ROMANCE: Mason (Bad Boy Alpha Male Stepbrother Romance Boxset) (New Adult Contemporary Stepbrother Romance Collection) (253 page)

I crept back along the wall, and around to the front.

“What are you doing?” I voice right next to me, and my body froze with fright. My body trembled and my heart beat in my throat. When I looked, it was Mr. Harris.

“Mrs. Harris!” I cried out. “I nearly died, oh my gosh.” I held my hand over my heart and focused on slowing down my breath.

“You’re not supposed to be out here,” he said. “In fact, I don’t think you’re supposed to be on campus at all.”

I shook my head, swallowing. “I had to get back. I got—“

“Save it. I’m taking you to Principal Cole.”

I was going to get it now. Some hero I was, I couldn’t even sneak around school without being caught. We walked through the glass front doors and to Ms. Donovan, the old receptionist’s desk. Her eyebrows rose when she saw me.

“Adelaide, I didn’t expect to see you here,” she said. She usually caught me coming late to school, and sometimes she stuck up for me, getting me out of the trouble she could. Out of all the staff at Worthington, she was my favorite.

“That’s because she’s not supposed to be here. I’m taking her in to see Cole.”

Ms. Donovan shook her head. “I’m afraid he’s in a phone conference right now. He can’t see anyone.”

“How long will he be?” Harris asked.

Ms. Donovan shrugged.

“Can I leave her here?” Harris asked. “I have a class to teach.”

“Of course,” Ms. Donovan said, clearing a chair next to her. “She can wait here, and I’ll send her in as soon as Mr. Cole frees up.”

Harris glanced at me, and nodded at Ms. Donovan. “Appreciate it.”

I sat down next to the old secretary with a huff. Despite her old age, she always looked neat and well taken care of. Her white hair was in a braid down her back tonight, and her immaculate nails were the same shape as her lipstick.

“You have to let me go,” I said, looking at her.

“Why?” she asked.

“Because Boris Kirilov is with Graham right now, and I think he’s in danger.”

She cocked her head to the side, inviting me to say more. So I told her about my suspicious that Graham had only been injured to lure Boris back, about the threat on my bed, and about the Lynx I’d seen so many months ago.

“Why don’t you tell the authorities about this?” she asked.

I groaned and rolled my eyes. “You know how much they don’t care about what I say. They never take me seriously. If Kirilov dies tonight, I’ll never be able to forgive myself. He’s not just a politician, Ms. Donovan, he’s my father.”

Ms. Donovan looked at me for a moment where I couldn’t read her expression. Finally she nodded. “Okay, you can go. You’re not supposed to be here anyway, and what Cole doesn’t know won’t hurt him.”

“You won’t tell him I was here?”

“I won’t, but Harris might. I’m not going to stop him from doing it.”

I jumped up and gave her an awkward hug. In an alternate reality, I would have liked for her to be my grandmother.

“Thank you,” I breathed and ran out the door.

I couldn’t go out the front gate again, not with the guard having spotted me. He would still be on duty. I thought for two seconds, and then I ran across campus to the residences. There was an old door in the wall there, used by servants. As far as I knew that door wasn’t locked at night.

When I reached it, I tried it, and it was open. I breathed a sigh of relief, thanking whoever would listen under my breath.

I wrestled the heavy door open, and slipped through, pulling it shut again behind me. The door opened onto a small clump of trees. It was dark between the leaves and trunks. I swallowed hard, pushed any fear away, and disappeared between them.

No guards would see me now, even if they looked right at me.

The moment I was in the trees, I dematerialized again.

I landed in front of the Medical Center. I slipped and fell to my knees, and I took some skin of my palm when I tried to break my fall. But I was here. I really needed to dematerialize more to stay fit for it.

I walked inside, and at the counter I asked for Graham Kirilov.

“Shouldn’t you be in school?” she asked.

“I’m his sister,” I said. Well, I wasn’t really, and I felt like less of a sister to Graham than a daughter to Boris. But it worked and the nurse directed me to Graham’s room.

The room had walls of glass. It was a cubicle that was almost an Intensive Care room, but it was removed from the other critical patients. The glass was for observation. They had to keep an eye on him all the time.

I walked towards the room, and I could see Boris sitting next to Graham, holding his hand. Graham’s eyes seemed closed and Boris looked defeated. A pang of jealousy shot through me. I saw Boris once or twice a year besides Christmas and my birthday. I didn’t think he’d ever held my hand. I shook off the feeling. Now wasn’t a time to compare lives and affection.

A black shadow moved inside the room. A third person. Was it a nurse? But the shadow was behind Boris, and it didn’t look upright and official, like the nurses did. I sped up, walking a bit faster. The room was some distance away, still.

As I watched, the shadow lifted an arm, and silver blade glistened in the light. The blade was poised over the back of Boris’s neck.

“No!” I cried out and broke into a run. I reached the room. The door was locked. Red eyes glared at me from the black swirling mass. I couldn’t get inside!

I took to steps back, and threw my whole body into the glass. Pain shot through my body as the glass broke and pieces cut me, but I my focus was on the creature. On Boris.

Boris had spun around when he’d heard the glass breaking. In the corner of my eye I saw he’d jumped up. I lunged at the creature, baring my fangs and hissing. I grabbed handfuls of skin and hair. The shadow was flesh and blood, and where there was flesh, there could be pain.

The knife lifted in the air, and came down towards me, but I’d seen it coming and threw myself to the side. The blade skimmed my shoulder, leaving a searing red line of blood on my arm. I screamed, and jumped, biting the creature wherever I could. It let out a horrible, unnatural shriek, and tried to attack me again. But security guards had arrived, and they jumped in, taking over. I fell back and moved out of the way, letting them do their job. It didn’t take long before the two guards had the creature in cuffs. The lights in the room were turned up, and in front of my eyes the shape transformed into a tall, dark man.

