Zodiac Academy Fated Throne - Caroline Peckham Page 0,37

guess. Not that there were many passages on either of those things in the tomes kept in the piss-poor Darkmore Penitentiary library. But there was an old section on the royals which mentioned the Imperial Star once or twice. Nothing useful so far though, nothing that could give Darius and Darcy an edge to find it before Lionel did.

Someone slid into the seat beside me and I turned my head, a growl grating against my throat in warning. I found Roary Night perching there, his muscles flexing, his long hair falling around his face.

“I’ve been watching you,” he said casually, like we’d spoken a thousand times.

I grunted, turning away again. “You? Or your little band of followers?” He wasn’t one to show off about it, but everyone knew he ran one of the biggest gangs in Darkmore. Unlike the other gangs, the Shades didn’t need to go around shouting about how big their balls were to prove their power though. They were the shadow in the dark, the threat you didn’t see coming. It was hard to even know for sure who exactly was one of them, but they saw everything that went on in this place. Each and every one of them reporting back to the man in charge. And for a while now, I’d gained his attention.

He chuckled darkly, twisting around in his seat and resting his forearms on the table. “Both.”

“Good for you, I hope you enjoyed the show.” I stuffed a spoonful of oatmeal into my mouth and he yawned broadly, slinging an arm over my shoulders. I swallowed the tasteless sludge on my tongue, cocking a brow at him.

“I’ve been speaking to my brother. And he’s been speaking to Gabriel Nox...” His brother Leon was a good enough friend to me that I didn’t distrust Roary, but I was also planning on collecting friends in here about as much as I planned on starting an acapella band. But now he had my attention. I’d met Leon after he and some of his classmates had been sent to Zodiac Academy for a student exchange back when I’d been a student myself. He’d licked my face which had made me dislike him intensely, but I guessed the over-friendly Lion Shifter had grown on me eventually. His brother was a little more sinister though.

I fell still, surveying Roary curiously. “And?”

“And, I know the truth now.”

I dropped my spoon into my bowl and shrugged his arm off of my shoulders. “And what’s the truth?” I asked hollowly.

“You’re no pervert,” he said with a smirk, rubbing his knuckles against my cheek. I batted his hand away with a growl of warning and he laughed lightly. “So we can be friends now.”

The table banged as Ethan Shadowbrook, the leader of the Lunar Brotherhood gang in here, slammed himself down on the seat opposite us, his fists hitting the table. “Hands off, Lion. I already called dibs.”

“Didn’t realise I was building a harem,” I said dryly, returning to my breakfast.

The resident nutjob, Sin Wilder, suddenly launched himself to sit on the table cross legged, gazing between all of us with a psychotic look on his face. “What do you call a harem with four swords and no scabbard?”

“What?” Ethan narrowed his eyes at him.

“Boring.” Sin jumped off the table and laughed manically as he headed away. The guy was a certified lunatic, but at least he left me the fuck alone most of the time.

“So, remember that offer I made you about those pills that will, you know…” Ethan leaned closer, pushing his fingers into his styled blonde hair. “Suppress the Guardian Bond.”

I itched the mark on my arm where the sleeve of my orange jumpsuit was rolled up, the skin prickling as it urged me toward Darius as always. Fuck I missed him.

“I said no,” I growled. I wasn’t gonna owe this guy anything. I’d fought to keep myself a loner in here and that was the way it was staying. I’d align myself with one of the gangs the same day I’d strip down and bend over for the local pervert Plunger. Last week a guy had made a crack about him drinking tea instead of coffee and Plunger had face slammed him into a wall, then proceeded to drop his pants and dunk his balls in and out of his slack-jawed mouth while shouting ‘who likes tea bags now?’. So, yeah.

“That’s the thing. Yesterday I gave those pills to a guy who was suffering from Faemorrhoids,” Ethan said, scratching