Page 40 of Ava: Part One

Life-changing? She stopped chewing to pay more attention to Emily.

“Like what? Expulsion? Suspension?”

Emily shook her head with a frown but didn’t expand on it. She had flipped through the rule book on her tablet a few times, but she had not found anywhere that listed the consequences of breaking the rules. What would they do to her?

“Try not to get too many detentions, too. After a certain point, they take you as a repeat offender and send you in.”

“Send me where?” she asked, her eyes wide.

She liked detention. It was the only place she felt safe.

Again, Emily didn’t answer that question as she started eating.

“Just use their proper titles and keep your head down. Don’t befriend them; it’s not our place,” she advised. “Memorise the rule book.”

Was she really breaking the rules by hanging out with Jared? How messed up was that? That explained the hostile looks she had received from the Omegas who had been at his house.

“If you keep your head down, Coach Baxter might go easy on you this week. I don’t know why you insist on looking people in the eye, but that’s probably why he kept putting you in matches.”

“He put me in all the matches because he’s a sadistic bastard who gets off on that shit,” she pointed out.

And then the whole room got quiet. Ava sucked in a breath and didn’t dare look around, but she could tell by the way Emily looked down with her face paling until it was paper-white that all the sensitive ears in the room heard what she had said. Was that another rule broken?

“Well, well, well,” a voice said as the girl came to stand next to her table. “If it isn’t the homeless vermin that’s contaminating our school.”

It was the model and her two friends. Ezekiel’s girlfriend. She looked down at her food quickly, Emily’s warnings playing in her head. Had she broken a more serious rule?

“Humans are so weak and pathetic. I don’t know how you made it here, but you won’t make it out. I’ll see you in training.”

She didn’t respond as the girl and her friends walked past her and out of the dining hall. She watched their retreating backs before she looked back at Emily.

“What did I do?” she whispered.

Emily shook her head and then picked up her tray as she stood.

“Read the rules,” she whispered before she left her alone.

No one spoke to her as they set up the training room; it seemed as if they were going out of their way to avoid her. By thetime the rest of her class filed in, her stomach was in knots. They all sneered and laughed as they looked in her direction more than usual, so she knew they had heard about what she said.

When Coach Baxter walked in, more students filed in behind him. Ezekiel came in last, but he didn’t even look in her direction.

“We are doing something different today,” the coach said. “Since you all failed to impress me last week, I’ve moved the weapons testing to next week. This week, you’ll be fighting against the Intermediate level. I’ll pick one of you to come to the middle, and one of them will step forward to spar with you. And trust me, I may get off on this just a little bit.”

Damn it. He’d heard.

She kept her head down as Emily had suggested. She’d found a spot behind everyone else, hidden by their height, and breathed deeply to keep her heart calm. But she could feel all the gazes on her at the coach’s words. She wasn’t surprised that someone had snitched.

“Ava!”

She flinched when his voice boomed across the hall.

“Step forward.”

How had she even thought this week would be better? She shuffled to the middle of the room and waited for her opponent. It felt like forever, standing there, the whole class watching her. There was so much excitement in the training hall that she knew what was coming would hurt.

When her opponent finally stood on the mat, she lifted her gaze and saw the sneer on Ezekiel’s girlfriend’s face.

“Claire, thank you for volunteering.”

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