“Take him away,” Boris said behind me. “And get nurses here.”

I looked at him. His face was ashen, and he half-leaned over Graham as if to protect him. He didn’t know that the creature had been there to kill him.

Nurses rushed into the room, and gasped. They took me, and fussed over me, and even though I hated the attention, I let them.

My arm needed stitches, and there were a million tiny cuts all over my face and neck, and my bear arms.

Finally, when I was patched up and stitched, one of them thought to give me a bagel and some coffee. Food never tasted that good.

“The police are here,” a nurse said, and two officers and a man in an ordinary suit walked in, followed by Boris. They took my statement. When I told them what I’d seen, Boris’s eyes stretched. I think he finally understood that his life had been in danger. Once they left, he sat down on the bed next to me.

“You always seem to show up at the perfect time,” he said. “What were you doing here in school hours?”

“I had to check on you. I heard Cole say you were here.”

“Well, I thank you. You’re a light in my life, Adelaide. More than you know.” The words were like a warm towel, wrapping around me. Boris maybe didn’t love me like he loved Graham, but he loved me all the same. It was good to know.

“Let’s get you home,” he said.

I shook my head. “I’d really rather go back to school,” I answered. I wouldn’t be spending time with Boris, but it was how we did things.

“You’d rather be there?” he asked.

“It’s like my home, anyway,” I said. I told him about being sent home, and about the note Morris had mentioned.

“I’m glad they sent you home, I agree with keeping you safe. But I never sent a note,” he said.

“I didn’t think you did. Not your style.”

Boris smiled and took me back to school in his fancy car.

At the school Boris walked with me to Cole’s office. The principal was flustered when he saw the political figure. When he saw me, with my stitches and bandages, he looked like he was going to faint.

“I sent her home to keep her safe,” he tried to explain. “I did everything in my power—“

Boris cut him off. “It’s alright. She’s safe. And so am I, thanks to her.” He explained everything that had happened, and finally told Cole that I could come back to school. Of course Principal Cole didn’t argue. No one argued with Boris Kirilov.

4

I got the expected attention from everyone in school, and of course the rumors spread about what could have happened. It started off as an act of heroism, and grew until I was a goddess, a superhero, a saint.

“I can’t believe you did that,” Beth said when we sat together for lunch a couple of days later. I shrugged.

“Don’t just shrug at me; no one would just jump through some glass.”

“You’d do the same if it was your dad,” I said. Beth pulled face. Neither of us knew if she’d even be able to get through the glass. With her slight build she might just have bounced back.

“Tell me again,” Beth said, eyes glimmering.

I rolled my eyes. “It’s the same old story; it doesn’t change like the gossip around here.”

“I know, but I still love hearing it. You’re something else, you know that?”

I grinned.

“Mind if I join you guys?’ a voice asked and Christian walked into my view. I held my breath. I still didn’t know if he was the one that had ratted me out.

“Sure,” Beth said, and nudged me.

“That’s some story about you saving Kirilov,” he said. I shrugged.

“It was nothing.”

He leaned back, chewing on a sandwich. “It’s not nothing at all,” he said. Beth cleared her throat.

“I’m going to get to science earlier. I have to work on some extra credit stuff.”

I knew she was just leaving to let me have alone time with Christian. I glared at her. I wasn’t sure I wanted to be alone with him. She shrugged, and left.

When she was out the cafeteria door, I looked down at my food. I didn’t want to look him in the eye.

“Does it hurt?” he asked, extended his arm towards my upper arm, where the stitches were, but not touching it.

“Sometimes. It’s not so bad though.”

“It was very brave,” he said.

“Wounds can heal, death can’t really.”

He nodded.

“I wanted to say I’m sorry.”

I looked up into his eyes. They were big and liquid.

“I was wrong. I know we don’t have the same views, but I shouldn’t have said those things.”

“You know, just because I’m all tough and I prefer not to hang out with the others, it doesn’t mean I have no feelings.”

“I know that,” he said, fiddling with a napkin. “And I know the Kirilovs are your family, sort of. I don’t always like them, my own reasons, but if they’re important to you, I shouldn’t go off like that.”

“Thank you,” I said, really meaning it. He finally seemed to understand what had gotten me so upset.

“Do you want to give this another go?” he asked.

“What? Us?”

He nodded. “We did pretty good there, for the first bit.”

“We did,” I smiled. He took my hand over the table, and rubbed my palm with his thumb. Then he got up and kissed me over the table, a peck but it sent butterflies to my stomach and sent tingles down my spine.

“I missed you,” I said.

5

Everything is calm. Chaos is averted, and it seems that after the walker, or whatever it was has been locked up, there’s no reason to be nervous about safety anymore. Graham probably won’t head back to school until after the summer, and I don’t blame him. If I had a hole the size of an apple right through my chest and back, I’d probably feel a little under the weather too.

“I’m glad you and Christian have kissed and made up,” Beth said to me on the last day before we broke up for summer.

“Yeah, well,” I said, rolling my eyes. “Young love; you know what a pain that can be.”

We both giggle.

“Have you sorted out your issues?”

“Not really.” I said. “I mean, he’s not going to be an idiot again and say something offensive.”

“So yes, then?”

“No. It kind of bugs me that he still feels that way about Boris, you know? He’s not going to say it, but the suggestions he made were still horrific, and he didn’t change his mind. Just his manners.”

“But you’re still going to date him?”

“Hey, he’s hot.” It was easier to comment on his looks rather than what I felt when I was around him. He still had a magnetic attraction, something that made me want to be around him, even though there was something about him that said ‘danger’. I always had a nervous feeling around him, like the sky was going to fall on my head. He just fixed it with acting like he would save me if it did.