Chapter 44: Not a Secret If You Can’t Keep It

The numbers on the chalkboard were starting to blur together.

Blair rested her chin in her hand, staring blankly at the front of the math classroom. She was trying her hardest to focus on the lecture, but her brain felt like a tangled ball of yarn. There were simply too many loose threads to pull.

Hookup Forest.

She chewed nervously on her thumbnail. What Professor Feron had said that morning echoed loudly in her mind. Was it really possible Heather had offered herself willingly? It honestly wasn’t a far-fetched conclusion. That was the entire reason her roommate had enrolled at the academy: to secure a rich, noble beastman.

But a nagging, persistent doubt tugged at Blair’s chest. Would Heather really just leave like that without saying a word to her? They weren’t exactly best friends, and they had barely known each other for a week, but leaving all her belongings behind and vanishing without a goodbye felt wrong. Besides, if Heather had successfully bagged a royal beastman, she would have wanted everyone to know. The entire human population at the school would be gossiping about it non-stop.

The endless possibilities were giving Blair a headache.

Unbidden, the memory of Daemus effortlessly lifting her into his arms flooded her senses. The feeling of his solid, warm chest and the sound of his deep laugh made a sudden heat rise in her cheeks.

I like to help a princess in distress.

Blair’s face flushed a brilliant, burning crimson. She quickly dropped her hand from her chin and forcefully rubbed both of her hands over her hot cheeks.

"What is wrong with me?" she muttered under her breath, squeezing her eyes shut.

When she finally opened them again, the room was dead silent.

Blair blinked, dropping her hands to her desk. Every student was staring at her. Standing at the front of the room, the strict badger beastwoman professor was glaring daggers right at her.

"Have you lost your hearing, Ms. Willows?" the professor barked, her coarse voice echoing in the quiet room. "I said, come work the problem."

The heat in Blair’s face instantly shifted to embarrassment.

She quickly stood up, her chair scraping loudly against the floor, and shuffled down the aisle to the front of the room. The professor shoved a marker into her hand, gesturing sharply to a web of advanced calculus written across the white board.

Blair uncapped the marker and stared at the numbers.

Killian.

Blair’s brow furrowed as she worked the equation across the board. Why was the Crown Prince in Hookup Forest at the crack of dawn? He was alone. Was he meeting a beastwoman out there?

She wrote out a long line of variables, shaking her head slightly. No. Definitely not. Blair couldn’t picture a universe where the arrogant, perfect Snake Prince would ever lower himself to rolling around in the dirt. So, what was he doing? Did he just enjoy taking morning strolls through the woods where beastmen were mating?

Drawing a final, neat line under her solution, Blair capped the marker.

Still lost in her own thoughts, she set the marker down and absentmindedly walked back up the aisle to her seat. She sat down, resting her chin back in her hand, her eyes staring blankly out the window.

She didn’t notice the stunned silence that had fallen over the room.

The professor slowly turned to look at the whiteboard. She had specifically put a trap question on the board: an extremely difficult equation pulled straight from the senior-level advanced mathematics curriculum, fully expecting the distracted human to fail and humiliate herself.

The professor stared at the flawless, step-by-step solution written in neat black ink. Her jaw went slack.

She leaned forward so fast that her reading glasses slipped right off her nose, clattering onto the floor.

Twenty minutes later, the bell finally rang.

Blair zipped her bag closed, eager to escape the stifling atmosphere of the classroom. She couldn’t be bothered to figure out why she was being stared at this time. As she slung the strap over her shoulder, she caught snippets of a hushed conversation between two human boys packing up their books at the desk next to hers.

"Are you sure we’re actually allowed to go to the game?" one of them asked worriedly.

"Yeah, of course," the other boy reassured him, stuffing a notebook into his bag. "It’s a school thing. All students can attend. It’s the Timber Wolves hock—"

The rest of the conversation faded into the background noise of scraping chairs and shuffling feet as Blair walked away.

She pushed the classroom doors open and stepped out into a wall of gray uniforms.

Heather’s "friends" were standing in a tight semi-circle, blocking her path. The three human girls crossed their arms simultaneously, looking at her with impatient, demanding glares.

"Well?" the center girl demanded, tapping her foot. "When are we meeting Daemus and his friends?"

Blair let out a long, exhausted sigh. "I’m working on it," she said flatly, trying to step to the side and push past them.

They immediately shuffled sideways, cutting her off.

"You know," the girl on the right said, casually twirling a strand of her curled hair between her fingers, "the longer you take, the more danger Heather could be in."

Blair looked up, narrowing her eyes at the girl.

"Why do you think she’s in danger?" Blair asked, her voice dropping into a quiet tone.

The girl rolled her eyes, scoffing as if the answer was the most obvious thing in the world. "Because royals are crazy, obviously."

The center girl’s eyes widened in panic. She slapped her palm over the chatty girl’s mouth.

"Shut up, idiot!" she hissed, glaring furiously at her friend.

The girl struggled against the hand, her muffled voice slipping out from between the fingers. "I didn’t say his name!"

Blair bit the inside of her cheek to hide the smirk threatening to break across her face. Her pulse quickened. A male royal beastman. She finally had a real, tangible clue.

Satisfied with the massive piece of information she got, Blair easily stepped around the arguing clique.

"Thank you, I knew you guys would come around," Blair tossed over her shoulder with a smile as she walked away, leaving the friends glaring at her back.