Their Shifter Academy 1: Unwanted, page 21
He frowned. I thought he was going to ask me about what I had done to the bo, but then he demanded, “What do you mean, you don’t need help? Or you just don’t need my help?”
Funny how he didn’t like that idea.
Men are exhausting.
“It’s just a book,” I said.
It was just the possibility of my total humiliation. It was all too easy to imagine Jensen hopping on a table in the lunch room or the Friday night mess for an impromptu poetry reading. I could picture the smug look on his face. I’d seen it enough already.
“It doesn’t matter. We’ve got far bigger things to deal with right now.”
“What’s in the book?”
I raised my eyebrows at him. “We don’t have that kind of friendship yet, Chase.”
Because he didn’t want that kind of friendship.
His lips parted, a frown creasing his forehead above that handsome, heavy-featured face.
But I was already brushing past him and opening the door. “Come on. I have a funny feeling it’s time for pizza and a lecture.”
“About the bo staffs or—”
“Oh, we’ve got all new drama. Keep up.”
Chase heaved another sigh. No matter how much we were fighting, the two of us headed together down the hall to the lounge. I was keenly aware of his hulking presence at my elbow. I wasn’t exactly petite for a girl, but he had almost a full foot on me.
Jensen was already in the lounge, lying on one of the couches with his boots propped up on the arm of the couch. He was reading, the book propped up on his chest. It was a hardcover book with the dust cover stripped off, and I was far more curious than I should’ve been about what Jensen was reading.
“I hadn’t pegged you for an intellectual type,” I said.
Jensen’s gaze flickered up to me. Then he returned to reading his book, as if I wasn’t even worthy of an answer.
I rolled my eyes and threw myself onto the opposite couch. Silas and Penn walked in then, followed by Tyson and Lex. Lex was carrying a couple of pizza boxes, and Tyson had plastic bags with two liters of soda and cartons of buffalo wings.
As we served ourselves, I realized we were missing someone. I dropped a third slice of pizza onto my paper plate and asked, “Where’s Beckett?”
Jensen snorted. “You miss him?”
“I just wondered where he is,” I said carefully.
“Don’t worry about it,” Lex said. “He’s fine. He just has homework.”
Jensen’s mouth was tight as he headed back to the couch with his pizza. I felt a stab of worry for him. He and Faro and Beckett had been inseparable.
“Listen,” Lex said as we took spots on the couch. “I’m sure you guys have heard a bunch of rumors flying around. I wanted to take a few minutes to talk to you guys. Get them out in the open.”
Jesus. I hoped we weren’t going to discuss Faro and the basement. I wasn’t sure I could survive a group chat.
But luckily, Lex steered the topic away from why Faro had left campus, and we talked about his death.
“The Warren pack has fixated on the idea that Maddie and Jensen are involved,” Lex said. “We have to look out for each other. They’re on campus, and they’re not supposed to talk to you without the dean’s permission and an instructor present, but if they try, remind them of the rules, be polite, and get the hell out of there. Understood?”
His words set unease twisting through my stomach. I glanced at Jensen. He leaned forward, his shoulders hunched slightly, staring at his hands.
Then, as if he felt my gaze, he turned. When our eyes met, he leaned back, and his usual expression of insolent boredom was back up.
It was harder to hate Jensen when the smirk felt like a mask. I wondered what really went on in his head.
Lex put on a movie as promised. When he turned the lights off and the movie rolled, I couldn’t focus on what was happening on screen. My pizza tasted like dust in my mouth.
I got up halfway through the movie, and Lex’s head snapped up.
“Bathroom break,” I said, smiling at him, even though the fierce protectiveness radiating from him made me feel even more nervous. Lex was worried. I promised, “I’ll be right back.”
When I came back from my room a few minutes later, Jensen was waiting just outside the door to the lounge.
“What is it?” I asked.
“I just had a question,” he said, and his jaw worked once. “Did I…did I really see what I thought I saw, Maddie?”
There was a rawness in his voice that I didn’t expect.
