Chapter 17
TESSA POV
Walking past Block A and saying goodnight to Irene and Alletta without Maxim’s arm around my shoulders felt bizarre. I should have looked for him but Kai and Silas said to let him wind down.
“You can stay at mine if you like?” Irene offered sweetly.
“I’ll be fine. He’s probably already back at the room,” I assured her.
I know she didn’t believe me. Maxim doesn’t rate her but that innocently freckled face notice a lot of things.
Quiet doesn’t mean stupid.
Luca used to say that to me all the time when we were children.
Walking back alone, as slow as possible in hopes of Maxim catching me up. The idea of ending the night without a breath–stealing kiss, pressed up against the wall is seriously depressing.
Arms silently folded around my waist, just like back at home. My thoughts trail back to my mother and her scolding. The quieter I became the less she shouted, ending up as the village mute long before I left, as Malva knows.
There has been no attempt to contact me yet. I left a letter. If they shrugged and threw it on the fire I’d be relieved.
Maybe they can forget my existence and continue with their strange meetings. The things I wasn’t meant to see.But deep down I know they won’t. They need the control. There will be repercussions.
We aren’t like the other farming families. Darnell is a nothing name, No roots going back generations. Just sprouted up like a weed in our village and never left. That’s how I heard us described once.
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My first memories aren’t growing up around the hay fields and barns. My first memories are soaked in blood. Chubby, fumbling hands crawling over someone not moving. Laid upon something that used to be warm and precious, only to be roughly picked up, reaching out for a shape that only got further away.
The cold wind was stinging my face. Every storm, where the wind whips sideways reminds me of that blurry, strange time. So long ago I cannot trust what is memory, dream or hope.
When I asked my parents about it at around ten years old, the beating left me seeing double for days. My speaking vanished completely.
Luca was furious but he was only a young teen himself. He couldn’t do anything but make promises to get revenge. Only to vanish and leave me even more alone and silent.
He began playing in the orchards on the other side of the village. I was bound to the house, unable to follow. At night he would come to my window in our tiny cottage and whisper.
“Wait and see Feisty.”
My mute little face raised an eyebrow. Making it clear I disagreed with his nickname. Luca would just grin, his dark eyes gleaming with excitement.
When the weevils contaminated my fathers entire grain store three weeks later the family was baffled. Every single bag of grain.
“How did they get in! It’s impossible, we did everything right! Check the neighbours, everyone must be diseased!”
But they weren’t. Only us. Luca had raided the fruit trees for the tiny insects and planted them in my fathers sacks. Once in, they had multiplied to vile numbers.
“I will always look after you Tessa. I can’t help it,” he urged, squeezing my hand through the window. I remember feeling like the sun itself was
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shining upon me, even during that dark, wretched night.
Eventually I started talking again. Years of skimming stones, archery practice and making campfires followed. His hair was merely black and shaggy back then compared to the savage, overgrown length he returned with. The same ragged locks he glare up at me through with feral
desperation in his dark eyes.
Before he ruined everything.
Now I’m sitting in the quiet of my bedroom, concerned about a completely different kind of man. Luca has always been serious and considered. Inflexibly devoted. Destined to save me, once upon a time
anyway.
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Maxim reminds me of molten metal. Bright and alluring except you never know what his true nature is. It’s all to fit the view required at the time.
Even I know his desire to be an assassin is not born out of loyalty to the pack. It would just give him a life of adventure. An escape from whatever it is he is hiding from.
The same man who has not returned.
Checking the time I puff out my cheeks and study Maxim’s few
possessions. His leather jacket, various weapons, all kind of organised. I noticed how little either of us actually own before now.
Irene’s room has little knick–knacks and books. Allette’s bright headscarves decorate her small space. This room is just wood, lamps and a bed.
The starkness never stood out when Maxim was in here with me. But then I don’t look around too much usually. Not when my lips still tingle from his kisses and my hands know the feeling of his chest. I fling myself into the shower, into bed and squeeze my eyes shut.
I waited up the whole night. Defying curfew I even stepped out of Block E and paced around in his borrowed shirt, pajama shorts and slippers on the
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crunching gravel. The breeze sends goosebumps scuttling across my bare
skin.
My wolf was restless and agitated, not stopping the palpitations in my chest until I retreated back into the arched wooden doorway of Block E.
“Where the hell are you?” I mutter into thin air.
Not caring about looking ridiculous, I sniffed the air. My wolf found nothing, as much as I twisted high up on my tiptoes for every waft of breeze that hit the doorway.
Maxim must either be downwind of us, meaning the infantry training grounds, a place he hates.
Or he’s in a different room.
The idea of him being in a different room sends a lonely stab through my chest. Two weeks of restraint for a playboy, am I wrong to be upset at him finding some cheap fun elsewhere?
