Bloodline Diplomacy: A Young Adult Urban Fantasy Academy Novel (Bloodline Academy Book 3), Lan Chan [best way to read an ebook .TXT] 📗

from Kai, his fingers wouldn’t budge. His eyes were like two shards of glittering emeralds. At the moment, they looked like they could cut through metal.

“I have to go,” I pressed. His fingers latched on to mine.

“No you don’t.”

I rounded on him, keeping my back to the two humans. “You can’t have it both ways, Kai. I can’t be the hedge witch nobody trusts and also stay cloistered inside Bloodline. I made a deal. I have to go.”

He blinked in a slow, pained way. “We’re not locking you out of things because we want to.”

I tried to pry his fingers away. “You might not want to, but you’re still going to do it. One way or another, I don’t completely fit in at Bloodline.”

His expression became stricken. “Blue –”

“It’s okay. Whatever happens, I’ll deal with it. I always have.”

Yanking the suitcase away wasn’t an option. His strength was infinite compared to mine. If he didn’t want to let go, he wouldn’t. I would have to go for the low blow.

“I want to go. There are things about what I am that I won’t be able to find out at Bloodline. I need to know the truth. If they can give me a way to free Nanna, I have to take it.”

As soon as he let go of the suitcase, I dragged it towards the car. Sean lifted it into the boot. When I opened the back passenger seat and waved for the dingo to get inside, his ears flattened against his head. The hairs on the back of his neck stood up sharply. I wouldn’t want to get into a small cramped space made of metal either if I were him. But the only other alternative would be to run alongside the car.

I patted the seat. “Come on,” I said. “We haven’t got all day.”

The dingo wouldn’t move. Kai came up beside him. Without knowing it, Kai dropped his hand to the back of the dingo’s neck. The animal butted his palm. “Get inside first,” Kai said. There was a husky catch in his voice. I had to wonder how much it cost him not to just drag me out of here.

I did as he suggested. The dingo whined once, but when he saw that I wasn’t going to get out, he leaped onto the seat. Sean and the other girl got in the car. In the reflection of the rear view mirror, I saw Sean flinch when the dingo padded around on the leather. The dingo’s claws weren’t all that sharp. At least not compared to the kinds of claws I was used to.

Kai shut the door and came around to my side of the car. He stood for a second. “Tell Sophie I said bye,” I said. “I didn’t get a chance to see her before I left.”

He nodded. Sean started the car and backed it out of the rest stop parking lot. It wasn’t until we were back on the highway and I could no longer see Kai that I turned my attention to the other humans.

The girl sat with her head rested against the window. Sean glanced back at me in the rear view. “So that’s your boyfriend?”

I could feel my cheek twitching at the assessment. Boyfriend didn’t seem like the right way to classify whatever Malachi Pendragon was. It seemed almost...juvenile.

“That’s just Kai.”

“Are they all that broody?”

It was hard to tell whether he was just playing with me or if there was malice in his questions. I shrugged. “He’s no different than any human guys I’ve known.” Biggest lie ever.

The girl sensed as much. She snorted and shifted position.

“The monsters are all like that,” she snarled. “They come here and take over like they own the dimension and we’re all their little playthings.”

Sean snickered. “You’ll have to forgive Rachel. She’s not a fan of the monsters.”

Rachel turned her head slowly towards him. The look on her face was venomous. Something abrasive brushed against the skin of my cheek.

“Jeez, Rach,” Sean said. “The truth is the truth.”

“Just shut up,” Rachel said.

We lapsed into silence. I kept my attention decidedly to the right so I wouldn’t catch a glimpse of the great expanse of water we were driving beside. The dingo had at last decided this wasn’t as bad as he’d thought. He sat down on all fours and allowed me to pet him. I bit the inside of my cheek when my hands played along the scarred ridges where he had been cut. It spoke volumes that Kai wasn’t able to heal him completely.

“Where did you get the dingo?” Rachel asked. I had been contemplating how much I should tell them ever since the dingo decided he would stay with me. In the absence of supernaturals that could smell deception in the air, I lapsed back into old habits.

“I found him during a routine guard shift. He was stuck in the barbed-wire fencing.” A little bit of the truth mixed in with a lie made them harder to detect.

“His behaviour is odd.”

Mayday. “Really? I’ve never had a pet before.”

She thought on that for a second. I breathed a sigh of relief when she said no more. Not long after, the roof of Terran Academy came into view. I found myself swallowing. The palm that wasn’t petting the dingo was sweaty. Instead of passing through the front, Sean drove the car around a dirt track that led in a wide arch behind the back of the Academy. Here, big palm trees and other conifers grew to towering heights. Along the side of the ocean they acted as both a barrier and shade against the harsh sunlight.

We stopped in a space that held at least a dozen other cars. It was a head trip to see them all lined up when I’d barely seen a vehicle besides the Bloodline bus in so long.

“Come on,” Sean said. “We’ll get you settled into your room and then you can meet everybody.”

“Is everyone here a low-magic users?” I asked.

Rachel’s fists balled.