Not a clue what that behavior was. Watchers never did anything but stand there silently… unless they were actively disciplining a student.

  And I’d gone and met his eye like a fool and was trapped and extremely pensive.

  This had to be some kind of test. I just didn’t know what the right action would be. Break eye contact and appear weak and affected? Hold his gaze and be judged aggressive or overly informal?

  When instinct failed, I fell back on logic. Focusing on his eyes, unable to look away, I worked to separate the ocular organ from the man. Assessing as coldly as I could. Vorec green, an acidic shade that announced his hybrid status at first glance. It was a common enough color amongst our kind, so I looked for what made him unique. The human limbal ring, darker green than most. There were also flecks of gold in the mix, a sign that his mother must have possessed honeyed eyes. I wondered if she was as pretty as him.

  Was it her bone structure that gave him high cheeks and a sharp jaw?

  The cruel mouth that never smiled was as severe as always.

  But something was very different. Hating that I could not figure it out, I waited, tamping down rising panic, reminding myself that I only had to get through this one last meeting.

  Perhaps this was going to be another one of those strange appointments where he just stared at me for a good half hour before commanding me to leave.

  “Private Lorieyn.”

  Okay, he wanted to speak. I had prepared for that as well. “Sir.”

  “Remain at attention.”

  An easy enough command to follow. Or so I thought, before the general circled his desk and came to stand before me.

  Seldom had he ever come this close. The rare occasions where he had, had been disciplinary and terrifying.

  The first time?

  A boy had been killed. I had been terrorized.

  It was the only time I’d been told to sit on his fancy white couch—only sixteen, certain my death was being ordered and the noose was already strung up.

  Over a stupid misunderstanding. Mixing genders after hours was strictly prohibited. It didn’t matter if the reason was innocent or well-intentioned.

  And as I mentioned, a boy had been killed.

  Because I had tried to secretly tutor Private Cullen in math, so he might pass our next test and not be executed for failure to perform up to standard.

  Being caught after hours, pouring over books with me, he was dragged to execution on the spot.

  I was towed to General Cyderial’s office for punishment. He’d ordered me to sit on the beautiful couch, yelling me down for a solid ten minutes about the importance of following the rules. I had never seen him so manic, ranting about the dangers of young men and how there was no room for foolish female compassion for unworthy boys.

  Meanwhile, sweet Private Cullen was being strung up in the yard.

  I’d dared to start crying, and that had sent the man from manic to full-blown insanity.

  Tearing at his hair, he gave me such a look. “There had been incidents before I took over this position. Incidents where girls were harmed, Lorieyn. It’s a harm we cannot undo.”

  But the harm, the fear, had all come from the general. Life had been better before he’d taken over leadership of the academy and begun disposing of students—my brothers and sisters—as if they were trash. “If he failed trigonometry, you were going to kill him!”

  “Has your interference changed the outcome in any way?” He scoffed, letting the question go unanswered. “It isn’t your job to save these kids. It’s mine! This is not a charity. This is a training ground that will decide if you live or die.”

  As I was well aware. Dysregulated, angry at the injustice of it all, it was my turn to raise my voice. “Kill me already! I hate it here, and I don’t want to listen to you anymore!”

  “You are very young. Lorieyn, you would gain so much if you would just focus and absorb everything we are trying to teach you. This is a dangerous world full of desperate people. Equip yourself with wisdom. Private Cullen could have gone to his instructors for help. Instead, he asked you to meet him in the dark, knowing he was going to die anyway. Do you understand what I am saying to you?”

  I understood that this man was horrible. “You killed a boy who did nothing wrong.”

  Exasperated, he hardened his voice. “I saved you from rape.”

  “I don’t even know what that word means.” And I didn’t care about General Cyderial’s assumptions or brooding. I just wanted to go to my room and cry.

  Releasing an extended, shaky exhale, the general pinched the bridge of his nose, swearing under his breath.

  I watched him collect himself, watched when he stood taller and straightened his jacket, as I hunched into myself on that damned couch. My arms wrapped tight around my middle as if it might hold in all the grossness I felt inside.

  “You will be severely punished for your lapse in judgment. If I catch you outside the female dorms after dark again, you will force me to do something you are not ready for.” A strange change came over the man, as if he was trying to speak reasonably and gently. “I am asking you to please take better care of yourself.”

  My lip shook as I asked, “You’re not going to kill me?”

  “No.” He let out another exasperated breath and made damn sure I was looking him dead in the eye. “But I will kill any boy you are caught with. Remember that next time you want to help a failing student study for math. Their death will be on your hands.”

  He may not have beat me, but the general kept his word. I was heavily punished for my part in the late-night escapade. One full year of extra labor every day after classes—time I used well. Always, an armed watcher supervised my work, yet they never engaged. And as I scrubbed the halls on hands and knees, day in and day out, I found something close to privacy for the first time in my life. Time to learn the secrets of my prison.

  Mapping out surveillance devices when you had reason to linger in one place wasn’t as complicated as one would think. I knew exactly how I’d been caught last time.

