She Entered the Academy with a Crush, Three Men Fought to Keep Her novel · Chapter 2 of 24

Chapter 2: Fox in the Window

Before nine, a fox and a wolf fight in her room and she orders both off; the tower door opens by itself.

"Maybe he said mind," I said.

"Mind," Chris repeated flatly.

"Mind your step. Mind the wards."

"Chloe."

"It's loud out there. Four hundred people."

"I have heard you sneeze through a wall in a thunderstorm," Chris said.

"I know what I heard."

He had come all the way into my room and he was standing very close.

I could smell pine and warm laundry and the faint wild edge that has always been under it.

His claws were out, just the tips, dark against the cuffs of his shirt.

"He wants you," Chris said.

"He's forty-two."

"I know how old he is."

"He's the director."

"I know what he is." His voice dropped.

"I'm saying he looked at you like a man standing in front of a fire he built."

I should have been scared.

Instead my stomach did something warm and slow, and I looked away fast.

"I'm not a bone, Chris," I said.

"I know you're not."

"Then stop standing guard over me like one."

His jaw worked.

"I've been standing guard over you for fifteen years," he said, low.

"I don't know how to stop."

Something small and bright flashed past the window.

I turned just in time to see a red fox leap off the ledge outside.

He came through the gap I'd left open for air and landed on my bed with all four paws.

He was the size of a big cat, copper and cream, with a white tip on his tail.

He looked very satisfied with himself.

"Fox," Chris said, in a voice like gravel in a blender.

The fox sat, looked at me, and yawned.

"Matt," I said.

"Get off my quilt."

There was a ripple and a stretching and a smell of warm grass.

Then a very tall, very naked man was sitting on my bed, holding my quilt around his waist.

I looked up at the ceiling.

"Sorry," Matt said, not sorry at all.

"The shift eats the shirt. The window's the only way in for a fox, the door's warded."

"The door's warded because of you," Chris snarled.

"Not you personally. Foxes in general."

"Chris," I said.

"He is naked in her room."

"I'm decent," Matt said.

"I'm wearing a quilt."

"It's my quilt," I said.

"A very nice one." He turned to me with that easy grin.

"I came to warn you. Hunter asked for me."

"Asked for you how?"

"Before I even applied." He rubbed the back of his neck.

"My acceptance letter had his handwriting on it. I thought it was a mix-up.

"Then I saw your roster, Winslow, and Maddox's next to it.

"Hunter's note was on both files. I looked. I shouldn't have.

"He asked to put the three of us on the same hall."

"Because he's her guard," Chris said.

"I'm the guard. He asked for me because of her."

"He asked for me because of her too," Matt said.

"No." Chris's eyes went all the way to silver.

"He didn't ask for you. Get out of her room."

"I'm not in the room. I'm on the bed."

That did it.

Chris moved so fast the lamp rocked on the nightstand.

He had Matt flat on my mattress, one big hand pinning his chest, the quilt twisted down around his hips.

Matt, to his credit, did not scream.

He went completely still and looked up at the silver eyes inches above his own.

Then he laughed.

"Is this the part where you tell me she's yours?" he said.

"She is not anyone's," said a voice that came out of me, from somewhere, harder than I'd planned.

They both froze.

I had my blue scarf in one fist.

I hadn't thought about picking it up.

I stepped up to the bed and looked at Chris's hand flat on Matt's bare chest.

The muscle in Chris's shoulder was jumping, and Matt's breath had gone short.

My mouth went dry.

My knees went the way they had at the arch, but for a different reason.

"Off," I said.

Chris held for one second.

"Off him, Chris."

He let go.

I snapped the scarf once against my palm.

"Both of you. Stand up. Face the wall."

Matt got up first, holding the quilt, and turned.

Chris stood so slowly I could hear his teeth, but he turned too.

I looked at two broad backs and two sets of shoulders, and a flush ran straight down my spine.

"No fighting in my room," I said.

"And nobody tells me who I belong to. Not a wolf, not a fox, not the director, nobody."

"Understood," Matt said to the wall.

"Chris?"

"Understood," he ground out.

I breathed out.

I had never given an order in my life.

It had felt like putting my hand into warm water.

"Now get out. I have somewhere to be."

I tossed Matt the big grey hoodie from the top of my bag.

He tied it around his waist, and I shooed them both into the hall.

Chris looked back at me from the doorway.

He didn't say it.

He just looked at me, long and dark and hurt.

I locked my door.

Then I went down the stairs and across the lawn in the dark.

The clock tower stood at the north end of the grounds, black against the stars.

A single gold window burned at the top.

It was eight fifty-eight.

I put my hand on the iron ring of the door.

It opened by itself.

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