Midnight Truth (Shifter Island #4) - Leia Stone Page 0,38

notch to a full-on sprint. “You don’t know a thing about me—”

“I know enough,” he snarled, stepping into my personal space.

Honor lunged forward then, snapping his jaws at the dude, and he backed up slightly.

“Clearly, you don’t,” I growled, glaring up at him as I inched through the gap Honor had created.

“Unless you’re on some sort of suicide path, you’re not going to be the mage master of spirit,” he said, eyeing Honor before his gaze flicked back to me. “You don’t belong here with us. You’re a mutant high crime.”

Oh. My. Mage.

I rolled my eyes and then gave him a one-finger wave. “Tell me something I haven’t heard a million times. I don’t have time to exchange insults like teenagers. Get. Out. Of. My. WAY!” I roared the last part, my wolf coming to the surface as pelts of fur rippled down my arms.

His face pinched, his lips bunching as he clenched his teeth, but he stepped aside to allow me passage.

“That’s what I thought.” I dismissed him with a wave and started walking backward down the aisle toward the portal door. “Come on, Honor.”

Pretty much, everyone I’d met here, excluding family, was an evil asshat.

“You better tell the alpha king to get his crap together,” Julian seethed. “If he doesn’t hold up his end of the bargain with the high mages, he won’t be king for very long.”

I stopped my departure and cocked my head as I measured the young man. I didn’t know him well enough to get a solid read, but I was getting close to kicking his ass. Balling my fists, I strode closer to him and snarled, “Are you threatening my mate?”

Shaking his head, he snorted and then turned his back on me. “Not at all. I don’t need to. I’m just educating you.”

What did that mean?

Glaring at his retreating form, I decided I didn’t care. He was probably only posturing, and I didn’t need to chase down one more battle. Rage could handle himself. Still, I’d be more wary of Julian now.

‘Let’s go, Nai,’ Honor called, his nails clicking on the stone flooring as he led our departure. ‘Something’s wrong with Justice. I feel it.’

Honor’s declaration wiped all thoughts about Kian’s son from my mind. I’d have to deal with that bully at some point, but right now wasn’t the time.

When I arrived at the onyx door, my chest felt heavy with foreboding. I pushed through, and my heart stopped.

The Shifter Island Academy library was silent—unnaturally so, especially considering it was a school library and the middle of the day.

“Hello?” I called.

Nothing.

‘Rage?’ I called through our bond, my heart thundering against my ribs. ‘Rage!’

Honor took off at a sprint, and I followed, weaving through the library shelves, I ran as fast as my two legs could go.

‘Are you close?’ Rage suddenly asked, his mental voice sounding breathless. Strained.

‘Yes. Where are you? What’s wrong?’ I ran out the door and down the hall, exiting the building, and still … I saw no one.

My mind raced, and the fear I’d felt intensified—mine mixing with Rage’s. And… ‘WHY WEREN’T YOU ANSWERING?’

‘Come to the castle infirmary; Justice is hurt bad,’ he said. ‘I was busy helping him.’

I skidded to a stop in the middle of the quad, only then realizing that Honor wasn’t anywhere near me, he was way far up ahead.

‘Hurry, Nai … please,’ Rage said.

Mother Mage.

‘Run!’ I commanded my wolf—because the sooner I could get to Rage, the better. She surged to the surface and my clothes shredded as muscle and bone and sinew snapped and shifted in the blink of an eye … and then I was running.

As I approached the castle, shifters appeared, their forms a blur in the periphery as I raced to my target.

‘Justice better not be dead,’ I snarled to Rage, his brothers, and even the universe. Now that I knew what it took to bargain with the Keeper of the Dead… ‘Nobody better be even close!’

I sprinted into the infirmary, and my wolf receded. Boom. Gone. And … totally naked, I strode into the room, pausing to scan the inhabitants. Every single bed was occupied. All of them. There had clearly been some type of attack.

The metallic tang of copper hung in the air, but it was the heavy weight of dread that pressed in around me. A half-dozen shifters dressed in white attended to the other patients, but there was only one bed with several people hovering around it. I recognized the broad shoulders of two of the