“Is that what a group of pigs is called?” I asked.
“Strewth, no. But those two act like gangsters.”
I hated seeing him so upset. “No worries, mate,” I replied.
His lips split into the familiar lopsided grin, and my heart lifted.
This school had its challenges. But the best thing about it, hands down, was Matt.
34
Talakai
I succeeded in staying well back from the rest of my team during the run. But by the time I walked into the special weapons class, my stomach was twisted into an intricate, very painful, knot, and my wings itched to spring free from my shoulders. I struggled to put a word to what I felt...
Dread.
Fortitude in the face of adversity had been drilled into me from a young age. This anxiety was a foreign thing for me.
Foreign, and not welcome.
As we took our seats in the coliseum, I positioned Aaron and Darius between me and the others. The primary cause of my angst entered with Matt and the ogress. I did my best to ignore her, but as it had been during the runs, my entire body vibrated to her every move. When she sat down, an errant drift of wind carried her scent to me.
It was enough to make my scales stand on end. Them, and other things best not contemplated when growing your own clothing.
Intuition—the skill that had saved my skin more times than I could count—was screaming at me to run. To put as many miles between me and her as possible. But instead, I fixed my eyes on the table full of weapons, while the knot inside me twisted ever tighter.
Come to me.
The commands from the dream echoed through my mind, as did my reaction to them. I trembled with their power. It had pulsed through the words. Hooked into my soul.
And my body had wanted more.
Only a dream. It had only been a dream. I longed to ask Haki whether he’d dreamed of Kala before he’d met her. If Dragons could experience living dreams...
But if that was true, then Fate had me firmly in its grasp. And it had awakened things within me that I desperately needed to keep contained. Memories that weren’t twisted figments of my fatigued brain.
They needed to remain caged.
I was stronger than this. I’d survived worse things—I could survive anything.
We waited while the entire student body filed into the coliseum. On the stage below stood Cody and Ryan. Set up on tables behind them was an array of weapons.
I gritted my teeth. I was familiar with every one of them on an intimate basis. Was deadly accurate regardless of which I wielded.
If I wanted to keep my cover, I needed to botch the next two hours.
The urgency was real. I sensed the gaze of both instructors. Not a stare—they were too good for that. More a casual drift of the eye over me, away, and then back again.
Shards.I was on their radar. I didn’t just need to fail—I needed to be convincing at it. In front of experts.
That had been a surprise. Those who had owned me employed only the best instructors, and they’d been ruthless. I’d expected the academy to hire reputable teachers, but I’d envisioned pensioned-off, out-of-touch mercenaries or those with a more academic bias.
What hadn’t been factored into Kala’s little hide-in-plain-sight plan were shrewd warriors at the top of their game.
But that was what I got.
To have any chance at this at all, I needed to stay away from Anna and Matt and focus on the job. Which, at the moment, involved saving my blue scaly skin.
