Page 96 of The Stone Initiation
His hold slackened. “Go,” he said gruffly, then shoved me behind him and out of the doorway. “I’ll deal with this.”
He closed the door.
Wait…what the?
Don’t look a gift horse in the mouth woman. Go.
But if I walked away now, then what would happen to Curi?
Fuck it.
I took a deep breath and yanked open the door to find Jay and Curi facing off.
Quaid stood to one side looking uncertain.
He was obviously the smarter out of the pair of initiates.
“What the fuck?” Curi said to me. “I told you to go.”
“I’m not leaving without you.” He blinked in surprise, but I focused on Jay. “And you… What do you think will happen if you get into a fight with a Mason, eh? You might be able to salvage your reputation after being held back from alpha team, but touchhimand it’s your family that’ll pay the price.”
“She’s right, Jay,” Quaid said. “Look, let’s just go. This is…”
“Stupid.” I finished for him. “And you know you’re better than this, right Quaid?”
He looked away. “I’m out of here, Jay, do what you want.” He strode past me and out of the room.
With his wingman gone, Jay deflated back to his human form. “This is your fault,” he said to me again, but he didn’t sound so sure any longer.
Curi gave Jay a final once over then walked over to me. “I’ll walk you back to dorm.”
* * *
Curi didn’t speakas we made our way back to dorm. He had a towel around his neck, a rucksack slung over one shoulder and his blue hair was pulled back and tied in a knot ready for a decent workout, but instead he was walking with me.
He’d stood up to Jay for me, challenging my perception of him, and I needed to understand why he’d done it. “Why’d you stick up for me back there?”
“It was the right thing to do.”
Curi doing the right thing…It didn’t correlate in my brain, but then what did I know about this guy beyond a few shitty interactions? “But you hate me.”
He sighed. “No. I don’t.”
I shot him a skeptical look. “Maybe I misinterpreted all the snarls, growls, and digs you’ve made then? Look, you wouldn’t be the only one. I seem to have that effect on most of the males here.”
He exhaled through his nose. “It isn’t like that. It isn’t about hating you.” For a moment I thought he wasn’t going to elaborate but then he continued. “You confuse us. You have the look of an omega, and yet you act like an alpha. You want to fight alongside us instead of writhe beneath us.”
“Writhe? Seriously.”
The corner of his mouth quirked. “The only gray in our world is the one we fight. Everything else is black and white. Omega, alpha, sigma, beta, everyone has a place and there’s a system. You confuse that system, and it affects some of us more than others. But give it time.”
“Touron seems to be okay with me.”
“Touron is from a civi family,” Curi said. “He wasn’t raised the same way as most of us.”
“And how is that?” Curiosity had me slowing my pace.
“No, Walker, we’re not doing this,” Curi said.
