Page 27 of The Goddess is Angry
Belladonna ignored me and scowled at Church.
“You need to come to your senses and stop slumming it before you end up looking totally ridiculous. Anyway, you and I are going to be co-captains. If Ihaveto share the cheerleading team with anyone, you were the most adequate choice out of everyone who tried out. I have several good ideas for the direction of the team that I’d prefer you not get all shifter and fight me about.”
Oh, my fuck. This girl right here. No one talked like that anymore. People stopped pretending other supernaturals were inferior because of what they were a long time ago because everyone had good and bad traits they got from their gods.
And some of it was straight-up lies. Shifters weren’t inherently violent and prone to fights. That was propaganda startedagesago when a wolf shifter became more popular than a really inefficient king who taxed his people unfairly and used their taxes to buy himself luxuries. Everyone knew that. They taught it in high school history, but you still had idiots like Belladonna who still repeated it.
“Look, I’m going to level with you,” Matilda said. “You’re a decent cheerleader, but if you think you can talk to me and anyone who isn’t a vampire like that, I will destroy you. There are more of us on the cheerleading team than there are vampires with shitty beliefs like yours. I will overthrow you harder than a basket toss and no one will be around to catch you. Don’t fuck with me. I have ideas, too.”
Belladonna didn’t look angry, and she didn’t pitch a fit. Kaylee would have. She almost looked like she…respected Matilda and was a little intrigued.
“I want this team to be the best. Can we talk?”
“If you stop being racist against everyone who isn’t a vampire.”
“You good?” I asked.
“I can handle it,” Matilda said.
She could. Matilda handled her shit much better than I did. We all got up to join the other dodgeball players at my brother’s table. The bear shifter who was team captain of the other team and the warlock he chose for the team witch had made the team. The bear shifter wasn’t a freshman, but he introduced himself as Innis and scooped me up to sit on his shoulder.
“We are going tobeat the shitout of everyone in the league between all of us and a team witch that can dothatto an Air Ball. It wanted nothing to do with my team. We couldn’t even intercept it,” Innis said, smacking the shit out of my thigh like I was a show pony.
Dodgeball guys were great. Most of them weren’t threatened by women at all. If you proved yourself on the field, you either became their little sister or they forgot you had a vagina. I was pretty sure I was just another dude to Innis, but my idiot brother was scowling at him.
“She’s also my little sister and you’re manhandling her.”
“I’m manhandling herrespectfullylike her very gay teammate. I’m not into girls at all.”
“And if he wasn’t manhandling me respectfully, I could handle it myself, butthole.”
“You’re all going to lose ifshe’son the team,” Kaylee sneered as she stopped by our table.
“Seriously,” Paris laughed. “God genes have to be insanely potent and she ended up a dud. That old bear shifter they roped into coaching dodgeball must not have any idea what he’s doing. They should have brought in an actual coach instead of letting a teacher do it.”
An entire team of insanely strong dodgeball players stopped everything to look at those two. Kaylee and Paris also just drew the attention of the entire cheerleading squad. Neither of them tried out for cheerleading or came out to watch dodgeball tryouts like a good bit of the student body did. The people who tried out for cheerleading came to watch the dodgeball team and everyone who tried out for dodgeball came out to support the cheerleaders. And a good bit of people who were trying out for neither came out for both.
Anyone with half a brain knew Zion Skinner wasn’t some rando they just asked to coach dodgeball. He was one of the best players in the league back in his day. Zion led his team to countless world champions. He retired before anyone at this academy was born, but anyone who knew dodgeball knew who he was because he wasthatfamous.
“Excuse you, but did you just insult our team witch whose signature move is taming the Air BallandZion Skinner? Are your parents siblings or did they just drop you on your head? I can’t imagine any other reason you’d bethatstupid. You have to be a legacy student because there’s no way in hell you got into the Academy of the Profane on your test scores,” Innis growled.
The entire dodgeball team started throwing shade at Kaylee and Paris and then the cheerleaders joined in. And they all had experience with verbal barbs on the field that sometimes escalated to actual brawls. Even the cheerleaders got into fistfights sometimes. Kaylee and Paris had never started shit with an entire dodgeball team before, but it looked like they just did. The cheerleaders weren’t all that fond of them, either. Some of that was Matilda, but surprisingly, a lot of it was Belladonna.
I had my siblings, familiar, and my guys who would always have my back, but it looked like the dodgeball team and the cheerleading squad had it, too.
drake
Ihadn’t applied for a library card at the Library of the Profane, even though it wasn’t that far from the academy. I wanted one. It was pretty famous even in Azren’s realm. Iwanteda library card. The system only got snippy if you were going to abuse the contents, which I wasn’t. Getting declined for a library card sounded traumatic and horrifically embarrassing, so I didn’t.
This was supposed to be some meet the boyfriends and girlfriends dinner. George was bringing West, Oscar, Church, and Ren. Michael had invited Dexter and Matilda was bringing Mina and Mags. I was starting to feel like one of them. I liked how George and I had settled into giving each other a hard time.
But I wasn’t dating her.
It wasweirdbeing invited to the meet the boyfriend dinner and she pretty much threatened to have me celestially kidnapped if I said no. Azren probably wouldn’t, but I’d been sitting through her dad’s history classes and he was totally devoted to his kids. He’d been kicking Kaylee Krauss out of class for tardiness since he started teaching, even when she got there before he did.
Bless Paris, she’d been trying to stick up for her friend and Reyson was destroying her in front of the entire class. She usually stormed out. All over that video Dexter posted and Kaylee’s history with George. And I was pretty sure Reyson knew how Paris was treating Dexter because he was very vicious.
Azren wouldn’t hunt me like a wounded animal and kidnap me to the library, but if George told Reyson she really wanted me there, her daddy totally would.
