“No! I don’t real y do it that much, but that’s not the point.
What I’m saying… ?” Gods, what was I doing? Trying to talk to him about his brother?
“What are you saying?”
Hoping I wasn’t over stepping boundaries, I plunged ahead. “I think Deacon drinks so he doesn’t feel.”
Aiden sighed. “I know. So do al the counselors and teachers. No matter what I do or who I bring him to, he won’t open up.”
I nodded, understanding how hard it was for Deacon.
“He’s… proud of you. He didn’t say it exactly like that, but he’s proud of what you’re doing.”
He blinked. “Why… how would you know?”
I shrugged. “I think if you keep at what you’re doing, because what you’re doing is right, he’l come around.”
The serious look remained, and there was more to it than that. He looked worried, and for reasons I didn’t even want to acknowledge, it bothered me.
“Hey,” I reached out and tapped the hand that rested next to my left leg. “You are—”
The hand that I tapped reached up and clasped mine. I froze as he threaded his fingers through mine. “I’m what?”
Beautiful. Kind. Patient. Perfect. I said none of those things. Instead, I stared at his fingers, wondering if he knew he was holding my hand. “You’re always so… ”
His thumb moved over the top of my hand. The balm made his fingers cool and smooth. “What?”
I looked up, and I was immediately snared. His stare, his soft touch along my hand was doing very strange things. I felt hot and dizzy, like I’d been sitting out in the sun al day.
Al I could think about was how his hand felt on mine. Then, what his hand would feel like on other parts. I shouldn’t be thinking that at al .
Aiden was a pure.
The door to our room swung open. I jerked back, my hand fal ing to my lap.
A big, hulking shadow paused at the door. Mister Steroids—Leon—glanced around the room, his eyes fal ing to Aiden, who had moved to a much more appropriate distance.
“I’ve been looking everywhere for you,” Leon said.
“What’s up?” Aiden asked evenly.
Leon spared at glance at me. He didn’t suspect anything.
Why would he? Aiden was a wel respected pure and I was just a half-blood he was training. “Did she hurt herself?”
“She’s fine. What did you need?”
“Marcus needs to see us.”
Aiden nodded. He started to fol ow Leon out, but he stopped at the door. Turning back to me, he was al business again. “We’l talk more about this later.”
“Okay,” I said, but he was already gone.
My gaze went back to the painting of the goddess of love. I swal owed hard and my grasp on the little jar tightened. There was no way—absolutely no way—I was interested in Aiden in that way. Sure, he was swoon-worthy and real y nice, and patient and funny in a dry kind of way.
There was a lot about him to like. If he were a half-blood, then there wouldn’t be anything wrong. He didn’t work for the Covenant, so there wasn’t a student hooking up with a teacher kind of problem, and he was only three years older than me. If he were a half-blood, I’d probably have thrown myself at him already.
But Aiden was a freaking pure-blood.
A freaking pure-blood with wonderful y strong fingers and a smile that… wel , made me feel like there was a nest of butterflies in my stomach. And the way he looked at me—
how his eyes shifted from gray to silver in a heartbeat—
affected me even now. My stupid little heart leapt in my chest.
CHAPTER 10
SPRAWLED ACROSS THE MATS, GOING THROUGH
THE motions of the cool-down stretches a couple of days later, Aiden decided to let me in on why Marcus had wanted to see him.
“Lucian is coming.”
I stared up at the ceiling, disappointed. “So?”
Instead of looming over me like he usual y did, he dropped down beside me on the mat. His leg brushed mine, causing a tightening in my chest. You’re being ridiculous, Alex. Knock it off. I moved my leg away from his.
“He’s going to want to talk to you.”
Pushing my weird attraction to him out of my mind, I focused on his words. “Why?”
He bent his knees and dropped his arms over them.
“Lucian is your legal guardian. I suppose he’s curious to see how your training is coming along.”
“Curious?” I kicked my legs into the air. Why? I had no clue. “Lucian has never been interested in anything that had to do with me. Why would he start now?”
His expression tightened for a moment. “Things are different now. With your mom… ”
“That doesn’t matter. It has nothing to do with me.”
He stil looked strange as he continued to watch me point my toes at the ceiling. “It has everything to do with you.” He took a deep breath, seeming to choose his next words wisely. “Lucian is dead set against you returning to the Covenant.”
“Good to know Lucian and Marcus share that in common.”
His jaw tightened. “Lucian and Marcus share nothing in common.”
There he went again, trying to convince me Marcus wasn’t the douche I believed him to be. He’d been at it for weeks, talking about how concerned my uncle had appeared when my mom and I had disappeared. Or how relieved Marcus had seemed when he’d notified him I was alive. Nice of Aiden to want to repair the relationship between us, but Aiden didn’t realize there was nothing to repair.
Aiden reached over and pushed my legs back down to the mat. “Do you ever sit stil for five seconds?”
I grinned, sitting up. “Nope.”
He looked like he wanted to smile, but didn’t. “Tonight, when you see Lucian, you need to be on your best behavior.”
I rol ed to my feet, laughing now. “Best behavior? So I shouldn’t chal enge Lucian to a fight, I guess? I’d win that one. He’s a total wimp.”
The severe frown that graced his face was a clear indication he wasn’t amused. “You do realize your stepfather can overthrow Marcus’s decision to al ow you to stay here? His authority supersedes your uncle’s?”
“Yes.” I planted my hands on my hips. “Since Marcus is only al owing me to stay if I prove myself capable of returning to classes in the fal , I don’t see what the big deal is.”
Aiden came to his feet swiftly. For a moment, I was struck by how quickly he moved. “The big deal is if you mouth off at the Minister like you do with Marcus, you won’t get a second chance. No one wil be able to help you.”
I tore my eyes away from him. “I’m not going to mouth off at him. Honestly, there’s nothing Lucian can say to me that wil get me riled up. He means nothing to me. Never has.”
He looked doubtful. “Try to remember that.”
I threw him a grin. “You have such little faith in me.”
Surprisingly, Aiden grinned back at me. It made me feel al warm and stupid. “How’s your back?”
“Oh. It’s doing okay. That… stuff real y helped.”
He stalked across the mats, silver eyes focused on me.
“Make sure you put it on every night. The bruises should fade in a couple days.”
You could always help put it on again, but I didn’t say that . I backed up, keeping a space between us. “Yes, sensei.”
Aiden stopped in front of me. “Better get going. The Minister and his Guards wil be arriving soon, and al of those at the Covenant wil be expected to meet him.”
I groaned. Everyone would be wearing a Covenant-issued uniform of some sort and no one had given me one.
“I’m going to look like a—”
Aiden placed his hands on my upper arms, obliterating my critical thinking skil s. I stared up at him, entertaining a vividly wild scenario in which he pul ed me against him and kissed me like the barrel-chested men in those smutty books my mom used to read.