On one hand, I was glad for her, that she no longer had to endure dressing out and showing her scars in the t-shirts and gym shorts we were required to wear. Coach Vasquez was a Drake and, like many of my people, she was completely unbending when it came to following the rules. She had forced Kaitlyn to dress out, like everyone else, despite the shame and pain it so obviously caused her.
So I was happy that the little human no longer had to endure something that made her so uncomfortable. Also, though Pedro Sanchez had been expelled from Nocturne Academy, his two cohorts, Felix Gomez and Lupe Romero, remained. They were what my mother would have called, “low class.”
Their beasts were common green dragons with no flame at all that hardly deserved the name Drake. Though their sires had made a fortune in the human world—enough to send their sons to the prestigious Nocturne Academy—they had no standing in the halls of my own Sire.
So of course Sanchez, who was supposed to be a hidalgo or nobleman among our kind, immediately attracted them. The fact that he was willing to acknowledge and lead them despite their thuggish ways said as much about him as it did about them.
And the fact that what he led them in was the practice of bullying those who were weaker than him said even more.
When their leader had been expelled, Gomez and Romero had blamed Kaitlyn, just as Sanchez did. But they also knew she was under my care and the care of my Drake.
Neither dared to come against me openly, but I knew enough about them to think that if either one of them had a chance to hurt her without my knowing it, they would certainly take it. It was one reason I was still on high alert, even though Sanchez himself was gone.
Yes, it was a good thing that Kaitlyn was no longer in my first period PE class, I told myself.
But I couldn’t help missing her, even as I told myself she was safer away from Gomez and Romero. Seeing her first thing in the morning had lifted my heart and reassured my Drake that she was all right. Now I had to wait until third period to be near her—if you could call sitting three seats down and one row to the left near her, anyway.
I finished my test and brought it up to the teacher’s desk to place face-down on the slowly accumulating pile. Ms. Eventide was a Nocturne with sharp green eyes and a pale face. She nodded as I put down my paper and turned to go back to my seat.
“Very good, Mr. Reyes, you may read quietly at your desk,” she murmured.
I nodded, even though I knew that I wouldn’t be reading a thing. I would get out a book and pretend to read, of course, but mostly I would be watching Kaitlyn, who was even now getting up to place her own test on the teacher’s desk.
But as she moved past me, the little human seemed to trip on something on the floor. She gasped and windmilled her arms, her test papers flying in all directions as she started to fall.
I didn’t think—I just acted. Reaching down, I scooped her up before she could hit the floor and gathered her close to my chest.
“Oh!” Kaitlyn gasped and for a moment I saw her full face, as I had that day in PE—both the lovely right side and the scarred left side. Then she turned away quickly, using her long hair to hide herself, as she always did.
“Are you all right?” I asked, worried about her.
“I’m fine. Please put me down.”
She was trembling in my arms—shaking as though she feared me. I could smell the scent of her terror too—the sharp smell of adrenalin rose around me.
But there was something else too—an added component to her usually sweet scent which I was, by now, completely addicted to. It was strangely metallic and…I don’t know how else to put this…cold. A scent like winter coming on.
What was wrong with her?
“Mr. Reyes, I believe you can put Miss Fellows down now.” The sharp voice of our teacher cut through me like a knife and I realized I had been cradling the little human to my chest and inhaling her scent, trying to work out what was different about her, while ignoring her request to be put back on her feet.
“Forgive me,” I said quickly, setting her down gently. “I just…didn’t want you to fall.”
Kaitlyn’s only answer was a frightened glance before she rushed back to her seat. But then she appeared to realize that her test papers were still all over the floor. She started to get up again, though by now, everyone in the class was staring at her—which I knew was agony for the little human. In all that she did, what she strove for most was simply not to be noticed—not to be seen.
“Let me,” I told her and bent to pick up the scattered papers. Stacking them neatly, I placed them face-down on the teacher’s desk and resumed my own seat.
Kaitlyn’s one visible eye—a lovely pale aquamarine that was striking in the pale, creamy brown of her face—followed me uncertainly. As I passed her on the way back to my desk she murmured, “Thank you,” in a voice so low I was certain no one heard but me.
I nodded and murmured, “Welcome.”
She stared at me for a moment more, then looked quickly away, her curtain of hair swinging down to hide her face.
I wished she could have met my eyes just a moment more—I hated the fact that she was clearly afraid of me. I probably shouldn’t have swooped her up like that but what else could I
