Page 23 of Shadow Master
“Yeah,” Aidan agreed. “I am.”
We had a nice little setup going, and the forge had been converted into a kitchen by some of the cadets. Food had been shipped from the Academy. We had a nice store up here now.
“Full moon tonight,” Devon said. “You want to run?”
It took a moment for me to realize he was addressing me. “What? Run with you guys?”
Aidan grinned, and his eyes lit up. “You afraid of seeing a little too much package? I promise we’ll change out of view.”
He was talking about shifting. “I’m a nightblood. I thought moonkissed had an aversion to nightbloods when in their wolf forms?”
“Some do. It’s not a generalization,” Devon explained.
Aidan nudged me with his shoulder. “We can do a sweep of the grounds while we run.”
The past week, stuck here on the fortress grounds, training cadets, barking orders, avoiding Hyde, and wondering if I should go find Kash and apologize had been trying. The idea of letting my hair down and just running was appealing.
“You know what? Yes. I’ll run with you.”
“Meet us at the stables at sunset,” Devon said.
He climbed off the bench and sauntered toward the training grounds.
Aidan picked up Devon’s plate and proceeded to lick it.
“Wait a second … aren’t you on wash-up duty?”
He paused to grin wickedly at me.
“Oh, gross.”
* * *
“Two AM post attacks today,”Lloyd said.
It looked like the weaver alarm was weakening, if it hadn’t failed already.
The cadets were on a break, eating, drinking, fueling up for the next round.
I smiled at a couple of female moonkissed. “No sign of the fomorians who damaged the posts?”
“Nothing,” Lloyd said. “The posts hit were in sector three. Our shadow cadets dealt with the repairs.”
“How’s the weaver training coming?”
“You’ll need to speak to Kash about that,” Lloyd said. “Latrou has him running point on it at the Academy.”
“Fine.”
Thinking about Kash made my stomach hurt. He’d left for the Academy before I’d had a chance to say sorry, to explain that he meant more to me than just sex. He hadn’t come back yet. Part of me said I needed to go after him, but another part, the secret part that had failed at relationships, held me back.
“You haven’t spoken to him yet, have you?” Lloyd said.
“No, I haven’t.”
I’d mentioned we’d had a little tiff to Lloyd a few days ago when he’d questioned Kash’s absence on the grounds. Considering the weaver had been so eager to be around me originally, Lloyd had found it odd that he’d retreated to the Academy so suddenly.
“Is that because you don’t want to continue a relationship with him?” Lloyd asked.
