Chapter 114: There’s No Escaping an Assignment

Blair’s face reddened all over again. "Why would I want to smell like a beastman?"

Daemus’s playful demeanor softened into something much more serious and protective. "People will ask a lot less questions given your appearance. You can’t exactly walk around campus telling people you were experimented on, Bunny. That’ll just bring a bunch of other, more dangerous questions."

He leaned against the counter, crossing his arms. "It’s much easier if people just assume you’re a bored noble beastwoman who lost a bet, or someone who was just pretending to be human for fun."

Blair bit her bottom lip. His logic was sound, and it was certainly safer than the truth.

She hesitantly took the glass from his hand. The thought that Professor Feron had actually taken the time to make this potion just for her brought a swirl of very confusing feelings to her chest.

"I could just dye my hair brown again," Blair suggested quietly, looking up at him. "And wear the contacts."

"No," Daemus replied instantly, shaking his head. "I prefer your actual appearance. Plus, you won’t have nearly as hard a time at school if everyone thinks you’re a beastman."

Blair looked down at the dark red liquid sloshing in the glass.

No more being the human genius.

If she drank this, if she committed to the beastwoman lie, everything she had accomplished would be credited to a beast. The whispering students would just nod and say, ’Of course a human couldn’t score that high, of course it was a beastwoman.’

The thought made her sick. It went against everything the church had taught her, against every core belief she held. She had worked so hard, suffered so much bullying and isolation, to prove that a human could stand on the same level as the apex predators. Her accomplishments were a victory for all humans. She absolutely refused to hand those victories over to the beastmen.

Blair firmly pushed the glass back toward Daemus.

Daemus furrowed his brows in confusion, taking the glass back.

"I’ll think about it some more," Blair told him softly.

"Goodnight," she added, turning back toward her door.

But Daemus reached out, grabbing her waist and pulling her back flush against his chest.

"No goodnight kiss?" Daemus asked, a teasing smirk playing on his lips.

Blair’s face flushed a deep pink. She slowly went up on her tiptoes, leaning in to press a quick, shy peck against his lips.

Daemus laughed softly. "Not a grandma kiss, Bunny," he murmured. "I want a real kiss."

Blair took a deep breath. She went back up on her toes, wrapping her arms around his neck, and kissed him properly.

Daemus smirked into the kiss as she pulled away. "That’s more like it," he grinned, his large hand playfully squeezing her butt cheek before he finally let her go. "Goodnight."

Blair hurried into her room, her heart practically beating in her mouth as she shut the door behind her.

She plopped down onto the soft mattress, letting out a long, exhausted sigh. What was she going to do about her disguise?

As she lay there, her pink eyes drifted across the room, landing on the laptop resting on the study desk. She looked up at the ceiling, trying to ignore it, but her gaze snapped right back to it.

She really should have asked the professor about it earlier.

Maybe there are assignments on it, Blair reasoned with herself. I don’t want to fall behind.

Blair pushed herself off the bed, grabbed the laptop and the black thumb drive, and brought them back to the bed.

She popped the lid open and carefully plugged the thumb drive into the side port. The screen flickered, instantly opening the file explorer.

There was only a single folder saved on the drive.

Blair stared at the screen, her blood running cold. She recognized the name of the folder instantly. It was the name of the church that had raised her.

The Church of Sol Cadens.

Blair stared at the folder for a very long time, bringing her thumb to her lips and chewing nervously at the edge of her nail. All sorts of questions raced through her head. Professor Jack Feron didn’t do anything by accident. She knew he must have left the laptop and the thumb drive sitting right there on her desk on purpose.

Blair knew he didn’t trust her. It wasn’t something he ever attempted to hide. A knot of nervousness twisted in her stomach at the thought of what he might have found out about her past, but her curiosity refused to back down. Her trembling finger hovered over the trackpad. She needed to know what he knew.

Blair clicked on the folder, her breath catching in her throat.

But the files didn’t open. There was a lock on the folder. Displayed directly above the password prompt was an image of a dirty, tattered piece of paper covered in scrambled words and letters, all written in a messy handwriting. She recognized it instantly. It was the exact same assignment Jack had given her some weeks ago, the one she lost that day Daemus got in a fight with the snake beastwoman.

The message was obvious: the answer to the assignment was the password to access the folder.

Blair’s shoulders fell, a defeated sigh slipping past her lips. Her anxiety only peaked higher. The professor knows something, and she will only be able to find out what it is after she actually does the assignment.

Refusing to let the puzzle beat her, Blair reached over to the nightstand, grabbing a pencil and a blank sheet of paper. She began to carefully copy the image from the screen, writing down the scrambled words and letters exactly as they appeared.

But as she wrote, she paused, squinting at her own writing. While writing, she realized some of the messy scribbles she thought were letters were actually numbers.

"Maybe a chemical equation?" she wondered aloud.

The formatting suddenly made a lot more sense. Energized by the realization, Blair scrambled off the bed. She went over to the study desk and began going through the stack of chemistry textbooks.