Bloodline Alchemy: A Young Adult Urban Fantasy Academy Novel (Bloodline Academy Book 6), Lan Chan [free ebook reader for android TXT] 📗

was alone and these were my pleasant thoughts, I allowed myself to bask in the intoxicating scent of Max’s T-shirt.

After a few seconds, my headache eased. A minute or so after that, so did the furious beating of my heart. My hands shook as I slumped onto the edge of the bed. Raising the vial up to the early morning light, I glanced ruefully at it. This was the extent of my kitchen magic. This and the food I could cook. If I forsook all of the rest, this was where my limits lay. How was this going to help me when Lucifer came?

The ghost of my great-grandfather’s voice reverberated in my head. “You wish to be strong? Embrace who you truly are.”

I shuddered, remembering that first ritual that I had seen in my dreams about three months earlier. That had been enough. The sickening queasiness made my head light. Covering my ears with my hands, I pressed in like I could squeeze the memory of Dani’s screams out of my brain.

Shaking myself, I gathered my things and crept to the bathroom with the intention of washing away the nightmare. In fact, I stepped into another one entirely. The evidence of masculine inhabitants was everywhere. It was disgraceful. It wasn’t that it was dirty so much as messy. There were clothes in piles on the floor even though the laundry basket was sitting right there in the corner. There was a pair of muddy boots in the bathtub and a scrawled message on the mirror that said: this is not a lodge. Shayla’s handwriting, of course.

Seeing the mirror made me frown. It was only then that I realised there was no mirror in the spare bedroom. I reached out eagerly and pressed my fingertips against the glass. There was no familiar light that scanned my palm. No robotic voice asking me what I would like to see. Sigh. I guess I was still banned from the MirrorNet.

Irritation made me kick the pair of jeans on the floor next to the shower into the wall. Somebody thumped on the door. “Yo!” Charles said. “Don’t move any of my stuff!”

Heaven forbid I make the place messier.

After showering, I felt marginally better. If only because when I came out, the smell of toast filled the air. Pulling on my sneakers, I went downstairs into the kitchen and stopped dead. When I’d been in there the night before, everything had been clean and neat. Right now, it looked like a poltergeist had had a field day. The grill over the fire was smoking and there was blackened bread and crumbs in the sink.

“You want something to eat?” Charles asked.

He sat at the table with an oblivious smile on his face. “What happened to the electrical wards?” I asked, moving slowly into the room. I drew a protection circle around myself just in case.

Charles shrugged.

Breathing out slowly, I tried another tack. “Why aren’t you wearing a shield amulet so you don’t break the appliances?”

“Forgot.”

It was a wonder Shayla hadn’t smothered him in his sleep. “And who do you suppose is going to clean this up?”

Another shrug. “One of the inner circle will sort it out.”

I could feel the nerve in my jaw twitching. “And would that person be a female?”

“I don’t know! What is this? An interrogation? Do you want to eat or not?”

“Well, when you put it so enticingly, no. I’ll just grab something in the dining hall.”

He glanced sideways at me, his expression grim. “What are you talking about? Did you not see the Academy? They don’t provide meals anymore.”

It took a moment for it to sink in. Shoving aside the sliver of grief, I rallied. I’d spent the last six months as a fugitive. Andrei and I had camped out in places and eaten many sub-stellar meals. So why was it that the thought of the Academy without the comfort of the dining hall made me want to weep?

Maybe because you’re too soft? Anastasia’s mocking voice said in my head.

Suppressing a snarl, I went to the cooler and opened it up again. I wasn’t sure why, considering it had been almost empty last night. And it was the same empty this morning. “What have you been eating?”

I could feel him shrugging again even though my back was turned. “Dunno. Stuff. Mostly someone brings food over or we eat with the circle.”

My breath was heated when it came out of my nostrils. Pretending to be interested in the shrivelled contents of the crisper, I asked, “Who brings stuff over?”

There was a quiet pause. When I turned back to him, his expression was unreadable. “What’s wrong?”

He picked up a piece of toast and bit into the corner of the least-burned side. “I’m trying to figure out how much to mess with you,” he said, eyes twinkling. My heart almost stopped. One day soon, every female in all of supernaturaldom would lose their minds over him. “But I’m not gonna lie, Soph. The females come by a lot.”

He stood and walked over to where I was leaning with my back against the cooler door and joined me. My head barely reached past his shoulder these days. “If you’re not going to consider this mating thing then I can’t do anything to stop them. And neither can you. So you’d better figure out a way to get that look off your face.”

“I don’t have a look!”

“Uh huh.”

“It would be a lot easier if I just moved into the human precinct.”

“Well, that’s not happening anytime soon.”

“But that’s not fair. I haven’t agreed to anything. He can’t force me to be here while his harem comes calling. It’s against the custom.”

He pressed his shoulder against me, and I found my head lolling against his arm. “Not when the inner circle don’t accept you. Have you ever seen that happen?”

He knew that I’d grown up in a wolf pack. Wracking my brain, I tried to think of an occasion when one of the wolves chose a mate and the