Reaching Answers (Artemis University #8) - Erin R Flynn Page 0,6

she was part of the problem and accepted what she shouldn’t. Campbell ignores tons of what goes on right around, and that’s why I poked her. She wants to be kept in the dark and then bitches about it.

He studied my aura and bit back a smile. “Sure, love, it was only that.”

Damnit! I hadn’t put back on my charms or the runes yet. He could see in my aura it was jealousy and anger on his behalf too.

“I also healed her from those punches.”

“She deserved them.”

“Yes, and I thank you for giving them to her.”

I shrugged. “Anytime.”

He snorted, giving me an impish smirk. “I’ve got more than enough juice to keep wiping her memory and healing her. The twat deserves nothing less for insulting you like that, and not because of your true birth. You know I don’t care about that. I never did. Being from certain families isn’t a blessing but—”

“A burden,” I whispered, glancing away. “I know. And I know that never bothered you. It bothered me when it came to her. You were two peas of the good breeding pod and I was a street rat for a while. She wasn’t wrong about that. I ran away from that foster dad and lived on the street until Mel found me. I still see that girl when I look in the mirror somedays.”

“I still see the lad whose family talked about him like an investment they weren’t getting the right return on,” he muttered as he moved closer. “Everyone besides my parents. That’s how they’ve always spoken of me. I had the potential for more, the value was there, but I wasn’t giving them the return they wanted. It was horrible after my dad died and they put the squeeze to my mum. Good breeding doesn’t mean manners.”

Amen to that. The polite society of supes was more dangerous than some of the crack houses I’d gone in to help people or the ghettos I’d been to when I’d needed to handle pimps.

For real.

“Now back to you yelling at me for being your alibi?” he murmured as he surrounded me against his desk.

I sighed, forgetting that was why we had come in there in the first place. “It was stupid.”

“No, it wasn’t. I’d do anything to protect you.” He tried to kiss me again but I ducked him.

“Julian, I’m guilty as shit,” I whispered. I sat on the desk and pulled up my legs, spinning away from him and landing on the other side so we were staring at each other. “Jordan Holmes and his friends are dead. I ordered Chief and the pack to burn them to ash and they did. They’re not missing. They’re gone forever and no trace of them are left. That’s what you just gave the alibi for, okay?”

He swallowed loudly but kept my gaze, not even flinching otherwise. “What did they do this time, love? Why did you do that?”

I couldn’t even hide my shock. It took me several moments to get my mouth to work. “What does it matter?”

“It does. Tell me. Get it off your chest if nothing else. I can see the pain pulsing in your aura.”

He wasn’t wrong. I might have brushed it off until that last part. I’d kept it all inside and it was eating at me.

The tears instantly came and I angrily wiped them away. “They sent me a picture of a woman’s hip without a birthmark this time. They set a trap for me.”

“I figured if you went to them. What did they do, Tamsin?”

“They bought a fox shifter,” I choked out. “They just bought her from her family, Julian. The family knew what they sold her for. They didn’t care because she was just a girl and it was lots of money. They showed me the whole thing, bragging in their minds because I could hear it, see it all. They raped her, a virgin no less, over and over again, not drugged this time.

“And they drank from her as they brutalized her, taunting her they were going to kill her, and all so they could make me blow a gasket and reveal I was a witch. It was all so they could get proof I was a witch and get their places back among society and with their council. That she was nothing but a purchased tool and no one cared for her, not even her family.

“They tortured her with that. It was hours, Julian. They did that to her for hours