Chapter 4

The weekend passed far too quickly; she wanted it to go as slow as possible. She dreaded this meeting with Tekkin on Monday. She did her best to make it last by reverting to her undergraduate habits: bar hopping. She’d gotten more sophisticated with it. She went to bars off campus, away from the sea of early twenty-somethings and fake IDs. She no longer got giant pitches of some concoction that was pure sugar and alcohol. She ordered red wine at every bar and sat alone in the corner, watching everyone out with their work friends or on a date.

She spent all of Saturday trying to nap, trying to read books, looking up recipes on the internet, trying to keep her mind busy and make the clock move faster. As soon as the clock struck six o’clock, she set out to the bar to make time move even faster as the buzz of alcohol set in her system and went for a swim in her veins. So far off campus she didn’t expect to see anyone she knew, but you couldn’t always get what you wanted.

“You would be the type to order a glass of wine at a bar,” said a familiar, narcistic voice.

Erik from her seminar stood there. He was dressed with much more care than he presented in class. Her shirt was ironed and buttoned up to the collar, a faded flannel that was shaped well at all the edges. His deep brown hair was still damp from the obvious shower he’d taken earlier and he put off a scent of aftershave that she didn’t exactly hate. On his wrist was an expensive-looking watch, the hand wearing it tucked into the pocket of his dark jeans that gave way to well-cared-for shoes on his feet.

“You here on a date?” she asked, running her eyes over him one more time to make sure she got all the assets to his look right. It would probably be the only time she saw him looking so well put together.

“Meeting some friends at a club downtown,” he said. “You’re clearly having a roaring time here.”

He nodded to her half-full wine glass and the empty next to it that hadn’t yet been taken away. She blushed, despite herself. She wasn’t ashamed. She could order whatever the hell she wanted from a bar. Her face must have said that because next he said, “You’re not exactly the picture of fun and excitement looking like that. Wine is a couch and Netflix drink, not something to be seen with unless you’re at Martha’s Vineyard.”

She glared. “Anything else? I come here to avoid your insults.”

“I can buy your next round if you’d like,” he said, shrugging.

“And spit in it?”

“Watch you drink it and come up with all sorts of witty insults,” he said, smirking. “I’m waiting for my asshole friends who are always late.”

“Maybe they ditched you.”

He narrowed his eyes, dropping down next to her, perhaps thinking this was his best way of getting revenge on her. His presence was the worst punishment he could inflict on her. She angled herself so that she was turned away from him. Unfortunately for her, the result was a view of the wall inches from her face and her own empty wine glasses. He chuckled behind her.

“You can handle having me in your peripheral vision,” he said. “I swear, I’ll be quiet.”

She sighed, slowly starting to shift back. She kept her eyes and head focused in the other direction, however. She played with her wine glass and took a sip, letting the dry, tart taste settle there and work its way down her throat in warmth.

“Did you do the reading for class?”

“I thought you said you’d be quiet.”

“Well, this is an actual question.”

“Yes, I did the reading.”

“Did you think it was bogus too?”

Her first answer in her own head was yes, absolutely, it was bogus. It was a piece on why shifters should be patient with society, that their place in the public was still somewhat new and everyone was adjusting, that they’d catch up. It was complete garbage. She was pretty sure that was the point. No self-respecting person in the shifter rights field could read it and not cringe. But she didn’t want to agree with Erik on anything.

“Yeah, that was the idea,” she said like it was obvious.

“But do you think there’s something to it?” he asked, turning to face her and letting his head cradle in the palm of his hand as his elbow rested on the bar top.

“Absolutely not,” she said. “Why the hell should shifters have to wait to be considered people?”

“Well, think about all the small steps towards progress, you know? Like getting the first senator and the first Academy award-winning director. The steps are there,” he said.

“And what about the people who never get to live to see the full progress because they’re told that they should be grateful for whatever miniscule amount of achievement they get in their lifetime?”

“It’s bigger than just one person, or a couple people. It sucks to think about some grandma who picketed for years and years dying before she gets to see all that freedom. But this is about an entire group. The individual never matters in a revolution.”

He didn’t end up meeting his friends that night. Somehow drinks seemed to keep appearing in front of them both and before they knew it, someone flickered the lights for last call, ushering them out the door. They split a ride back to campus and kept their heated debate going before she told him he was wrong, slammed the door behind her, and walked from the car into her apartment building. From the window he rolled down in the cab, he called a good night to her and said he’d see her in class next week.

