My Hockey Alpha #Chapter 272: Study Buddies
Nina
The end of the semester was just around the corner, which meant that final
exams were on their way. And considering how much time I had spent that
semester dealing with what felt like everything except for my classes, I
needed to study.
When I wasn’t training the new recruits with Enzo over the following week, I
was studying in the library. I stayed up late every night to cram as much as I
could, and found myself reverting back to the way that I used to be before it
felt as though the world was falling apart; just a normal college student who
wanted to pass her exams.
If I pushed everything else out of my mind, it did feel as though everything was
normal.
But it wasn’t.
And I couldn’t really push everything else out of my mind for more than five
minutes. With the Crescents potentially returning at any moment, it felt as
though the world was collapsing in on me. It made it difficult to focus on
studying, and if I was being honest, the fact that the school was still running at
this point almost felt silly to me.
I wished that everything could just be put on
hold until the Crescents were no longer a threat, but at the same time I knew
that the Crescents would likely be a threat for a long time, and the world
needed to go on. Students had already paid their tuition, and future doctors
and lawyers were studying to go out into the world. Just because the
Crescents were hell-bent on taking over the world didn’t mean that it needed
to stop turning.
And so, despite everything, I spent my days and nights when not training
studying in the library.
One evening, on a Wednesday, I had been in the library for at least six hours
at that point. I had lost track of how much time I had spent in there, and was
only able to measure the time I had spent studying that day by the number of
cardboard to-go coffee cups I threw in the trash. By the time I finally looked
up at the clock on the wall to see that it was almost midnight, I had counted
seven cups of coffee throughout the day.
“Shit,” I whispered to myself, rubbing my tired eyes. “It’s late.”
I was too tired and bleary-eyed at that point to study for any longer, so I
decided to close my book on human anatomy and pack up my things for the
night. I stood, cracking my back after sitting in pretty much the same position
all day, and stretched for a moment before grabbing my bag and heading out
of the library.
However, just as I was heading out, someone else was heading in. And that
someone was none other than Selena.
She put her head down at first and tried to hustle past me, but froze when I
called out to her.
“Hey, Selena,” I said. “Can we talk?”
Truthfully, I had wanted to talk about the Claiming ceremony since it
happened; but I hadn’t been able to find Selena anywhere. I knew that she
was avoiding me.
Selena slowly looked over her shoulder and cast me a dirty look.
“Is it important enough to interrupt my studying?” she asked, shifting her bag
on her shoulder.
I bit my lip for a moment, watching her, before I took a sharp breath. “I’m
really sorry about the whole Claiming thing,” I said quietly.
Selena scoffed. “No you’re not,” she growled. “You’re not sorry.”
Just as I expected, my evil twin sister was just as nasty as she always was.
But I had seen a spark of an innocent young girl in there a couple of times,
and I was determined to draw that spark out.
Even if it took years, I was
determined to get her to see me as a sister and not an enemy, despite what
she had done in the past. I knew that the Luna had probably whispered all
sorts of things in her ear, and I didn’t fully blame her for everything.
“I am sorry,” I said, walking up to her. “I really am. But I do hope you
understand that—”
“Yeah, yeah, I know,” she said dismissively with a wave of her hand and a
dirty glare in her eyes. “I’ve given you plenty of reasons not to trust me.”
I fell silent. She was right; she had given me, and everyone else, countless
reasons not to trust her.
“But it is possible for you to gain my trust,” I said softly. “We’re sisters.”
Selena stared at me for several long moments. Her eyes were slightly wide,
as though I had once again surprised her by being gentle with my words. It
almost felt as though she had expected me to be just as nasty and evil as she
had been.
“So what?” she asked, finally turning to face me fully. “You want me to prove
myself or something?”
I nodded and shrugged at the same time. “Yeah, sort of. If you can prove to
me that you’re not just gonna use your powers to hurt people again, then I’ll
happily turn you back into a werewolf.”
For a long time, Selena was quiet as she chewed the inside of her cheek. Her
blue eyes were the only thing that kept me from feeling as though I was
looking into a mirror. Honestly, her blue eyes were pretty. They stood out
starkly from her dark hair.
Finally, after a long time, Selena opened her mouth and spoke.
“I know this probably won’t be enough to make you trust me, but I’ll say this:
the Luna has an army of those special rogues. But they’re all connected to
her.”
My eyebrows raised at this information. I opened my mouth to ask what she
meant exactly, but it seemed as though I had already exhausted my time with
Selena. Without another word, she hiked her bag strap up on her shoulder and
stormed off, disappearing between the tall bookshelves. I stared after her for
a minute, chewing my lip, before I finally sighed and headed out the door.
The air was cold as I began to walk back to my dorm, but it felt nice after
being inside all day and it helped me think. I needed to know what Selena
meant when she said that all of those special rogues were connected to the
Luna… Surely that information would be extremely helpful if we wanted to take
the Luna, and thus the Crescents, down. But I didn’t know enough yet. I
needed to see if I could get Selena to tell me more, and soon, before it was
too late.
As I walked across the quad, I looked up to see a familiar face waiting for me
at the fountain. It was Enzo. He stood and walked over to me with his hands in
his pockets and shot me a cheeky smile.
“I thought you’d be walking home right about now,” he said. “Wanna come to
my place tonight instead?”
“Um, sure,” I replied, managing a smile despite the millions of thoughts whirling
around in my head. But I couldn’t help but glance over my shoulder as we
walked, and Enzo noticed.
“What is it?” he asked, putting his arm around me.
I shook my head. “It’s nothing. I just ran into Selena, and she said something
interesting; she said that the Luna is ‘connected’ to these genetically
engineered rogues. But I don’t know what that means exactly. I mean, she
might not even be telling the truth, but…”
Enzo stopped in his tracks and looked down at me. “That’s not ‘nothing’, Nina,”
he said. “That’s crucial information. We have to get more. Maybe we should
interrogate—”
“No!” I blurted out, surprising even myself with my urgency. “No. We need to
give her time… If we push her too much, she’ll never tell us anything.”
For a few moments, Enzo looked at me with disbelief on his face.
“C’mon,” I said, punching his arm playfully. “Didn’t you just tell me that you
think I’m capable?”
Enzo looked down at the ground and chuckled, then nodded. “Yeah, I guess I
did say that, didn’t I?” he said.
With that, he slipped his arm back around me and we began to walk to his
dorm just as snow began to fall.
