Page 16 of Wings of Ashes
Thatsurprised Nix. “What?”
“Yeah. I wonder how long they’ll stay out there before they give up.” Mara snickered.
“Should we… I mean, can you call or text them to say I made it out?”
“Nah.” Mara winked.
The bell rang, and Nix looked to the front of the classroom, ready to learn.What kind of shifter am I? What was my captor?Why was I taken?
Dusty artifacts littered ceiling-to-floor shelves, which encased the perimeter of the classroom. Nix let her gaze roam around the room. Even the air in the classroom felt rich with history, smelling like old leather-bound books.
“Professor Thierry likes old things,” Mara whispered to her. “Much to the dismay of all the young women who flood his class for a chance to look at him—”
“Everyone, quiet,” a low, raspy, masculine voice sounded from the front.
The professor entered from a hidden door at the front of the classroom that blended in with the eclectic décor. What was beyond that door? A secret library? A sex dungeon?I really need to never be around that incubus, Bael, again. Tainted thoughts.
“We have a lot to get through today,” the professor said. “I hope everyone brought their homework and typed it double-spaced.”
Nix frowned. Homework on the first day?
Oh.Oh no.
She recognized the professor as he turned and moved into the light, looking out at them all. Behind sexy, wide-rimmed and esteemed glasses, those silver eyes shone like beams as he scanned the class with his stony gaze.
Don’t see me. Don’t see me, she chanted in her head.
But, as if he heard her, his eyes instantly locked onto hers.
His mouth, which had been at a resting grumpy expression, thinned into a familiar ornery line of displeasure that Nix had gotten personally acquainted with in the hallway.
“You,” Professor Thierry said very pointedly at Nix. So pointedly that every student turned to follow his gaze and look at her.
“Me,” Nix replied.The one who bumped into you and caused you to drop a mysterious vial full of reddish liquid.The one you seemed to want to murder once I complained about my wet shoes.
“Youare not one of my students,” he snapped at her, pushing his wide-rimmed glasses higher up the bridge of his nose. He waved toward the door. “Get out.”
7
CHAPTER
“I, um, actually am one of your students.” Nix cleared her throat awkwardly as everyone stared at her. “I just transferred this morning.”
“You just transferred? Into a year-long course—during the second semester.”
“Um, yes?” Nix said, but her voice got higher at the end, making it sound like a question.
“How ridiculous,” the attractive professor stated.
Ridiculous?Thatsparked a heat at the back of Nix’s neck. How dare he call a student, who wanted to learn, ridiculous?
“You will have missed an entire semester of material. You will be setting yourself up to fail.”
“I’m a quick learner,” Nix said, her tone featuring a bit more of an angry edge than it had before he uttered the word “ridiculous.”
“A quick learner?” the infuriatingly sexy professor repeated.
“Yes.”
