Magic Secret (Half-Blood Academy #2) - Meg Xuemei X Page 0,13

might cower. I’m not as crazy as you think.” That was a lie. I would’ve stood between them and Paxton. I wouldn’t allow anyone to hurt my friends.

“You are the craziest chick I’ve met, probably even crazier than One-eighth.” she said.

“Hey!” I called. “Remember rule number one: Don’t throw insults before breakfast. And that was the worst slander I’ve had thrown at me all week.”

She giggled and quickly wiped tears from the corners of her eyes with a folded napkin. I grinned at her. I liked to hear my friends laugh.

Her laughter dropped, and her face became solemn too soon.

“We were sick to our stomachs with worry,” she said. “And then we heard the shouts about you disappearing. Half of the Dominions were sent out to look for you. Nat and I joined the search. We covered the entirety of both campuses. We were out of our wits, and then the Dominions wouldn’t let us look anymore and sent us back to our dorms.”

We’d settled down at a rectangular table. I pushed a tray that had an empty mug and a plate with a half-eaten bagel on it to the corner.

“Why can’t people just put away their own trash?” I asked.

“And here you are,” Yelena said, studying me with half-relieved eyes. “You look better than ever. You’re—glowing.”

“Am I?” I asked with a stupid smirk on my face. I couldn’t help it. My mind drifted to the three demigods, who had fought to pamper me last night.

“Oh my gods.” Yelena nearly tossed the napkin she’d used to wipe off her tears at me and jumped to her feet. “You had sex, Marigold. While we were all so worried about you and lost sleep over it, you’d had the best sex ever!”

My face flushed pink, and she caught that right away.

Yelena was one of the most observant people.

She blinked. “So, it’s true.”

“What is true?”

“Who’s the lucky guy?”

“Shush.”

The other students had resumed chatting and eating after their initial shock at my appearance, but plenty of them still trained their eyes on me or pricked their ears trying to catch the thread of my conversation with Yelena, despite that we’d picked a corner table trying to avoid just that.

“Sex? And who’s the lucky guy?” Nat arrived with two large trays of food and three mugs of steaming coffee.

Yelena and I rose to help unload his burden.

“I got this,” he said, fending us off and swatting our hands away as he arranged the dishes and coffee before us in order.

“Did you ever wait tables, Nat?” I asked, arching an eyebrow. “Or are you a control freak?”

“Both,” he said. “I bartended at an upscale bar in downtown Chicago. It’s an excellent place to pick up cute dudes.”

“Were you underage when you tended bar?” I asked.

He arched a well-manicured eyebrow. “Who follows rules in the age of the Great Merge?”

I grinned at him. “Hey, I don’t judge.”

The world hadn’t been about peace and order for centuries. In this age, the rules were made by Lucifer or the demigods.

And three demigods wanted to be my boyfriends.

“Sex?” Nat returned to our disrupted topic, his hazel eyes brightening. “Tell me all about it.”

Everyone was interested in sex.

I shook my head. “I’ve never met anyone who loves to gossip more than you.”

He smirked instead of taking offense. “I’m the source of intel at the Academy.”

“No, I didn’t have sex,” I said, biting my lip in disappointment. “I didn’t get any action at all.”

Last night, I’d stayed in Héctor’s suite in central Manhattan, the war-free zone where Lucifer also had an apartment. Zak and Axel had refused to leave after supper and spent the night in Héctor’s place as well. They’d insisted it was because they wouldn’t let Héctor take advantage of me, but it was pretty obvious they just didn’t want me to sleep alone with Héctor.

Héctor had gritted his teeth, and then I’d had to step in and stop another battle between them.

So amid threats of violence, we’d talked, bargained, and made compromises as we arranged what sort of future they wanted for me and what future I insisted on for myself.

We’d all calmed down after we’d had some dessert.

In the end, I’d gone to bed alone. The three guys had gone to sleep on the floor of the same bedroom. But when I woke up, all three of them were on the vast bed with me. They sprawled around me with their trousers hanging low around their perfect hips. Apparently they’d all climbed into the bed in the middle