Page 82 of Ava: Part Three

He discarded his blazer and kept running. There were vampires in the guard ranks. If they were serious about stopping him, they would have outrun him by now.

The tie came off next, and then he ripped his shirt off. When he was butt-naked, he shifted and let Shadow take over. That had been too close. He could still feel the anger surging in his veins, but the distance from Jared was already doing some good. They would be okay if he was left alone for a little while.

The crisis would be averted, at least for today.

Several guards appeared to block him before he could run through the treeline into the woods. They came out of nowhere; he had to wonder if they had let him get this far on purpose. If they had planned this.

Shadow slid to a halt and growled at the guards to make them get out of the way, but all they did was pull their weapons out.

It was like they threw a match at a can of gas.

Shadow’s rage was instant. The bloodlust took over so completely that they were in a pile of limbs before he realised what he was doing.

And then something sharp hit him from the back. Shadow whined and turned, but they were already toppling over before they could see what had happened.

Everything went black.

Chapter 48

Avacouldn’tconcentrate.Shecould feel that Zeke was upset and angry.

Something was different today; it felt like she couldn’t separate his feelings from her own. Like they were... more, somehow.

She knew she was the one feeling anxious, but the unjustified anger... That was Zeke. His emotions had her clenching and unclenching her fists instead of paying attention to Dexter.

But why was he angry with her? Because she didn’t want to see Jared die? She didn’t want anyone to die! And she wasn’t asking him to befriend Jared, but there must be a way for them to talk this out and put the past behind them. How old were they when this had happened? They would have been still teenagers, and she knew kids didn’t always make the right decisions.

Like her, for example, she’d defied her dad several times and ended up in the hospital because she’d been too pigheaded to stop picking fights in the pack. But she had never sold her packmates out because they were just teenagers like her, and they were fighting the Alpha’s child. That was a mistake they all knew could have led to fatal consequences.

She was older now and knew she should have listened to her father and stayed away from these things. She was sure her packmates now knew how to think before acting and had better control of their wolf natures. They had matured.

The same way she knew Jared must have matured from that time. He wouldn’t make the same mistakes again.

But had it been a mistake? Not picking a side?

If her father wasn’t Alpha and decided to challenge the Alpha, would she go and rat him out? She didn’t think so. And Zeke’s dad wasn’t much of an Alpha anyway; she had known that from the moment she saw him. Perhaps he’d deserved to be toppled.

Killing other packmates was the only thing she couldn’t agree with, and that was hardly Jared’s fault.

She felt the anger surge again and gripped the side of the desk.

“Are you okay?”

She looked up and saw the fear in Dexter’s eyes before he lowered his gaze.

“Stop doing that?” she growled.

“What?” Dexter asked nervously.

“Don’t lower your gaze! We’re all the same here,” she snapped.

And now Zeke’s unreasonable anger was making her snappy.

“I’m sorry. I’m okay,” she said, pulling her work towards her.

They had a free period, and Dexter suggested they catch up in the library. If it weren’t for the fact that she hated that the only reason she was now able to study what she wanted was that she’d killed some students, she would have been above the moon that she had a reason to use the library.

They were in a private study room, but she’d been able to see more of the library this time than when Zeke dragged her in there, and she’d almost lost her head—and other things—on a desk.

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