  I watched the instructors’ habitual movements and schedules. I discovered the best hiding places. Within five months, I began to sneak away from the females’ dorms simply out of spite. Just to see if I could.

  Twice over the following year, I had run into a boy doing the same. Both times, I had let them kiss me in the dark.

  After asking the older girls what the word rape meant, I had a better understanding. It meant boys kissing without permission. Well, it wasn’t rape if I asked them to do it.

  In an awkward fumbling moment of foolishness, I even let one touch my breasts—a redhead who looked a lot like the boy I had tried to teach trigonometry to. They may have even shared the same birth mother.

  We didn’t quite know what we were doing, groping in the dark, and I’m not sure either of us enjoyed it the way we were supposed to. But it had been my moment in that dirty alcove, using my body the way I wanted to use it. And he had kissed me a great deal.

  I liked the kissing a lot.

  He graduated days later. I never saw him again.

  I attained my goal and enjoyed a brief sense of empowerment. One that fell away almost as quickly as it arrived.

  A week later, I was summoned to the general’s office in the middle of the night.

  And avoided his silent stare for ten straight minutes.

  He must have known something, for he gazed at me with such deranged wrath. It was the only time I had ever seen the man untidy. Uniform wrinkled as if he’d been rushing to dress. Hair mussed, eye twitching, tense, he sat in his chair and seemed to go a little more insane by the minute.

  He looked pointedly at the white couch as if to remind me what it signified yet said nothing else.

  I know I must have looked pathetic in my adolescent uncertainty. Which broken rule had he discovered? For I had broken all of them in my rebellion against his tyranny.

  Thinking about that poor, dead redheaded boy stirred up anger that had been growing for a year. Resentment for the unfairness of losing all my free hours. Bitterness that the general held all the power and I had none.

  Angry, it was easier to finally meet his treacherous gaze. To really look at my tormentor as a person, not just a force of nature.

  A person I did not like very much.

  “Do you understand the consequences of consorting with the opposite sex after hours?”

  I could be snide too. “Deeply, sir.”

  “Tonight, a boy was apprehended on his way back to the boys’ dorm. There were signs of fornication. He had something on him that looks to be yours.”

  Not only had I not been in the halls that evening, but I now knew how to make him just as uncomfortable as he was making me. “What is fornication?”

  “Private, were you in the halls tonight?” He was in no mood for my games. “I smelled you in every room.”

  Our sense of smell may have been slightly better than a human’s, but to blame me for a crime because he “smelled me” somewhere was absurd.

  My adolescent years did not always lean toward the wisest responses, especially when faced with someone I loathed so deeply. “It’s my job to clean every room, sir.”

  He barked an order. “Take your hair down.”

  That one caught me off guard. “Sir?”

  “Your hair. Take it down.”

  He’d looked as if he was about to get up and do it for me. All bravado replaced with confusion, I looked around, unsure of what I was supposed to do.

  “Well?”

  Hesitant, my hands slowly moved to the knot at my nape. One at a time, hair pins were removed, some falling to the floor as the coil unfurled.

  Half done, I gingerly stepped forward and set a handful of pins at the edge of the polished wood, then went back to unfurling the standard issue coil.

  When it was done, hair brushed my lower back. And I had never felt more naked.

  I knew I was blushing, that my speckling of scales would be glittering from the blood flow, and I couldn’t conceal how uncomfortable I was. But I cleared my throat, glanced at some random thing on his desk, and asked, “What now, sir?”

  Without a word, he produced a thin braid of long brown hair and laid it out between us. Hair similar enough to mine, but not quite the same. Mine was a bit darker, a bit coarser. Sylvia’s hair was softer, and if it hadn’t been twisted into that sad little rope, it might have still had a little bounce.

  The general watched me, eyes flicking over my unbound tresses as if searching for the clipped edges that might match.

  And then I knew. She had given this to someone. To a sweetheart.

  The next part was easy, because it was the right thing to do for a sister. “I confess. It was me. I did the fornication with a boy. It wasn’t rape, because I gave him permission to kiss me. Therefore, you can’t kill him.”

  In a blink, the man went from wild and glaring to exasperated and exhausted. A groan of, “God, help me, Lorieyn. Who does the braid belong to?” followed.

  Never would he get that name out of me. “I don’t know what you’re talking about, sir. That’s my hair.”

  He pushed back his chair and stood. Leaning forward, scary as hell, he stated, “I need to confirm if they are mates before I can decide if he lives or dies.”

  I didn’t have a clue who the boy was, but I absolutely knew Sylvia. She was like a sister to me. And we all knew better than to trust the general. “I already told you. It was me. I accept the punishment.”

  Leaning farther over his table, Cyderial ordered, “Let me see your hair.”

  Grabbing the mass behind my back, I pulled it over one shoulder.

  “Closer.”

  I came forward and held it out for him to observe, yet it was all the more obvious the little braid did not come from me once he held it up to compare.

  “Lying to your commanding officer is a serious offense.” The hand holding up the braid, the backs of his fingers brushed my hair as he lowered it.

