Page 11 of Kimiko and the Accidental Proposal
The phoenix completed the link, and although he offered no words, Kimiko felt the tentative brush of his presence against her soul. Feather-light and friendly.
The gentle intimacy filled her with the awe of discovery. Yet there was something hauntingly familiar about that fleeting connection. If only she could remember why.
SEVEN
Panic Attack
Tenma had really only applied to the integration program because his father insisted. For the sake of the company. For the sake of the future. New Saga was supposed to be a good place for his lesser son to meet a whole new breed of influential families. Except Tenma didn’t think Amaranthine priorities ran to market shares and mergers.
His father had been pleased when Tenma’s letter of acceptance arrived, but the man barely looked beyond a few key words—elite, exclusive, unrivaled, unprecedented. Enrollment in the inaugural class would add gloss to Tenma Subaru’s vitae. But it was left to Tenma to navigate the halls of a school teeming with strangeness.
There were plenty of normal things—uniforms, shoe lockers, stairwells, club posters, and homeroom assignments. He could tell that some effort had been made to put average humans on familiar footing.
This should be thrilling. Hadn’t he been looking forward to meeting a wolf? Then why was his heart pounding, his skin prickling? Why were his palms slick and his nerves a quivering wreck?
Inhuman races. Tenma had been as thrilled as the next kid when the Emergence hit the news three years ago … almost four, now. He’d been in his last year of middle school. Impressionable. Idealistic. And clearly an idiot.
He’d never been bothered by the photos, the broadcasts, the documentaries. But seeing a Rivven on a screen was very different than sharing space with them. They were beautiful people, but wasn’t that how it worked in all the stories? Danger lurking behind a pleasing veneer. And he knew that while they might look human, they were actually animals. Somehow.
Was it too late to transfer out?
All through school, Tenma had been that slouching, awkwardly tall boy with glasses. He’d shied away from the attention his height commanded, so it wasalmosta relief when he realized that the majority of Amaranthine students outstripped him. But it was unnerving to look directly into inhuman eyes; their wildness fed his uneasiness.
The Rivven greeted him with polite nods and peaceful expressions.
So graceful. Even gracious.
Still, his anxiety mounted as he climbed stairs.
Nerves made him hyper-sensitive to signs of danger. Many of the Rivven had fangs or claws, and some retained animalistic features. Like the wolves and their tails. And Tenma was sure he’d spotted a pair of antlers disappearing around a corner.
Maybe he should latch onto a reaver. They were supposed to be able to contain a Rivven, keep humanity safe, things like that. Once he started looking for them, he realized that there were just as many of these so-called guardians of humanity walking through the halls.
And reason finally asserted itself.
Equal parts. Evenly divided. Evenly matched?
Humans outnumbered the Rivven two-to-one.
Tenma calmed enough to scan room numbers, but he refrained from looking into any more sets of the strange eyes. Which worked all right, up until 3-C’s homeroom teacher announced that they’d be dividing into three-person teams.
Suddenly, the whole mood in the room changed, and the Rivven began to prowl. Tenma was quite sure there was sniffing, and he felt a sudden, frantic need to run. Panic was building and boiling in his gut, and it looked to be even odds whether he would kick off the school year by passing out or vomiting.
And then someone stopped at his table. Tenma froze—head down, fists on knees, staring at the tabletop—as a clawed hand lifted the chair opposite and came around to set it beside his. Too close!
The person sat and said, “Now that I’m here, the others will stay away.”
Male. Tenma stole a look and swallowed hard. He was shoulder-to-shoulder with a Rivven who was easily as tall as he was. Tanned skin and reddish-brown hair mostly gathered in a braid. His face was averted, and a thicket of framing waves hid his expression. But Tenma could see his hands just fine. They rested quietly on the table, tipped by claws that were probably as sharp as they looked.
Tenma may have been hyperventilating.
“You seem to be sensitive to our presence,” the Rivven said softly. “In much the same way we are aware of reavers. That’s what’s triggering your flight instinct.”
He couldn’t get his voice to work right. Had he whimpered?
“You’re safe,” soothed his companion. “No one here would ever harm you.”
It made sense. Of course it made sense. But Tenma felt trapped.
