Page 22 of The Goddess is Fierce
“Well, is everyone going to watch?” Paris demanded.
Zion just chuckled.
“Yeah, they are. You tried to humiliate her loudly enough for the entire class to hear. It’s only right everyone watches you get your ass kicked. I thought you witches believed in thatkind of justice from the stars? Now, take your place. You’re barely passing my class. If I kick you out because you’re refusing this assignment, it's going to drop you an entire letter grade. Azren says you aren’t doing great in their class either. Shifters can’tsmellacademic probation, but that smells like academic probation. And you’re starting something with the new headmaster’s daughter. Choose wisely.”
Damn.TheZion Skinner just defended me. Iknewhe was a softie who actually liked me. He solved this exactly like he should have. By letting us duke it out magically when the stronger of us wasn’t pissed off and would hurt the other. It would be a simple magical sparring fight. We’d been in the same class with each other all year, so I knew what we’d been taught. I knew whatlevelto fight her on and I wasn’t mad enough to hurt her.
Paris decided she was going to fight me. This could either be really good or really bad. This could end things or escalate them. We faced each other and just stared. Paris looked like she was bracing herself and found some bravery.
“Fight!” Zion yelled.
I was intending on fighting fair, but Paris flung a particularly nasty hex at me that Zion didn’t teach us in class. I guessed it was from her family grimoire because I wasn’t intimately familiar with it, but I couldfeelhow nasty it was. I didn’t have to pretend to throw up a shield. I just had to be me.
Paris grinned because she could feel I didn’t have my magical shield up. She didn’tgetit. She saw her hex barreling at me and she just assumed I was going to get blasted back with what was probably the nastiest thing in her family grimoire and spent weeks in the infirmary trying to get it healed.
I was counting on that. Ineededher to know she could fling her absolute best at me, and nothing was going to happen. Parisclearly hadn’t learned that after the Basilisk potion just dripped off me and did nothing.
I just stood there smiling as the hex hit me. It barely even blew my hair back. Paris’s smug grin fell, and she started to look a little horrified. I think Paris was starting to realize who she was fucking with, which was all I really wanted.
I wanted her to leave me alone, and I didn’t want her to pull a Kaylee and do something that was going to hurt my guys, but I also didn’t want to destroy her. I flung a basic spell at her that we learned the first day of class. It was aget the fuck away from mespell that was more like a little love zap to warn someone you weren’t messing around.
That was what I hit her with, but I put a little extra punch behind it to blast her back a bit. Paris would have known I just beat her with something we learned on day one and her best did nothing to me. She jumped to her feet and glared at me. I think she expected her friends to flock around her and come up with a plan to strike back, but they were all looking at her like I’d blasted her into a pile of shifter shit.
Maybeit was finally over with Paris, maybe it wasn’t. It looked like she wasn’t going to have help from any of her friends now and I could handle one spiteful legacy student.
oscar
. . .
It seemed like a lot of the minor drama was working itself out so we could focus on the giant, insanely hot, god-shaped drama who didn’t remember who he was or if he’d been murdering witches. Kaylee and Lindsey were in jail, wefinallyhad a decent headmaster, George put Paris in her place in magical combat, and Zion Skinner was pretty terrible at hiding his emotions, so I was pretty sure he was about to give the dodgeball team good news.
“We worked it out with the league and the team who made the complaint. Theywill notbe banning George from college dodgeball and we’ll be settling this on the field in two weekswith the school who made the complaint. George Bell isn’t going anywhere.”
I could literally hear West shriek all the way from the field. When I looked at the bleachers, he was shaking his ass with the cheerleaders in celebration. We did what dodgeball players did. Someone body tackled George, and we all piled on top of them. Drake and I showed her affection in the bedroom one way. On the dodgeball field, it was chest bumps, ass slaps, and dog piling on each other. It was just how things were done. When everyone got off of her, Drake and I smacked her ass.
“Now, I don’t do the whole social media thing, but I was told Dexter already embarrassed the warlock that tried to get George kicked off the team. He’s going to be on the field with his team when they play us. I’m going to need you all to do it the old-fashioned way, too. I want all of you to beat their team so badly, they regret what they did.
“Back in my day, a god on the other team would have been seen as achallenge.We would have busted our asses with extra practices and if they beat us, we wouldn’t have made it easy. What wewouldn’thave done was go bitching to the league and try to get someone kicked off the team. Your generation is a bunch of soft-ass baby whiners. Now, warm up so we can show themyou’renot a bunch of soft-ass baby whiners and if someone starts something with us, we’re going to finish it like actual supernaturals instead of little bitches. Though, I might have to check out this social media thing just for Dexter’s account because I’ve heard some things. Stretch and impress me.”
Dexter was beaming with his chest puffed out. Honestly, Dexter had millions of followers and most of his posts went viral, but I don’t think any of that compared to getting our grumpy dodgeball coach who hated the internet with a fiery passion on social media just to check him out. That was someseriouscred right there.
Zion had already moved on with his life and was chatting with the cheerleading coach on the sidelines while we warmed up, but the rest of the team was losing their shit. We were used to Zion ranting about our generation being soft and social media being stupid, but we also knew he gave a shit. For a lot of us, he was our favorite professor, even if you weren’t on the dodgeball team.
I had a feeling a lot went on behind the scenes in keeping George on the dodgeball team. And I had a feeling Zion, her dad, and Azren were involved. George hadn’t put the pieces together that if the warlock was going to be playing against us, then a god had healed him. It was probably Azren because I couldn’t think of anyone else who would. Azren probably didn’t want to, but they adored George and if the condition for her playing dodgeball was a god healing him, Azren was going to do it rather than someone telling George she had to.
I was guessing they were some kind of dream team. Zion yelled at some people about the rules and regulations of dodgeball and that there was nothing that specifically said George couldn’t play, Gabriel handled the politics and smoothed over any of the fallout if Zion offended anyone, and Azren used their magic for any demands only a god could handle.
Zion would probably punch me in the face and make me run endless laps if I ever brought that up in his presence. Gabriel Morningstar scared me at first. Helookedlike a guy who had descended from a fallen angel and knew a ton of dark magic. He also had a snake for a familiar and it was always draped around his neck whispering in his ear.
But then I got to eat dinner with him at home with his family and it just broke the entire mystique of Gabriel Morningstar. He was just a guy who adored his wife and kids. I needed to talk to her dad, anyway. I was in an insane amount of pain as my flesh was being eaten down to the bone, but the rest of my roommatessaid George was literally two seconds away from killing Kaylee until Gabriel showed up.
We all needed to figure out how to do that for her. One of her dads was a god, but the rest of them were regular supernaturals like us. George had Azren and maybe she’d have Baldur if that worked out, but the rest of us needed to figure out how to calm her like Gabriel did with just a touch and a word.
Azren would swear me to secrecy if I approached them about this. As they probably should. If George never figured it out, I didn’t want her to know this bastard didn’t have to suffer for trying to take this away from her.
George offered, but sometimes, my girlfriend wasmuchtoo nice. I had no idea what it was like to be her, but I wouldn’t have offered to heal that warlock.
And I would have donemuchworse to Paris when Zion paired us up.