  “It was me.”

  Sitting back in his chair, unsmiling and austere, he warned, “I will find out who she is.”

  He may, but not until I’d given her warning to lighten her hair with the chemicals we used to remove blood stains from our uniforms.

  Determined to get even with me for insubordination, I was then tortured for five awful minutes.

  My punishment was to endure an explanation of what the word fornication meant and a vague description of how it was performed. From the general… while I turned beet-red.

  My very sincere reaction at the age of sixteen had been ewww.

  And I finally understood what he’d been so worried about. “So, rape is when a boy does that without permission?” Making out in that closet had been fun, letting a boy touch my boobs had been a bit weird, but the idea of someone doing that to me was completely repulsive. “That happens here?”

  The general did not answer my question. He had one of his own instead. “Are you still going to lie to me about whose hair this is?”

  Deeply disturbed, I would not and could not meet his eyes. “Yes. That’s my hair. I did the fornication.”

  Picking up the hairpins from his desk, the general passed them to me. “Go back to bed, Lorieyn.”

  After being escorted to the female dorm and locked away behind the vault door, I disobeyed the general. I did not go back to bed. Instead, I secretly helped a strangely woozy Sylvia lighten her hair just enough that the shade of the braid would never match. They still found her out. By that evening, she was summoned to the general's office.

  She did not return.

  I missed her terribly.

  After that, there was no more walking the halls at night nor kissing unknown boys in the dark.

  The man who explained sex to me for the first time that evening had not touched me since. Nor had I been forced to endure any conversation of that type in his presence.

  That had been six years prior.

  Now, it seemed the unspoken rules had changed.

  “Remain at attention, soldier,” General Cyderial murmured, stepping around his desk. And for the first time in years, there was no shield of furniture standing between us. Nothing to offer a flimsy illusion of distance or protection from this man I hated.

  “In the ten years since I took over leadership of the Academy, we have met in this office on twenty-eight occasions. Not one of those meetings has been a commendation for exceptional performance. Seven of them have been purely disciplinary.”

  Five by my count, but clearly I had missed some. I also didn’t really enjoy where this final conversation had begun… unless, of course, he was just going to comment on how mediocre my performance had been.

  Which had been my life’s mission to achieve.

  But he kept edging closer, expression severe. “You have lied to your superiors a total of forty-seven times in the last decade in an attempt to cover for fellow students' crimes. Three times, directly to my face.”

  So close I could sense the oddest low-pitched vibration coming from his chest, he narrowed his eyes, continuing, “You’ve received numerous punishments, yet not one of them has altered this insubordinate behavior.”

  Having one’s loyalty questioned was concerning, especially six weeks from freedom. “Sir, I have not been written up in two years.”

  “What makes you think that’s true?”

  If he’d wanted to begin this assessment by twisting me into knots of anxiety, he’d accomplished his goal with an artful perfection. Nervous, I asked, “Is there a disciplinary issue I am unaware of, sir?”

  He stepped even closer, closer than any instructor ever dared stand unless offering instruction in combat. Close enough I could feel the heat of his body warming the air between us.

  I was still struggling to determine what infraction might have been reported, adding up every rule I had knowingly broken, terrified my stash of contraband—the dress, magazines, and lipstick—had been discovered and confiscated without my knowing.

  If he knew of those things, there would be no graduation. I would be killed.

  Could he read the guilt in my expression? Was that why he stared?

  Maybe this was a test all graduates had to endure. One final, unbearable interrogation by a madman.

  That thought was the only thing that kept me from flinching when General Cyderial’s hands slowly reached for my throat.

  3

  Startled, I froze. A shocked inhale stuck in my chest.

  He was so close I could feel his breath upon my cheek.

  Yet it seemed General Cyderial was not intent on causing bodily harm. A few tugs at the fabric of my collar, and it was clear this was nothing more than a standard dress uniform inspection—pulling at bits and bobs to assure I donned the uniform exactly as every last recruit had been trained to.

  It should not have been so thoroughly unsettling, except that no grown man in my entire life had ever touched me before. Not a single, mated male professor. Not one male arms instructor. Even hand-to-hand combat was taught solely by women.

  Not even an armed watcher had dared, even if I’d reached a point of reprimand. Instead, I had always been ordered to follow, and I had always obeyed.

  Corporal punishment for females was meted out by a woman.

  And here I was, about to graduate, and a man was touching me for the first time.

  Flipping the hem of my jacket to check my belt, inspecting if my trousers sat exactly as they should upon my hips, he touched. Liberal in his exploration, only to find my seams were in place, everything starched and crisp.

  Hem dropped, inspection of my rank and various pins on my chest continued.

  Still, I did not breathe.

  Focused eyes ran over every possible angle. His touch fiddled with bits of my uniform, and it felt as if he were performing an act deeply forbidden.

  A taboo in the tilt of polished brass buttons that held the ugly black jacket in place, a scandal in the way his attention lingered on my shape.

  He was breaking the rules.

  Rules that had gotten more than one of my peers killed.