray beauty, which definitely shouldn’t belong to a twenty-year-old snob.

Miles always drove home, which made me all the more surprised that his car was here today. He was probably at Midnights.

“Ready to teach a Ruisangor a little lesson?”

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