“You mean did you really see Faro try to rape me?” My voice wanted to drop whenever I said the r-word, and I made myself say it out loud. I wasn’t the one who should feel ashamed.
“Yeah,” he said. “I got him killed. I mean, I’m the one who sent him off campus. I just wondered if—”
He trailed off, floundering, like he didn’t want to say it again. I knew how he felt. I never wanted to use the word again in all my life.
“Yes. The answer is yes. And you stopped him before…” My lips twisted. “Thank you.”
“You don’t have to thank me,” he said, his voice coming out rough. “I shouldn’t have asked you to. You were right. Low bar.”
“Yeah, well, lots of people don’t even manage that.” He looked so miserable that I wanted to touch him, but that wouldn’t help anything. It was a strange impulse. “It wasn’t your fault, Jensen.”
He shook his head, and I could tell he didn’t believe me.
Chapter Thirty-Five
When I headed out of my door for PT the next morning, I planned to wait for the guys in the hall.
“Hey, Northsea.” It was Jensen’s slightly husky voice, calling across the hall to me. I stopped and looked back at him, just as someone slammed into my shoulder. I took a step to the side, catching myself, and glared at the back of the shifter heading away from me.
“Watch yourself,” Penn barked at the guy who had just slammed into me. He stood in the doorway to our room, his eyes narrowed.
The other guy shrugged at him. “Oops.”
I turned back to Jensen, propping my hands on my hips. The sun hadn’t risen yet; you’d think this shit could wait until daylight broke. “Were you waiting for me?”
“Were you going to head out on your own?” he asked me.
“No.” I wasn’t scared of much, but I wasn’t reckless either.
“Amazing,” he muttered.
Penn locked eyes with Jensen. “What do you want?”
Jensen’s brows arched above his hazel eyes. “We’re on the same team, remember, brother?”
He clapped Penn’s shoulder as he passed. Penn crossed his arms, but didn’t respond beyond the hardening of the lines around his sensual lips.
Penn had been the one to tell me it was better to stay on Jensen’s good side. So why was he risking his own reputation on me?
Penn fell into step alongside me. “We’ve got to figure out how to get these guys to leave you alone.”
Jensen swiveled on his heel and kept walking backward. “All she has to do is quit. All the mean shifters turn into potential boyfriends.”
“Shut the fuck up.” Penn’s temper flared so fast that it surprised even me. His quick step forward was full of threat and intensity. “You know what happened. Why the hell would you say that to her?”
Jensen stared back at him, his jaw tensing, a dangerous glint in his eye. Then he raised his hands, as if to placate Penn, his expression softening.
“You’re right,” Jensen said flatly. “I didn’t mean it like that. But if she went home now, it would all stop. Her pack could protect her from what’s going on out there.”
He jerked his head to indicate the world outside the house doors.
Penn looked annoyed at how quickly Jensen had let it go, as if he’d wanted to fight him.
“Love the protective look, by the way,” Jensen said to him, and there was that familiar barb in his voice again. “So much for you being a lone wolf, huh?”
“I’m not a lone wolf,” Penn ground out.
“But if your daddy let you, though…” Jensen crinkled his nose, holding out his hands as if he was weighing options in them.
Penn threw himself into Jensen, pushing him into the wall. There was a thud as their two bodies slammed into the cinderblocks.
Jensen’s hands went to Penn’s wrists, but he threw his head back and laughed. “Now what, Penn? What’re you going to do?”
“Knock it off,” Lex snapped at us all. He and Rafe stood by the top of the stairs. “Let’s get out to PT. You guys seem to have lots of energy to burn off.”
Penn looked back at Jensen, his eyes still narrowed. He stepped back as if he had to throw himself away from Jensen to keep from going after him more, and he clapped his hands together as if he was dusting off something disgusting. “Come on, Mads.”
I went with Penn, and Chase and Silas fell in with us. It almost felt like the three of them formed a protective barrier, surrounding me, as we headed down the stairs behind Lex and Rafe.
