Page 22 of The First Year

Not that we could do anything about it. “I think she looks a little better.” At least I hoped. “Maybe we can get a look at her bites and see if they are healing at all. You know what mine were like when I got here.”

“A gory mess. And mine weren’t much better.” Odin pushed his plate of eggs aside. “I don’t know how anyone gets better here.”

The two guys launched into a discussion of how we could help Roxy heal without getting her in any trouble. We got demerits all the time, but that was the last thing the female needed after all the trauma she’d been put through. I kept my eyes on Roxy and my ears on my friends’ conversation. If I wasn’t mistaken, they both were far more interested in her than I’d ever heard them with anyone else. Basically, we hadn’t been looking for relationships, any of us, more interested in figuring out how we could get out and get back to our lives.

Now, all that had changed. While Roxy and her friend had their heads bent over a notebook, they were making awful faces but also laughing together, and it warmed my heart to see her smile. This female needed joy in her life, and my wolf was positive we were the ones to give it to her. The uniform that looked so dreadful on so many actually was cute on her, emphasizing her trim waist and flaring hips. Among other things. Maybe I was wrong to be ogling someone who at this point needed compassion and kindness more than a mate.

My mate-to-be in the pack had never been fated. We’d been betrothed very young with the intent of creating connections between powerful alphas, and when I was stripped of my future position, so I was stripped of my future with Madison. Although we’d been thrown together regularly over the years, and she was nice enough and certainly stunning, losing her had been the one part of my old life I’d never been able to bring myself to care about.

I only hoped she’d be happy with my younger brother who she’d been handed off to, I’d heard, like a possession with no say whatsoever in her life. Here, I couldn’t come and go at will, and I was locked in at night, but nobody was trying to force me into a relationship that I didn’t want.

One plus to this prison school.

If Madison left me cold, Roxy heated my blood. I already knew I’d lay down my life for her not out of duty, which would have been the case with my former betrothed, but because I chose her life over mine.

“Sol?” Odin elbowed me. “Daydreaming?”

“Something like that.” My friends had been talking about Roxy nonstop, and I wasn’t sure what that meant. Still, the most important thing was to help her get through her first days if not unscathed, at least no worse than she’d arrived. Way harder here than many realized when they first showed up.

Anything else, we could discuss later. What were the odds they also had strong feelings? I believed she was my mate, and therefore not theirs. If they attempted to take things beyond friendship and protection with her, I would just let them know she was my fated. It would be fine. “Let’s make a pact to keep an eye on her. I think she’s overdoing what we told her to do, and we don’t want her to draw attention by acting too healthy. Nobody will buy that either.”

“Anything can be a problem here,” Odin said. “I’m in.”

“Me too.” Evander’s gaze lit on Roxy. “Whatever she needs, I will protect her.”

“Deal, then.” It was only about caring for her. Nothing more. Until I claimed her as my mate.

Chapter Nineteen

Roxy

No shifting today.

At Urban Academy, there was some in-class shifting, but we could also do it in the courtyard or a few other places on campus. There were even locations off campus where we could walk or hitch a ride with someone to run in the hills outside of the city. And local restaurants and shops and all sorts of museums and concerts if we wanted to go.

Not that I’d had money for any of the expensive things, but museums were often free to students and other cultural-type events offered discounts. My stepmother wouldn’t have sent me an allowance if I was going to die without a chocolate bar from the canteen, but I had picked up some work-study hours tutoring first-year students, and that helped me to manage the basics. I made a mental note to ask in admin if there was any such thing because my clothes were not only not fashionable but at this point were close to falling apart, and I didn’t want to wear this itchy uniform forever.

After Mr. Haley announced the change in schedule, I whispered to Desi, “Can we just go do it ourselves in the afternoon?”

Her eyes widened, and she looked left and right. “Ourselves? Without supervision?”

“Uh yeah?” I’d been doing it unsupervised since my first shift that happened when I was all alone in the forest. “Pretty sure I know how.”

“No way. That’s like fifteen demerits…twenty maybe? Don’t even think about it.” She sat up very straight and folded her hands on the desk. So many folded hands around here. “Now sshh. Time for the test.”

I followed her gaze to the front of the room where the teacher held a sheaf of papers. We were going to take a test on a printed-out form? Why not mimeographed if we were stepping back into the past? In the olden days, my grandma told me, one of the few times I saw her before she died, they had a machine with a strong smell that nobody who had ever scented it could forget. She described it as chemically, but smiled while saying it, and told me how she was privileged to use the machine to turn the handle and magically make the letters transfer onto the test sheets.

Funny how I could miss someone who I’d spent so little time with, but my father’s mother had a magic about her that made her unforgettable.

The happiness and nostalgia of that memory flitted away, replaced by a present where a man wearing what looked like the identical jacket and pants from the day before was glaring down at me and holding out the test I’d been dreading. “Miss Swifthunt, are you prepared for this quiz? I noticed you were daydreaming yesterday as well.”

Bastard was probably hoping I’d fail. I’d never give him the satisfaction.

“Of course, Mr. Haley, I was listening. Your lecture was so filled with interesting details, it was a lot to memorize, but I promise to do my very best so you know I appreciate all the work you put into your lecture and our education.”

I heard Desi suck in a breath at my outrageous remarks. A bit over the top, but the teacher didn’t seem to notice. Rather, he preened. “We shall see, then. I get little enough appreciation around here.”

Holy shit. He bought it.

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