Page 80 of Wings of Ashes
She informed him, “All books on combat, self-defense, or any type of fighting are locked up in that section.”
“You wish to learn how to fight?” Professor Thierry asked an obvious question, so Nix did not expend the energy to answer him. “Do you wish to learn this to…not require a husband at graduation? For your safety?”
Nix crossed her arms over her chest.
Professor Thierry exhaled sharply. “I told you in my classroom that I would protect you.”
“You?Protect me?”
He flinched at her harsh tone. “You think me incapable?”
Professor Thierry stepped closer to her. His breath noticeably played with a lock of her hair hanging over her cheek.
He told her in a low voice, “I may not have the outward appearance of massive muscles like a dragon shifter, but I assure you that gargoyle shifters are capable of much strength and much destruction.”
“Oh, I believe you are plenty capable of destruction,” Nix said. He was a privileged, strong, male alpha shifter after all.
Professor Thierry did not read into her tone—maybe he only read stuffy facts printed on paper. He added, “You said it yourself; you need a protector.”
“Thatwas what your big professor brain absorbed from our conversation?” Nix snorted, again letting her frustration bubble and boil over. “I don’twantsome alpha to protect me.”
She pressed a finger into his chest, paused at the hard muscle there, and pulled her finger back to a safer, less my-professor-has-abs location.
“I want someone to challenge the school—challenge the council and the societal reasons why Irequireprotection,” she said. “Let the female prey shifters take combat classes. Hold alphas accountable for abducting prey shifters off the street.Changethe rules.”
“The council, regrettably, will not listen to me,” Thierry admitted, grating the words.
“Then, maybe we need a whole new council,” she snapped.
Thierry’s eyes widened, and he glanced around, as if looking for cameras in the back of the library. He grabbed her shoulders and slid his hands down until his long, warm fingers handcuffed her arms.
“Donotsay treasonous things like that,” he commanded her in a stern voice, shaking her. His black pupils grew, dominating the silver iris.
Nix tipped her chin up and stared into those mind-numbing black and silver eyes of his. “Truth uttered by the oppressed is always called treasonous at first.”
Thierry shook his head and urgently tightened his hold on her upper arms. His grip tingled over her skin. “I am serious; do not say such things in front of others. The council is dangerous. They have eyes and ears everywhere, especially in the academy.”
“Fuck the council.”
Thierry bit back a curse and covered her mouth with his warm fingers. They smelled like dark chocolate cherries. “Donotsay things like that.” He gawked and tore his palm away from her lips after she— “You dare bite your professor?”
“Donotmuzzle me. Or I will do worse than nip.”
“Do you think anything through before you do it?” he criticized her.
Nix shrugged off Thierry’s grasp on her. He reluctantly let her go. “If I appear to be acting before I think, then you are just thinking slower than me.”
“You planned to pick a lock and steal an off-limits book in front of your professor.Why?”
“Maybe I don’t respect you enough to see you as an authority figure.”
Nix’s mouth kept spouting things before she could rein herself in. There was just so muchfirein her today, now being fueled by the idea of “self-defense” being an off-limits topic to the group of students who most needed the knowledge.
“Are you activelytrying to piss me off?” he asked her.
His gray eyes were wide open; the specks of silver shone in the dim lighting. The beautiful gleam reminded Nix of a mosaic of shards of hematite, galena, and arsenopyrite.
What Thierry did not know was what a little geode freak Nix was. When deemed the Ugly Duckling, Nix lost friends and gained little hobbies in her past. The study of rock formations and different crystals and minerals had fascinated Nix.
