Melody smelled like sex and Trent.
“Puuush,” Ryan roared. Dean and Asher leapt forward to help them, and Oz pulled from outside.
Together, they managed to get him out the door as he began to swell, the shift fully taking over him. Wisely, Trent did not try to help, nor did he touch Melody, even as she stood there trembling.
“It should have been me,” growled Justin. “She’s fucking mine.”
The last was said with a sibilant lisp as his mouth shifted, and then suddenly Justin exploded through the last few steps of his shift. Going from scary large man to fucking scary huge dragon.
It was a sobering thought. Ryan had never been afraid of Justin’s dragon before.
Then again, Ryan had never seen Justin’s dragon so pissed before.
Melody Canticum, Justin roared through their network, making him flinch. I challenge you!
Behind him, Ryan heard Trent tell her what had been said.
Melody appeared in the doorway, the lovely flush gone from her cheeks, turning them ashen. Her pallor only emphasised by her hair, the curls darkened with water.
“No,” she shouted firmly. “I have only just got my life back. For the first time I have the right to choose who I accept, and I will not have yet another bond forced on me.”
The sound Justin’s dragon made at the rejection was one that would haunt Ryan’s dreams for the rest of his life.
At once angry and pained, it sounded like she had literally kicked him in the balls. In a manner of speaking, she had.
Ryan had experienced it once, while they were playing their game of hunt the first years through the corridors a few years back. He’d challenged her and she’d sneered at him, refusing him outright. It kind of did feel like getting punched in the nuts.
Instead of curling up in a ball, however, the ink-black dragon shot into the air with powerful sweeps of his wings. The roar that erupted from his throat was accompanied by flames, and he swept away towards the south horizon of the academy bounds.
“Shouldn’t you follow him?” Ryan asked Nick, who stood there, scowling.
Nick shook his head. “His thoughts are too chaotic, right now he’d flame me. I have no intention of fighting him. I’ll monitor him for now until he calms. Nobody can help him right now.”
Melody gave an inarticulate cry of pain, and sank to her knees, Trent beside her, holding onto her and whispering soothing words. Dean and Asher watched on silently, jealously. She had chosen to be intimate with Trent and not them, which meant that Trent was now higher ranked than them both, instead of being the lowest rank as the newest bonded shifter. It was now Trent’s role to console her and be her guide and defender. He wondered if she knew that.
Trent picked her up and carried her inside, Dean and Asher following like shadows. Before Nick, Oz and Ryan could join them, however, Mrs Hardinger arrived, out of breath.
“Who pissed off the black one?” she asked abruptly, looking between them all. Spotting Nick, she nodded. “Yes, I thought it was Justin. He was always the more temperamental of the two of you. I can’t remember the last time I saw one of you shifted.”
Nick shrugged. “We do it pretty regularly, just at night. Our dragons need to get out and move around too, you know.”
The woman nodded, flapping her hands in assent. “Yes, yes, but what happened to set him off this time?”
They all looked at each other, none of them willing to say anything. They should have known better.
Mrs Hardinger’s gaze swept across them all again, and then she nodded. “Fucked one of them, did she?” she said bluntly, making them all flinch. Fuck, she spoke like his own pack luna.
“Smells like it,” Nick said, hesitantly.
The counsellor rolled her eyes at him. “So, you can smell it. Big deal. Does it give you the right to comment on it? To demand knowledge or make her feel ashamed of herself? Nevermind thinking about where she grew up, what she would have been taught was normal and how she was treated. She has three bonded familiars. What she does is her business, and none of you have the right to intervene. You all seem to forget that none of you are guaranteed a bond with her.”
“She smells of Trent, and Trent smells of her, and they both smell of sex. The living space smells of Dean and Asher’s … release. But not of her,” Ryan said.
The others looked at him in surprise.
“I hadn’t picked up on that,” Nick said, thoughtfully.
“I just assumed they’d all been in on it, it’s what I would have done,” Oz replied.
She rolled her eyes at him. “Yes, fucking shifters. That’s exactly what most would have done. I bet it’s what he did before he went off in a tantrum.”
Ryan shook his head. “No, he very clearly was upset that she’d ‘fucked the fox’. That was bad enough, but then he challenged her and she refused him.”
“Oh, well yes, that probably would have done it too,” she said. “Stupid ass.”
Ryan blinked. While she was the counsellor for all shifters, the five of them had pretty much dealt with everything themselves for a long time. They had each other for support, and he’d had very little to do with Mrs Hardinger. Although her reputation for plainspokenness was legendary.
“All he sees is what he wants, and when he doesn’t get it, he storms off. He’s not looking at it from her perspective. Even if she didn’t have three shifters already and had a lot to contend with on that front, she’s only just regained the right to say no. Her right to accept or reject has been withheld from her for her entire life. Of course she’s not ready to leap forward and accept you all, no matter what she feels for you.”
“That’s pretty much what she said to him when she rejected
