Bryn smiled. “Next thing you know, you’ll be wearing yoga pants.”
He laughed, his eyes sparkled, his hair was kind of tussled, and with his tie undone he looked so much more normal…still devastatingly handsome and undeniably hot…but normal. Bryn froze. Wait. Did I just think Jaxon is hot? Where did that thought come from?
“What’s wrong?” Jaxon asked.
“Nothing.” Nope. Nothing was wrong. She did not think Jaxon was hot. I do not. “Clint and Ivy will be waiting for us outside my room with food. Let’s go eat.”
“Sounds good.” They walked to the Blue dorm. Guards were positioned outside of every building and along the sidewalk. Despite the heightened security, it seemed like just another night. A normal night. Not a night where she suddenly found herself attracted to a certain asshat…because that was just wrong.
When they entered the Blue dorm, it looked like the entire Blue student body was in the main lounge waiting for them. Jaxon acted like nothing was out of the ordinary, so Bryn followed suit.
Clint and Ivy sat on the floor outside Bryn’s room playing Go Fish.
“There you are,” Ivy said. “I was beginning to worry.”
“We’re fine,” Bryn said. She opened the door and they all sat at the library table where Clint placed four carryout boxes.
“Before you try to finish off all this food, Ivy and I call dibs on this container of nachos.” He pulled a container over toward himself. “You guys can split the rest.”
Bryn popped open the other containers to reveal nachos, hamburgers, and an entire container of French fries. “Since you were injured, you can pick first,” Bryn said to Jaxon.
He ripped the lid off one of the containers, placed two burgers in it and two handfuls of fries. “You can have the rest,” he said.
“Challenge accepted.”
Clint and Ivy left after they finished their food, but Jaxon hung back like he wanted to talk to her.
She finished off the last of the fries while she waited for him to start.
“Do you think those Greens targeted you and then me because of our Directorate connections or was that a coincidence?” he asked.
“Your father should be finding out the answers to those questions right now.” The two Greens would be dosed with a drug that would make them talk, which was much more civilized than she’d thought dragons would be.
“I think they came after us for some reason,” Jaxon said. “There’s no way they happened on both of us.”
“When it was just me I was willing to believe it was the luck of the draw, but I think you’re right,” Bryn said. “We had to be targeted for some reason.”
He leaned back in his chair and stared off into space like he was thinking. “Which means they weren’t after Quintessence.”
“Um…I seem to remember them sucking out a lot of my life force,” Bryn said.
“Maybe they just did that to cover something else up,” Jaxon said.
“Like what?”
He ran his hand back through his hair. “That’s where my theory falls apart. I don’t know what they could be after. It’s not like you or I have access to some secret information.”
“I could call my grandfather and ask what they’ve found,” Bryn offered, because she really wanted to know what the heck was going on.
“No. My father said he’d call me. I’ll share whatever he tells me. I guess I should say thank you for coming to look for me.”
“You’re welcome, though you seemed to have the situation taken care of by the time we got there.”
“Mostly,” he said. “But it’s nice to know that someone notices when I’m not where I’m supposed to be.”
And now this felt awkward and a little too serious. “I guess it really is our job to look out for each other now, isn’t it?”
He grinned. “I’d like to point out that I’m normally a lot less trouble than you are, so you’re getting the better end of this deal.”
She rolled her eyes. “Yes, I’m one lucky girl.”
He acknowledged her joke with a grin and then pushed to his feet. “Do try to remember that.” He walked to the door and let himself out.
She locked the door behind him. Weird how she felt closer to him now. Shared drama probably had that effect on a relationship. Whatever kind of relationship she had with Jaxon, it seemed to be shifting…which was natural given their strange circumstances. Nothing to worry about. Nothing at all.
Rather than think too hard about the absurd state of her life, she grabbed her book and relaxed on the couch. The now non-possessed hero of the book was declaring his undying love for the main character when Bryn’s phone rang, startling the crud out of her. She reluctantly set her book down, hoping whatever she was about to hear would make her feel safer.
“Bryn,” Jaxon’s voice came through the line. “The Greens they questioned claimed it was just circumstance that they chose us because we were alone. Apparently, it’s their job to collect Quintessence from unsuspecting students so that they have enough to share with the higher-ups in their dragon-pire ring. They called themselves feeders. They haven’t been doing so well with that, and their bosses take what they want from them, so they were ambushing people to try and stock up. They fed off several other students in this same manner but were successful in making the students forget so the incidents went unreported. They were desperate when they attacked you, and tonight when they came after me, because they’d just given so much energy to their higher-ups.”
“So, normally they don’t ambush people and drug them?”
“No. They just touch them in passing. Contact for a few minutes allows them to siphon off a dose of energy and the victims don’t remember a thing. That’s how they usually operate.”
“So they were behind the students who were so tired, like Clint and Ivy?”
“Yes, but my father said their answers in that area led them to believe that there were other feeders on campus.”
“Well, that’s just fantastic,” Bryn said.
“I think the good news is that they weren’t targeting us in particular.”
“I guess that makes me feel better.”
“I’d feel better if they’d learned who the ringleaders of this group were, but the higher-level dragon-pires never let anyone see their faces,” Jaxon said. “They wear masks, robes, and gloves to conceal their Clan colors.”
“Speaking of Clans, were they able to determine if the dragon-pires they arrested were hybrids?”
“Yes. And you can’t share this information with anyone. Not even Clint and Ivy.”
“They wouldn’t tell anyone.”
“I’m not telling you unless you promise not to share.”
Damn it. She hated keeping information from her friends. Still she wanted to know. “Fine. I won’t tell anyone.”
“They were Green-Blue hybrids.”
“Wow.” That was the only response she could come up with for a moment. “I’d never expect that pairing.”
“I’m not sure how it would happen.”
“If I were to hazard a guess, I’d say that the Greens were females who were denied marriage and the Blues were males who kept them as mistresses. The secret offspring of that union would have the brains of a Green and the ambition of a Blue.”
“And an angry, ambitious, genius who is unstable might resort to extreme measures to achieve their goals,” Jaxon said.
“I can’t tell you how much I hate the fact that some hybrid combinations are unstable.”
“Because it proves that the Directorate had a reason for creating the marriage laws,” Jaxon said.
“Exactly. I don’t get it,” Bryn said. “I’m not unstable.”
Jaxon laughed.
She almost threatened to blast him with a fireball but that would prove his point. “I’m not homicidally unstable,” she corrected. “And you’d have to think that any dragon raised in a loving supportive environment wouldn’t want to hurt other dragons.”
“For centuries, dragons hoarded treasure and kept control of land. It’s in our nature to seek out treasure and power. Some combinations of those genes lead to bad results.”