Page 5 of Cruel Destinies

I should talk to her about it. I’d told myself a hundred times to talk to her about it. When she visited me in the hospital wing, I pretended to be sleeping to avoid that conversation, but I needed to bring it up. I couldn’t keep avoiding it.

But with the school on lockdown and the fact that I should’ve been able to protect Arya from the vampires—and failed—I couldn’t bring myself to do it. I couldn’t have a conversation that might demand answers, not when I couldn’t even own up to a single one myself.

“Tobias?” Caesar asked, snapping me to attention again. This time, Caesar’s tone held a note of worry. “Did your screen freeze?” he asked, offering me an easy out.

I didn’t answer the last comment, letting my classmates believe my tablet was to blame and not my daydreaming about kissing a certain girl.

“In some states, that winter still holds the record for lowest temperature, even after over a hundred years.”

Caesar held his chin with one hand. “Anything else?” he asked, then turned to the rest of the class, inviting anyone to answer.

I continued to skim but couldn’t find anything out of the ordinary about the very cold weather. But then my analytic brain finally kicked in.

“This isShifter History,” I said, turning the entire class’s attention back to me—this time in a way I didn’t mind. “Was it caused by a shifter?”

Caesar smiled in the way he always did whenever he realized one of his students—usually me—was doing some critical thinking and not reciting from the text. He held his hands up as if to illustrate.

“Why would we be discussing the weather of 1899 inShifter Historyunless it had something to do with...” he paused for effect, “Shifter History?”

The entire class recited the last part with him in clumsy unison.

“Exactly!”

Caesar walked back to the front of the room and projected some black-and-white images that were probably taken that winter. Next to them, an image of the United States was projected in blue.

“Meteorologists say it began in Canada,” Caesar said, pointing above the map. “And it swept from the northwest here in Oregon and Washington and spread across the rest of the country.” He looked back at the class. “But it was not a natural event. What type of shifter could cause such drastic weather change?”

I racked my brain, forcing myself to focus on the task at hand and not on the way Arya’s hair fell around me in a dark curtain the moment before I pulled her down toward me in a kiss. But the only shifters I could think of who had any control over temperature were the ones who could manipulate fire—dragons like me and phoenixes. Ashlyn’s firebird, racing after the vampires and screeching as she flew to rescue Arya, invaded my thoughts.

“Alicorn?” A small mao in the back ventured. I couldn’t remember her name and was no longer invested in the history lesson, so I stared at my screen and hoped I wouldn’t be called on again.

After class, I was the first one out of the room. I needed to find Arya. I needed to see her, speak with her. Without being too obvious, I scanned every hallway I walked into, hoping to catch sight of her and stage arun-inso I’d have an excuse to talk to her.

But I couldn’t find her in any of the usual places. I begrudgingly attended the rest of my classes—giving them as much attention as I’d given Shifter History—and finally caught the rumors from some passing mers that Arya was busy with new training. Since finding out she was a chimera, she had a lot to learn about her new abilities and was kept busy with lessons to harness them.

Even as a dragon prince, the fact that she had more than one shifter nature was intimidating. How could I possibly measure up? But I shook it off.

I finally found her with Ashlyn and Niko in the dining hall having dinner. Her beautiful face lit up when she saw me. Seeing her was a balm to my frayed soul, relief spilling through me and alleviating the withdrawal symptoms of this damned imprint with which I was developing a toxic love-hate relationship.

She got up out of her chair as I approached, and when she happily put her arms around my shoulders in a blissfully tight hug, I savored every sensation of her presence. The smell of her hair as it brushed against my cheek. The warmth of her lithe body in my arms. The way her breasts pressed against my chest.Fuck!

“He’s back,” Niko called happily, patting my shoulder as I took a seat.

“How are you doing?” Ashlyn asked, then grimaced. “Oh, that was a stupid question.”

I chuckled and shook my head. “No, it’s fine. I’m doing pretty good.” And as I glanced at Arya, I actually meant it.

After everyone finished eating, I pulled her away and offered to walk her back to the common room.

But words left me. I’d mulled over what I wanted to say throughout the day, but the weight of everything that had transpired between us since the night of the attack made it so I couldn’t even form a sentence.

So we walked in awkward silence. I kept hoping she would break the ice. But since I’d been the one to seek her out, she probably assumed—as she should—that I wanted to talk to her about something specific.

And now I wasn’t even speaking at all.

I silently growled at the floor in front of me, like it was the smooth polished blackness beneath my feet that left me so tongue-tied.

“I’m glad you’re feeling better,” she finally said when we reached the avian common room.

---