But I still glanced back over my shoulder at Jensen. It wasn’t safe for him, either, and I wanted to make sure he stayed with us. When I looked back, he was walking with Tyson, just a few steps behind us.
He met my gaze, his golden eyes glittering, and I almost missed the step.
Silas grabbed my elbow. I smiled up at him as he steadied me. He flashed me one of those handsome, sweet smiles that instantly made the world seem like a safer place. He squeezed my arm gently, making sure I was steady, before he released me.
Behind me, Jensen let out a bark of laughter. I’d almost fallen down an entire flight of stairs because he had pretty eyes. But he didn’t have to know that. Fucking asshole.
“I can’t wait to get out on that run,” I muttered, and I meant it. I couldn’t wait to run off some of this boundless energy I had, some of my fear and anxiety and anger.
As if he lived to please me—ha—Rafe and Lex led us on a punishingly fast three mile run to the obstacle course. We did two rounds through the obstacle course with rounds of plyometrics at the end, clambering over logs and climbing ropes and jumping on boxes and doing pull-ups.
Even Rafe was sweating when we headed back toward campus, but that didn’t stop him from setting a brutal pace. I didn’t mind though—the burning in my legs and chest made it harder for me to brood over all the things that were bothering me.
When we reached the main quad on campus again, there were a dozen shifters I didn’t know—older, thicker-bodied, grizzled shifters in jeans and leather jackets—standing in front of Northsea house. The dean and a few guys from the guard patrol were standing with them.
“What the hell is this?” Rafe asked quietly, almost under his breath. Then, more loudly, he said, “Alright, I’m taking you degenerates to the pit after this weekend’s antics.”
I almost could have smiled in relief. Rafe was making sure we avoided a conflict with the Warren pack wolves.
We headed over to the fighting pits for a brutal series of conditioning work intermingled with short bouts of hand-to-hand. We were all reaching fatigue, starting to stumble on the ground as we switched training partners.
“Switch!” Rafe shouted. He was on the ground doing push-ups with us while Lex stood at the edge of the pit. Lex’s watchful gaze was directed around the academy grounds more than it was focused on us.
I scrambled up from the push-up position. My arms felt heavy, thick with lactic acid, and I shook my arms out, trying to get ready for another round of fighting.
As Jensen stepped in front of me, he was massaging his shoulder like he’d hurt it. As soon as he saw me looking, his hand dropped away and his shoulders twitched back impatiently into his usual perfect posture, not wanting me to get a glimpse of the slightest weakness. Even if we were all suffering the same right now.
“You okay?” I asked quietly. I couldn’t stop thinking about how threatening those men from the Warren pack had seemed, watching us with glittering eyes.
Jensen glanced at me like I wasn’t worth answering before he clapped his hands together, shaking off the sand that clung to all of us from our time on the floor of the pit.
I’d thought I caught a glimpse of Jensen-as-a-human-being when the two of us were running from the dean’s office, but maybe that was just my wishful thinking.
“Fight!” Rafe called.
“Wouldn’t want to hurt your feelings,” Jensen said, raising his fists.
I flashed him a tight smile. “You’re about to get more than your feelings hurt.”
“Hey,” Lex called to Rafe, who glanced up at him and nodded.
“Form back up,” Rafe said, clapping his hands together. “Let’s finish strong.”
Jensen dropped his hands, shaking his fists out, and for a second I could have sworn that relief flashed across his face.
“I don’t get you,” I muttered to him.
“I don’t get you,” he said. “I don’t like being places where I’m not wanted.”
We ran back to Northsea house, forcing our legs to move despite how badly it hurt for all of us. When we fell out in front of the steps, even Rafe looked tired. His t-shirt clung to his pecs and his lean waist with sweat, and his tanned skin glistened with it. He ran his hands over his shorts as if he was trying to get the sand off, but we were all covered in sweat and sand.
“Listen,” Rafe said. “I know you guys don’t always feel like one, you’re a family. Right now, you’ve got to look after each other.”
