Total pages in book: 132
Estimated words: 126358 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 632(@200wpm)___ 505(@250wpm)___ 421(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 126358 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 632(@200wpm)___ 505(@250wpm)___ 421(@300wpm)
“Before you start complaining, I know you’ve been getting up early to go ride the Flight Simulator every morning, so it’s not like you’ll be missing the sleep. Plus, the kind of work-out I’m going to design for you will be a hell of a lot more useful than just clinging onto a wooden dragon for an hour every day.”
I supposed I couldn’t argue with that. Also, I was pretty sure I would get kicked out of the Academy if I ever went near the Flight Simulator outside of class-time hours again.
“All right,” I said at last, when he moved his finger. I wondered why my lips tingled where he’d touched me.
“Good.” He nodded in satisfaction. “Now come on—I’ll walk you back to your dorm.”
“You don’t have to do that,” I protested. “I can get there fine on my own.”
“I just want to be sure your Dorm Monitor is there and you’re not all alone,” he said, and I could see I wouldn’t be able to talk him out of it.
“All right. Thank you,” I said, with as much graciousness as I could muster.
But as we walked back to my dorm, I couldn’t help wondering how it was that I had not only not stopped him from interfering in my life but had somehow agreed to even more interference.
33
AURORA
And so, over the next week, my life at the Academy fell into a new pattern. I was still up well before First Bell, but now I dressed in workout clothes—long, loose trousers and a thin, short-sleeved shirt I’d gotten at the Commissary—and headed for the Second-year weight room.
No matter how early I got there, though, Ryse was always already waiting.
“You’re late,” he would tell me.
“I am not,” I protested indignantly. “It’s not even light yet!”
“It will be in ten minutes. Come on—let’s get to work.”
As it turned out, he wasn’t joking about work. He pushed me hard—sometimes harder than I thought I could bear. But then I would remember that Chud Larson was still somewhere in the halls of the Academy, and I would work even harder.
“You can do it,” Ryse would say as he coached me through another round of push-ups or pull-ups. He wanted to build up my upper body strength, though he said I had surprisingly strong legs for my size.
He encouraged a lot and praised me when I felt like giving up. We were becoming something like friends, I thought. Or maybe he was more like my mentor. But still, sometimes I caught him looking at me in ways that made me nervous.
Once, I caught him staring at my chest with a puzzled expression on his face.
“What? Do I have something on my shirt?” I demanded, looking down at myself. The problem was, now that I was no longer on the edge of starvation, my breasts had started growing again. And my nipples were tight and pointy from the chilly air in the gym. But that shouldn’t matter because I always wore my Dragon Glass pendant—all Ryse should see was just a skinny First-year cadet with a flat chest.
“No,” he said, looking away quickly. “It’s just…sometimes you remind me of a Gold-wing’s scales.”
“What do you mean?” I asked frowning.
“Well…they look one color in the shadow and another color in the light,” he explained. If you saw M’alex in his cavern on Level Five, you’d think he was just royal purple. But when you see him in the sunlight, his true beauty comes out and you can see the gold on every scale.”
“What are you saying?” I scoffed, trying to act like the whole thing was ridiculous, though my heart was pounding. “That being all sweaty makes me beautiful?”
But Ryse refused to take the bait.
“No. I’m just saying sometimes you look one way…and sometimes you look another.”
“That doesn’t make any sense,” I pointed out. “I’m always just me—just Auri.” My hands were slippery with sweat as I willed him to believe it. Was he somehow seeing through the glamour my Dragon Glass pendant cast over me? But how was that possible?
Luckily, Ryse backed down.
“You’re right.” He shook his head. “Ignore me—I didn’t get enough sleep last night. Come on—let’s go for another round of squats.”
The incident worried me—should I start binding my breasts again? But Ryse never said anything else about it, so I tucked the small incident away uneasily into a corner of my mind and tried to forget it.
Other than that, I won’t deny I enjoyed working out with him—especially when he corrected my form.
“No, no—lift with your legs, not your back,” he would say, putting one big, warm hand on the small of my back briefly. Or—“No, look—you’re doing that wrong—“ as he took my wrist in his hand and showed me exactly how to curl one of the heavy stone weights the cadets used to build strength.