Is it really a betrayal when we’ve only promised to share the same lie?
Out of ideas, I sit up in our bed, on his side, where the pillows and blankets still smell of him and wait. Hugging my legs, my eyes are losing focus when the first glints of dawn break through.
Not a moment of sleep for me.
Before the bells can even lang for breakfast I sprint outside. Dressed in my beige and gold uniform, I didn’t even bother to plait my long hair away. I race down to the infantry grounds, fighting the twisting anxiety in my chest.
Of course I fall over on the dewy grass, tumbling down the slope and muddying my uniform.
“Maxim!” I shout only to clamp my hand over my mouth. Announcing his vanishing act feels like a risk. I don’t know why but it is. Instead I grumble,
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“You had better be seriously, lethally injured,” and stalk through the grassland around the perimeter, staring through the treeline.
Injury, I can understand.
Not an event that confirms every fear I had from the moment his amber eyes first seized my spirit. If he were to appear with that smooth grin, smelling of the sweet luxury of Princess Hazel I’d be mortified. Or Allette.
But there is nothing. Not a trace.
Running back I head to Block D, frantically checking the accommodation listings to find Silas or Kai’s rooms.
I briefly despise my wolf’s exceptional sense of smell as the foulness of unwashed men hits me in waves. Maxim was right to fight that huge Isaac guy for our room. If he hasn’t shacked up with a whore I’ll thank him for
that when I next see him.
Choking back a retch I bang on a red wooden door.
“What! It’s too fucking early Kai!” sounds out.
“It’s Tessa!”
“What? Hang on!” followed by a scuffling sound. I am greeted by the sight of a freshly showered Silas, a dark blue towel slung around his perfectly sculpted waist. His soaked blonde hair slicked back to his scalp. He smells so soapy fresh it makes my brain itch.
“Shit…no sign of him?”
“No. No and I don’t know what to do.”
“Why the hell are you covered in mud? It’s in your hair!”
“I fell. It doesn’t matter,” I step closer, only for Silas to use his huge body to bar the door. “What if he’s hurt? Or in trouble?” my voice dropping to a low whisper.
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“He’s a big boy, this isn’t the first time he’s done this,” Silas replies quietly. Around us men are waking up. Walking past, grumbling, cursing but pretending not to listen.
“What does that mean! What has he done before?”
“Look…he pissed off Warden Marshall yesterday. He’s probably got him doing drills or carrying logs.”
“I don’t…I don’t think that’s it. I don’t know why but I don’t.”
Silas stares steadily at me, his honey coloured eyes full of sympathy. “That’s the outcome you want Tess. Trust me.”
I understand. The other version is him cheating on his mate. Declaring bonds only to shit all over them. Silas places a hand on my shoulder, squeezing it gently.
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“Look, give him hell when he shows up. But you’re a first year. You still have to beat everyone else this morning then again this afternoon. They’re making more cuts soon. Don’t crash down the rankings stressing about him.”
hat’s the longest he’s ever gone for?”
e’s an assassin Tessa, if the Alpha sent him on a mission he could be gone weeks.”
Oh shit no. Now the stinging sensation in my chest has expanded into full panic. I can’t do this alone. Silas squeezes me again, my flailing idiocy obvious as my face colours and breathing shortens.
“Focus on yourself Tessa.”
I skip breakfast to take another look around.
Only to regret that and every other decision I’ve made in the past twelve hours. My eyes burn from tiredness. We aren’t on the regular archery field. A mile down a track is a wide open plain covered in high wires with
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blue–shirted beta’s stood around at the edges.
“What the fuck is this?” Briggs whispers to me. “And what happened to you this morning?”
Before I could even try to answer Warden Kendrick, his pink throat scar vivid and terrifying bellowed. “Hit the targets! GO! GO FUCKING GO!”
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Without thinking I grip my bow, place the arrow in its rest and charge forward along with the twenty others. Rather than remaining calm and centred, my nerves are jittery. I charge ahead, the targets moving on wires, zipping down the full length of the field.
Oh Goddess I am so screwed. The wind whips my flailing hair, straight into my mouth, around the string of my bow. When the first blue-
dered landmine I am completely fucked.
shot misses completely, the ground a sea of bright blue paint. Fighting for my balance I realise the ground is completely uneven. It’s not grass it’s fucking moss. High and low clumps, impossible to judge, patches of fucking moss.
Struggling against myself I finally stagger forward for a few seconds. Only to twist my ankle. Yelping I fall over, setting off another landmine with my face and hair. Spluttering I hear men laughing at me before casually jogging past. “Good luck hotshot,” is hissed my way.
My careless rushing will guide my rivals‘ success. Maxim was right.
“KEEP FUCKING MOVING DARNELL!” the voice of Marshall Warden
bellows “SHOOT!”
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