“Yes sir,” everyone else mumbled. I looked at Jensen, curious to see how he was taking this. His arms were crossed over his chest, his jaw tense.
If Jensen didn’t like for anyone to see his weakness, this had to be the worst: we all knew that Jensen McCauley was in danger right now.
“Don’t worry,” I told him softly as we headed for the house. “I’ve got your back.”
“That really makes me feel better,” he said tartly. He reached the doors ahead of me and bizarrely, he paused, holding it open for me, even as he said, “Christ. I’m going to die, aren’t I?”
I shot him a dark look. “You know, sometimes I think you aren’t a complete ass—”
“Thanks,” he said abruptly, cutting me off. “I mean, I probably am going to die. But it’s a sweet sentiment. Especially given that I am a complete ass.”
I stared at him, my lips parting, perplexed by the sudden staccato confession.
“You going through the fucking door, Northsea?” he asked impatiently. He glanced past me at someone down the steps, his posture stiffening.
I breezed past him through the door, but as soon as I was through, I turned back to see what he’d seen, what made him react that way.
He and Beckett had locked eyes. Then Jensen followed me into the house, letting the door slam shut behind him, leaving his old best friend behind.
Chapter Thirty-Six
“Hey, bodyguard,” I teased Silas as we walked side-by-side down the hall.
“We’ve got all the same classes,” he said. “We always walk together.”
“It’s different right now, and you know it,” I teased him. “You’ve been tense all day.”
“Maybe,” he admitted.
“I’m just running to the ladies’ room before we sit through Higgin’s dronefest,” I told him. “You can go on without me. There are two hundred academy students in this building right now—I think I’ll be okay.”
He hesitated. “I’ll wait in the hall.”
I threw back my head and laughed. “That’s your compromise?”
“I’m trying not to make things weird,” he said, “which, to be fair, Penn said is basically impossible for me.”
“I like your kind of weird, Silas Adelphus.”
“Good,” he said. “I like your kind of weird, too.”
I frowned at him playfully. “Wait, since when am I weird?”
“Do you want the list, Madeline Northsea?”
I was smiling when I left him behind and pushed open the door to the woman’s bathroom. As usual, I had it to myself. The window at the end of the room stood open, so the room smelled fresh but had a warm, humid feel in the Virginia heat. I shook my head as I went into one of the stalls.
When I came out of the stall, something felt wrong, and then suddenly, someone was up against my back, pinning me. Their hand slapped over my mouth.
My first impulse was to slam my foot into their shin, and they let out a soft grunt before they shoved me hard against the wall.
“I just want to talk to you,” someone muttered in my ear.
I grabbed their hand and tugged it away from my mouth. “There are much better ways to start a conversation,” I hissed.
The body along my back was big, powerfully muscled, and he suddenly shifted away from me. “I just wanted to talk to you about Reggie.”
Reginald Faro. It took me a second to make the combination as I twisted. The guy who faced me was around my age, and he stood head and shoulders taller than me. His dark eyes looked haunted.
“What do you want to know?” I asked.
“Is it true?” he asked. “What they’re saying about him?”
I couldn’t hide the incredulous smile that came to my lips as I began to tick things off on my fingers. “I’m sorry, did you really, one, get someone to open the window for you so two, you could surprise me when I came into the bathroom and three, attack me as the prelude to asking your questions so that—four—you could establish that your buddy was a perfect gentleman?”
He stared back at me, his lips parting.
“Your pack is so fucked up,” I told him furiously. My heart was still pounding wildly in my chest, but he didn’t need to know that.
“I didn’t think,” he said. “I just wasn’t going to get a chance to talk to you alone otherwise.”
“Yeah, it’s the weirdest thing I wouldn’t want to talk to you all.” I pulled the hem of my jacket down, fidgeting with my clothes even though it did little to calm my beating heart. Why the hell did I have to wear a blazer and a skirt for our lecture-based instruction, anyway? I should always be ready for a fight.
