CHAPTER EIGHT

El

I WAS GOING to be late.

I hated being late.

People stared when you showed up to class with a note.

I had no note.

I had nothing.

Mouth dry, I tried to hold my head high as I turned the knob to the door leading to my business marketing class.

It creaked open.

I sucked in a breath when every head in the room turned in my direction. The professor’s face was a mask of complete boredom as he looked up from his book and finally scowled.

“Hi, I’m—”

“Late,” he finished with an irritated edge. He couldn’t be more than forty, with dark brown hair and dead blue eyes. “Find a seat. Now.”

I gulped and quickly weaved my way around desks, finally locating an empty seat toward the back.

He continued droning on in this bored tone that already had me inwardly yawning.

I set my bag on the floor, pulled out my book, and froze.

The guy sitting to my left was the one who had picked a fight with Dante.

He leaned toward me, so close I had to keep myself from flinching or just running away. So close I could make out the strands of his wavy black hair that fell over a cut on the side of his eyebrow. Blood had dried to the corner of his mouth, a mouth that lifted up at the corner in a mocking smile.

“So.” His voice was husky. “Do they at least pay you?”

I didn’t answer.

Mainly because I had no idea what the hell he was talking about.

“Open your books to Chapter One, you’ll find the assignment in your syllabus. I’ll just be five minutes.” The professor gave the guy next to me a knowing look before he quickly left the classroom, coffee cup in hand.

“That’s pretty cheap if you ask me… they won’t even pay you and they force you to go to school on top of it?” He grunted, then stood, his chair scraping across the floor making my ears ring. He swaggered toward the front of the class and stood.

Everyone seemed to lean in.

I held my breath and watched.

Slowly, he rolled up the white sleeves of his shirt, leaning back against the teacher’s desk as if he owned it.

His muscled forearms flexed as he gripped the edge of the wood then hopped backward into a sitting position, all casual, like this was normal, like students always took control of college classrooms.

My anxious gaze darted around the room.

Nobody moved.

So I didn’t either.

“Try outs.” He said the two words slowly like he was waiting for them to sink in as a ripple of excitement filled the room. “Will be tonight at midnight, at The Spot… remember, if you fight and lose you’re out, if you fight and win…” As his voice trailed off, he spread his hands, palms up and gave a casual shrug.

One of the guys in front of me rubbed his hands together. “Been training all summer.”

His friend made a face. “Training doesn’t do shit if they kill you.”

“That was one time, and it was a freak accident. Plus the kid was asking for it and didn’t know when to shut his mouth.”

“Kind of like that guy this morning.” He shuddered. “It’s like he wants to die.”

I glanced back to the front of the classroom my eyes slammed into his cold depths. Soulless. They were soulless, and locked onto me in a way that said he’d bargained with the devil a long time ago.

And lost.

“Midnight,” he repeated with finality. “Oh, and welcome back everyone, summer was so… incredibly, dull without you.”

The class broke into cheers as he made his way back to his seat next me, sauntered was more like it.

The professor walked in the minute the crazy guy’s ass touched the seat next to mine and then he was leaning in again. “So, if they don’t pay you… does that mean you’re free?”

I gritted my teeth and flashed him a glare. “I don’t know what the hell you’re talking about.”

A cocky grin spread across his face. I’d probably find him attractive if I wasn’t so worried that he was going to pull a knife on me at any given moment, or worse, just embarrass me, make me cry. I had a long list of things that I wanted to accomplish that school year.

Survival was at the top, right along with a nice heavy cloak of invisibility.

“Nobody takes what’s ours and lives to talk about it.” His hand jerked out, strong fingers dug into my forearm.

Directly onto the tattoo that had been etched there despite my screams of pain.

Despite the kicking.

Clawing.

Fighting.

Drawn with such burning slowness that I’d almost passed out a number of times.

I inwardly flinched, clenched my teeth, and met his stare.

I’d seen eyes like that before.

Eyes of a monster.

Eyes of the one who’d tried to wreck me.

And I knew what the monster wanted, what it fed on.

Weakness.

So I stared back, without blinking, tilting my head in that bored amusement I knew would piss him off.

His fingers let up just enough for me to jerk my arm back.

“You belong to us,” he hissed under his breath. “And we don’t share.”