Page 11 of Great Falls Protector
The words hit River in the chest, and he dropped his hand at once, though it made his throat tighten. Putting his hands behind his back to avoid further temptation, he gave Lera a small nod of acknowledgment.
“Yes, I set you up,” he said, his voice steady as he gripped her eyes. “But it was the only way of getting the message to register, Lera. This time, you walked off the testing stage draped only in humiliation. Had these exams been real, you would see the end of the Academy. No recourse. Nothing. Not even I could bring you back.”
No response. Just a silent chocolate stare.
“Do you understand me?” River demanded.
“Perfectly.” Lera raised a brow. “May I go?”
After striding to his desk, River pulled out the withdrawal agreement and ink and laid them out for Lera.
“I am not withdrawing.”
“You will return in the fall.” He reached for the pen.
“I said no. I am not withdrawing.Sir.”
River stared at the pen in his hand, trying and failing to make sense of Lera’s words. When the pen snapped beneath the pressure he didn’t know he was exerting, he felt something inside himself give way too.
“What exactly do you expect to happen at the exams?” he demanded, his voice rising in spite of himself. He longed to take Lera into his arms and shake reason into the girl. He couldn’t do this again, watch a coming disaster and do nothing to stop it. Couldn’t lose Leralynn without a fight. “That was a real exam question, Lera. And you failed. What the bloody hell do you imagine will change in the coming days?”
A muscle tightened in Lera’s jaw, and for a moment, something other than cold iron flashed in that beautiful gaze. Regret. Hurt. Longing tempered with determination.
Crouching down, she picked up the broken halves of the pen and laid them on River’s desk. “I imagine that days from now, I will take the exam and fail, after which time, I will be expelled from the Academy forever,” she said with an evenness that sent a shiver down River’s spine. Lera wasn’t lying. She was…she was up to something.
Something that River had missed completely. His eyes narrowed. He was barking up the wrong tree altogether, wasn’t he? His heart quickened, his mind racing to discard the reality he’d imagined in favor of the one in Lera’s too-brave mind. And it scared the stars out of him.
“Is there anything else you need from me just now, sir?” Lera asked, pausing for a heartbeat that wasn’t long enough for River to find his words. When she started walking to the open door, however, River beat her to it, shamelessly using his longer stride and reach to shut the wooden panel before the girl walked out of his life forever.
“An explanation,” he said quietly. Not a demand, not this time. A request. “Please.”
A muscle ticked along Lera’s jaw, the hurt and anger she’d kept leashed flashing over her face. “If you’d bothered listening to anything I’ve told you since I arrived here, you wouldn’t be asking that.” She shook her head, her breath quickening. “You humiliated me today, River. I trusted you, and you twisted my trust into a bloody lash. So I’m done. We’ll play by your rules. For another three days or so, at least.”
River kept his hand on the door, his heart pounding against his chest.
“So if you’ve no reason to hold me here,sir,let me go.”
The cadet was right. He had no reason to hold her. Not as the Academy’s deputy headmaster. Not as anything. Except, somehow, these particulars had stopped mattering. Deep in his heart, an aching, raging fear that had started to roar minutes earlier was now slipping into his blood. If Lera crossed that threshold now, she wouldn’t be coming back. And a primal, untamed part of River wouldn’t let that happen, not without one hell of a war.
“No.” The rush of blood was deafening in his ears. “You are going to give me a chance to fix this.”
Lera yanked the door handle, the heavy wooden panel staying shut beneath River’s weight.
“Let me go.” Twisting around, she shoved his chest, her small palm thudding against him with a futility that would be humorous any other time. “I want—”
A growl that had nothing human in it rumbled from River’s lungs. Grabbing Lera’s wrists in the middle of her next swing, he twisted her around and pulled her back against his chest, her trapped arms now crossed over her chest. “I don’t care what you want. What you are going to do is talk. However long it takes to get there.”
9
Lera
Bastard. Bastard.Bastard.
I yank against River’s unyielding hold, his warm, rock-hard body pressing into my back. His chest heaves, his breath fast and hot against my hair, his bounding pulse hammering through my skin. Raw and unrestrained and so unlike the controlled River I know that my own primal senses spiral from my grasp.
I was going to walk out. And now I can hardly move, my muscles coil with tension and pain and a sudden flush of arousal that I hate as much as I hate the male himself right now. I want to run. To hit River with all my might. I want to bed him. Kill him.
“You set me up as a laughingstock.” I twist my hand, trying futilely to claw the skin on his wrist.
