Chapter 65

Of course as I’m leaving, I run into none other than Bella. Luckily for me, the tears had yet to spring from my eyes to my cheeks. I sucked them back up as she got closer.

The bitch had the Gaul to be perfectly done up at eight in the morning. Her skirt was ridiculously short and flounced around her thighs. She was wearing some sort of heeled boots and a little cropped cardigan. Most of her mid section was out, tanned and smoothed. Her long black hair was swishing around her waist, super shiny and straight.

And I was in a glorified sack.

“What are you doing here?” Bella snapped as she got close enough to me.

I jabbed a thumb towards Valentin’s office. “Oh, you didn’t know?” I feigned kindness with a sickly sweet smile. “We fuck at seven most mornings. Before the rest of the professors get in.” I flashed her my teeth, making the smile even faker.

“Just so people don’t talk,” I half-whispered at her.

Bella’s entire face contorted into a bitter sneer. She stepped up to glare down her nose at me. I should’ve been more scared of someone nearly a half foot taller than me but it was fucking Bella.

“Listen, cunt,” she bit out. “No matter how hard you try, it won’t change that fact that he’s mine. He’s proposed to me.”

She stood up straight and threw my fake-ass smile back at me. “Heard what happened at Kairos’s,” she said. “Of course, you’d be one to hook up with someone in the bathroom.”

My jaw fell completely slack. The fucking audacity of her to insinuate that I was into the attempted assault on me was disgusting. I was almost raped and here she was telling me she knew I’d be “one to do that”.

Instead of lashing out, I stood up as straight as I could. I put on the sweetest, sickest smile I could possibly muster and I walked past Bella. As I got past her, she scoffed. So I wheeled around and looked at her.

“Oh, by the way,” I added. “Tell Valentin I’m so sorry for breaking his chair. I didn’t know he’d be that… passionate.”

Bella’s eyes almost bulged out of her head. She glared at me more violently than she had before. I blew her a kiss before spinning on my heel and darting off. I was almost out of the Admission’s building when I started to hear screaming and banging from the hallways where Valentin’s office was. I snickered to myself as I darted out of the building.

The truth was, I didn’t think that Valentin actually liked Bella. I knew that the feelings that I felt towards Valentin were reciprocated. I’d felt them reciprocated as the hardness in his crotch whenever we were pressed together. Then, there was the electricity and the deep thrumming of our hearts that I’d come to associate with the mate bond.

The fated mate bond.

That I was slowly started to believe I had multiple of.

A queen deserves a royal court, Mona drawled from the back of my mind.

I couldn’t help but roll my eyes. I’m barely a princess, I said back. Actually, no one knows I’m a fucking Princess.

There is an aura of a princess about you, Mona countered. Even if they do not know, they can sense it.

Right. By assaulting and attacking and being generally miserable towards me.

Because they knew you were different, Mona’s tail swished. She was clearly annoyed.

I dropped the subject completely, trying to not argue with the voice in my head. I didn’t need to be crazier than I already was. My mind drifted back to my nights with Maximus. A heat crept up in my cheeks as I remembered him, driving into me.

I’d never had sex like that. Raw and deep and unrelenting. Yet somehow, my heart was tugging me more towards Valentin. There was a complete draw to him that I didn’t have towards Maximus.

The fact of the matter was, I didn’t want Maximus. I wanted Valentin.

But did Valentin want me?

I knew he did in the depths of his being, yet I had to convince him to believe the voice in the back of his mind. I’d heard through the rumor mill that he and Bella had set a date: New Year’s Eve of that year. That left with me with three months to try and weasel my way into his brain.

Three months to convince him to allow himself to be mine.

I sighed as I reached my dorm room. It was going to be challenging but I knew I had it in me. I got back in my room as Loren was waking up. The two of us walked to Basics together. Loren only asked a few questions that were easy enough for me to side step. But when we got to Basics, I noticed her gnawing her lip. I knew she was trying to figure out if I was lying out of omission.

Coach blew his whistle to start class. He paired us off and let Kairos demonstrate something. Once again, Kairos glared at me before he demonstrated. I fought the desire to roll my eyes. His attention to me was becoming boring.

Coach blew the whistle again and I searched the crowd for Maximus. He walked over to me with his normal emotionless expression. I licked the front of my teeth and offered him a half smile.

“Hi,” I said, softly.

“Hi,” Maximus replied, still with no emotion. “Ready to train?”

I nodded. That was the end of our conversation as we walked over to the training mat. That morning, we were working on countering kicks. I was supposed to throw a high kick and Maximus was supposed to grab my ankle and take me down. Then, I was supposed to do the same to him.

The first time Max’s hand wrapped around my ankle, the jitterly electric feeling surged from his hand to my skin. We locked eyes and both relished in the feeling. However, when I blinked, my eyes opened to Valentin’s face. I gasped and blinked again, Max’s face coming into focus. Immediately, I lost my focus and fell on my ass.

“Shit,” Maximus hissed. He dropped down to offer me a hand. “You okay?”

“Yeah,” I mumbled. I grabbed his hand and let him pull me up. He glanced at me with hunger in his eyes, but I felt nothing. I blinked again and pulled away.

“Sorry,” I grumbled. “Distracted.”

A frown worked it’s way onto Maximus’s face. It was like he could tell that it wasn’t him that distracted me. It was someone else.