#

She purposely slipped into the lecture hall for class just before it started, preventing him from eying her too much, trying to talk to her before. She shuffled into her normal seat while he answered someone’s question. She took out her notebook and pen and pretended to be busy writing something down to avoid any eye contact, any chance. Maybe he forgot he asked to speak with her after class.

Fat chance.

“Miss Monroe,” he said when everyone stood to leave.

He beckoned her over with a wag of his finger and she imaged herself ripping the digit off and laughing at his pain. He got her so incredibly angry. She didn’t like feeling hateful, but at least her fear was vanishing into something a little more productive. She could use rage a lot more than she could use nervous energy.

She walked up to him with all the confidence she knew she didn’t have. Her head was held up high, her shoulders rolled back, her hand placed with purpose and care on the edge of her bag.

“Yes, professor?” she asked with an overly sweet voice. She might need to pull it back; that sounded a little bit like the beginning of an awful porno.

“You are here as a guest in my class,” he said, leaning against the desk and crossing his arms in the typical I-know-better-than-you teacher pose.

“Actually, I’m a contributing part of the curriculum,” she said. “I’m a teaching fellow which means I’m meant to serve as an asset to the education of the students taking this course. I have four years of formal education on the matter and several years of experience before that. I’m here to use it.”

“As I see fit,” he said.

“Is it that I’m a woman?” she asked. “Because you’re meant to be a color, gender, and orientation-blind individual working for an educational institution. Is it my age? Because twenty-five is a respectable—”

“It has nothing to do with those things, Miss Monroe. I can assure you,” he said. “I am a firm believer that women will take the Earth from men and we’ll all be better for it. Likewise, I put my faith in the generations below me.”

“What’s the issue then? It’s not fair of you to disrupt my education like this.”

“Why did you go into this field?”

He’d switched his position again; now it was the teacher therapist here to tell her all the places she fucked up so far in her life. He was convinced he knew better, she could read that all over his face. He thought the grey stubble on his chin made him look older, made him seem wiser. He thought the build of his body made him seem powerful, the strange sort of energy coming off him made him seem dangerous…

Wait.

Oh crap.

Suddenly, she realized the source of all his frustrating antics with her, all his decided mistrust of her competency. He was a shifter. Of course. He seemed to read her mind on her face because he was nodding.

“I know why I got into this field,” he said. “It was the only option I had at the time because no one wanted to give me a chance. Now I’m making sure new generations are educated and have chances of their own. Why are you here?”

“My best friend is—”

“That, right there. That is your problem.”

He pushed himself up from his passive position leaning against the desk and moved to collect his things, shoving books and papers back into his bag.

“You can have empathy, you can have sympathy. You can cry a thousand tears for what your friend is going through and the things she faces, but you can never know what it’s like for her. You will always be an outsider, and that makes you a liability to the education of future generations when you will always be a secondhand source,” he said, slipping his coat on. “You’re here because the administration forced you on me and I cannot reject a student for the practicum portion of your courses. So you will continue to be here, and that is all. I will give you a satisfactory grade to complete what you need to complete and then you will move on to bother the next professor in your list. I’m the only one of my kind on the faculty, however, so you’ll have a breeze with them by comparison.”

And with that, he walked past her and out the door of the lecture hall. It was the first time she’d seen him express an actual emotion. He was frustrated; she saw hints of how sad he was below the surface. He was a dragon shifter. She’d never met one before. The only shifters she knew were Trish and her family, all wolves. She was left standing there, staring at the wall at the back of the lecture hall with a gaping mouth and wide eyes.

She couldn’t tell if she felt incredibly guilty for what he said or wanted to get even angrier. She’d heard bullshit like that before, that the non-allies of shifters couldn’t possibly understand or help a single thing. She’d seen it at protests and rallies. Now she faced it in her own classroom, from a man who spouted it right to her face, telling her she wasn’t only useless to the cause but a detriment to it all.

She wouldn’t take that at face value. He couldn’t stop her from running her discussion sessions. He couldn’t stop what she did outside of class and no matter who he was or what he went through, he didn’t have the right to hinder her education because he believed one thing about her without ever giving her the chance.

He wanted to make a challenge for her? She’d answer it.